Legal Limbo of Urban Indigeneity / Limbo Jurídico da Indigeneidade Urbana: Indigenous Mobilizations and the Traps of State Visibility

This chapter analyzes the current condition of the Indigenous population in Rio de Janeiro. It explores the growth of Indigenous urban populations and what that has meant for the legal rights and visibility of such groups. The concept of legal limbo is useful in capturing the recolonial predicament that the state deploys for urban Indigenous citizens. If the state recognizes Indigenous peoples only through their villages, lands, and tribes, can an urban Indigenous individual or people—who migrated away or were forcibly displaced from their ancestral villages—still make legal claims as Indigenous? And to which state authority would they make these claims? This chapter focuses on the occupation of the Museu do índio and the government response to such actions. Government refusal to ignore the legal rights of Rio’s Indigenous peoples reveals both the victories and limitations of movement organizations that have emerged in recent years.