At the most recent seminar, Mariana Françozo presented the book The Tapuia of Northeastern Brazil in Dutch Sources (1628-1648), organized together with Martijn van den Bel and published in 2023 by Brill. The book is an English translation of a collection of Dutch documents from the period when the West India Company (WIC) occupied Northeastern Brazil (1630-1654). During the meeting, it was mentioned that preparations are already underway for a Portuguese version to be published by Hedra.

The project involved a long process of transcribing sources, which started in 2016, and is part of a growing interest in the Dutch presence in the Americas. The organizers’ main objective was to revisit these historical sources to gain a better understanding of the actions and role of the indigenous Tapuia during Dutch rule in Brazil, without, however, assuming an “indigenous perspective”. The strength of the publication lies in its potential to make these sources widely accessible and provide a rereading of the period from documents of the time, some of which had already been translated into Portuguese in the 19th century.

During the meeting, the question arose of how to approach the relationship between the indigenous people and the Dutch beyond the period of Dutch occupation in the northeast. It was asked, for example, what the fate of the Tapuia was after the expulsion of the Dutch in 1654, and what sources could help reconstruct previous experiences of the Netherlands in Portuguese America. Some clues to this investigation can be found in the missionary efforts of Father Antonio Vieira in the Serra de Ibiapaba and the brief but significant Dutch presence in São Luís do Maranhão at the beginning of the 17th century.

Another important point discussed was the conception and evolution of the term “Tapuia”. The researchers highlighted the need for more in-depth reflection on the creation and transformation of the term over the centuries, as well as its strategic role in defining contemporary indigenous identities.

The discussions at the seminar encouraged the researchers to reflect on the need to overcome various barriers—chronological, linguistic, territorial and historiographical—to better understand the complex scenarios of interaction between different social actors, including the indigenous themselves. Collective work plays a fundamental role in this process: interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue between specialists from different fields broaden the scope of investigations and allow new perspectives to emerge on indigenous agency and colonial contexts.

This reflection also led to the formulation of a problem that will be the subject of the next meeting: how do we define, often in advance, the territories we work with? What are the implications of these predefinitions, and how can we avoid naturalizing them in our research?