Abstract
How is produced an Environmental Impact Inquiry? The aim here is to bring forward the process of elaboration and composition of the Complementary Studies on Bacajá River, an inquiry of environmental impact that was conducted in the Trincheira-Bacajá’s Indigenous Territory as part of the process of building the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant in Xingu River. By monitoring teams of specialists in the villages during the data collection stages, allied to the clear discontent of the Xikrin Indians with the final report, this article intends to reflect critically on this kind of inquiry. How can we guarantee the presence and the voice of indigenous knowledge in those documents? As the Xikrin Indians had put this issue, my aim is to make visible the Xikrin theories on the hydrological relations between the Bacajá and Xingu Rivers and their foreknowledge of hazards, both of them obliterated on the final version of the document.
Keywords
environmental impact inquiry; ethnology; knowledge systems; Xikrin Indians
