It's not hunger, it's the dam: the Akwẽ-Xerente people of Tocantins and the challenges of food security in the face of the development model

Abstract

This article presents reflections on hunger in indigenous worlds, with an analysis of the assessment of food insecurity, mainly through the parameters designed by the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA). The impoverishment of the eating habits of indigenous peoples, with the decrease in the consumption of traditional foods and the increase in industrialized foods with lower nutritional value, has resulted in an increase in chronic diseases. In the case of the Akwẽ-Xerente, these changes are related to the advancement of the Tocantins agro-industrial development model over Indigenous Lands, making it impossible to continue traditional practices in various dimensions of Xerente life. Therefore, measuring food insecurity, in different socio-cultural contexts, requires a broad, interdisciplinary and participatory process, which understands all these problems that involve access to food for these people. In this article, we present a proposal for evaluating food insecurity that approximates Xerente's reality, dialoguing with its food system.