Indigenous peoples of the desert: The Bedouins of the Negev. Congress in Beer Sheva, 2000: The future of indigenous peoples

Abstract

The following pages summarize thoughts brought about by the author’s participation in the 2000 International Conference on the Future of Indigenous Peoples, organized in 2000 by the Center for Bedouin Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel. Multiple topics intertwine, in brief brushstrokes. The condition of the Bedouins, little known in Brazil, is similar to that of indigenous peoples, in their clash with the State and their exclusion in an unequal society. The author draws attention to her discovery of the power of Bedouin oral poetry, in part also written by the poems’ pr otagonists themselves, or in an Arabic/English version by scholar Clinton Bailey. Between the lines, the conflicting feelings of a Jew, granddaughter of immigrants from Odessa (who were still fugitives from tsarism), brought up believing in the utopia of unconditional defense of all peoples of the world and the condemnation of any holocaust. Writing about this journey is to express, even with decades of delay, admiration for the Bedouins and especially for Ismael Abu-Saad, director of the Center, whose books, articles and defense of the rights of all peoples and the socially excluded are fundamental in this essay.