Indigenous Leadership, Anthropology and Intercultural Communication for COVID-19 Response in the Rio Negro Indigenous Territory, Brazilian Amazonia

ABSTRACT

Around the world, Indigenous groups have been among the communities most severely affected by COVID-19, and the ability of health systems and social policy responses to support Indigenous responses to the pandemic has been affected by challenges of intercultural communication, sometimes compounded by racist and exclusionary social and political attitudes. The Brazilian Amazon has been a particularly extreme case. This article reflects on the experience of a group of Indigenous leaders and non-Indigenous anthropologists working to promote intercultural approaches to epidemic response in the Rio Negro region of Northwestern Amazonia. It brings together findings from in-person fieldwork on Indigenous responses to infectious disease outbreaks that affected the region before the COVID-19 pandemic and from remote research on COVID-19 response conducted in 2020 and 2021.