“Indigenous peoples in Brazil” Wiki Critique

For the most part of the Wikipedia article “Indigenous peoples in Brazil” every topic covered was related to the article. The ‘Native people after the European colonization’ topic headline had too many subheadings under and could’ve been broken into two different headings. That was the most distracting about the Wiki itself. Additionally, I was confused with the statistic portion on religion for the Indigenous peoples. Some of the wordage and lack of correct capitalization was bothersome as well. The article at first glance seems to be neutral. However, throughout the article there is an apparent presentation of indigenous peoples and the uncontacted people as either fully assimilated with the rest of Brazil’s society or unable to assimilate. In a more positive bias, the environmental subtopics in this article are clearly biased in favor of the uncontacted peoples in regards to their land and the Amazon.

While reading, I felt like the viewpoints of the underrepresented were from the lack of research on the tribes and their people. While I understand that is implied in the term uncontested, I am hard pressed that not one person has tried to make efforts in historical research to contact and learn about these tribes. Europe’s role in Brazil is undeniable, but it felt overrepresented in parts because it was not directly pertaining to the Indigenous peoples.  Most of the links that I checked both support the article and also were still working links. There were a few bad links, but none that I felt were out of place or non supportive.  Most of the references were reliable secondary sources. There were a heavier amount of environmental articles cited but still academic sources. These were more neutral sources, with only one anthopological article that I read as slightly biased. There were no biased sources noted within the citations.

There is some older information which raises the question of accuracy. Some of the statistics or references are from the late 90’s and show no signs of being followed up on. This is something that could be improved within the article in order to make it more accurate. There were many comments and modifications noted on the Talk page of the article. The conversations were comments about biases and faults that readers had identified in the article. For example, there was a comment about the Bering Strait Myth and its misuse in the article as it was presented as a proven theory. This comment contained an external link to support their claim and changes to the article. External links have also been modified many times throughout the creation of this Wikipage.  This Wikipage has been rated as a C-Class  page. It ironically has also been rated as a Top-importance page. Since we are still just getting into the course content of our class, I am interested to see how we discuss indigenous people in Brazil vs. the way this Wikipage has.