There are several issues with the “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil” article in Wikipedia, beginning with the finer points and ending with the overall inclusion in the article. 

The finer points of the article, citations, punctuation, and the like, were some of the first noticeable issues in the article. First, starting with the lead itself, there is a general lack of citations in the article. There are entire sections in the article that do not have any citations, a clear violation of Wikipedia’s plagiarism code. In the “Origins” section, the author states: “To investigate this further, we applied…”, which shows that the author either took direct quotes from their references without changing the words or that they are using their own research, both of which are not allowed on Wikipedia. Second, the general punctuation of the article needs improved as well. There are several commas and quotation marks missing. Though I am not sure of the author’s origins, I believe that the article has been up long enough and has had enough commenters to have had this issue fixed earlier. Finally, on a good note, the references that were added did work, and I believe that all that was discussed in article had a cause to be there. 

Though the article gives a chronological history of Amerindians in Brazil, it does not give a complete history, showing a biased view. First, it gives a very European account of their history. It discusses the Portuguese takeover and destruction of Amerindians but does not show any Amerindian accounts. Secondly, it includes Portuguese activists that helped Indigenous cultures, yet does not discuss any important tribal leaders or activists. I find it very difficult to believe that there have been none or at least none discussed in popular culture. Finally, it gives little detail about the daily lives of indigenous cultures, now or in the past other than discussing whether they were hunter-gathers or agriculturalists. This article deals mainly with a European view of Amerindian culture. 

This article is a part of two very important WikiProjects: Indigenous Peoples of America and Brazil. It has received a C-Class rating on both, a High Importance rating by Indigenous Peoples of America and a Top Importance rating by Brazil. This article is obviously of great importance to Wikipedia. However, through looking through the talk page, there is a common theme of ignorant language and ignoring important information. First, while this is not as severe as another language issue, the original title of the article was “Indigenous People of Brazil”, making the tribes seem as one group and belonging to Brazil. This issue was remedied but shows that from the beginning, there has been trouble using correct language. Secondly, a line in the article stated that indigenous peoples could not learn to assimilate to Brazilian culture. After several comments against this line, the issue was fixed, again showing that ignorant language is used in an important project. Lastly, there is information missing in the article. A comment from 2011 asked about whether indigenous peoples were considered citizens and about their voting rights. This has still yet to be addressed, and this comment was made seven years ago. Though an important project, it has seemingly fallen by the wayside. 

From the basic components to the actual content, there are several issues with this article that must be addressed to be a good reference for those wishing to find information on the indigenous peoples of Brazil. 

The Wikipedia article “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil,” although it addressed prominent aspects such as European colonization and cultural diversity, the source failed to link the indigenous heritage with racial categorization, a representative figure in defining Brazilian identity. The article showed relevance to the topic through discussing how the indigenous population constitute the Brazilian society throughout centuries. Although it properly represented both domestic and foreign forces each as perpetrators and victims, the article implicitly conveys Eurocentric views. For example, the text minimizes the dreadful impact Portuguese conquerors caused across Amerindian communities. Patricia Seed, an American historian and professor at University of Carolina Irvine, argues how religious superiority and cultural alienation played integral roles in indigenous enslavement. Moreover, the article disregards the intricate hierarchy between indigenous mercenaries and Europeans which begot an ambivalent nature across Brazilian societies. Overall, the article showed many underrepresented ideas.

Sources cited in this article contributed in adding insightful views; however, few evidences lack credibility. Several parts within the article needed proper citations as well as full descriptions on the original source. Citation issues were common in the article which online readers updated and modified external links on the talk page. Majority of sources relied on foreign texts, scholarly journals, and online sources. I believe the article cited a wide variety of sources and historical evidences that incorporate both foreign language and English based texts. However, as mentioned earlier, the article essentially should establish a central theme through adding a larger scope of scholarly sources. The lack of information rates this article as incomplete. Despite such failures in containing thorough descriptions of the unique culture, social impact, and historical significance Brazilian Amerindians possessed, the source covers a large area of their origins and experience. Full coverage on indigenous people in Brazil should be contemplated and addressed through the WikiProject.

The Wikipedia Talk page and the discussions led by online users point out two historical aspects of indigenous people in Brazil: racial prejudice and social oppression. I strongly insist establishing a central theme for conveying a clear image of Brazilian Amerindians and their historical heritage, and further expand those ideas to illustrate how those themes constitute Brazilian national identity. For example, historical and cultural aspects such as European colonization, transculturation, and cannibalism should be dealt in the article to address current issues the indigenous people in Brazil experience. Moreover, the article, compared to the classroom discussions, neglect the ongoing problems the Brazilian tribes face in the contemporary world. Environmental decadence in Amazon’s ecosystem and commercialization of tribal cultures are the two representative figures Brazilian Amerindians are experiencing.

The Article on Wikipedia is done very well. From my reading of the article I did not get any bias’s from the article. And the article was a decent length, it was not to short or too long. Along with the length, it had some very interesting information over the topic. I clicked the links to about 15 different sources on the article and almost all of the links took me to some sort of academic online PDF, or a book. But a few of the articles to me to pages that either were where it said file not found or the site was not up to academic standards. I would like to see the sites that said file not found to be updated to the new correct link.

The article touched on immigration a bunch. I think it could have touched on more parts of the individual races in brazil, tell where the different races live within brazil and such.  It focused to much on where the people of brazil came from, but it didn’t even really describe why people emigrated to brazil in the first place.  The talk page did not have very many different conversations going on, except one that really just destroyed the entire article.

The comment said that the article was terrible, did not site enough and did not give people enough info on certain information stated within the article. And the rest of the talk page also just really discuses what the author of the article did wrong and what they should do to fix it. The article is also part of four wikiprojects, it is part of sociology, Anthropology, ethnic groups, and Geography.

I think that the article got off to a good start. The language and tone mostly remained neutral throughout the whole piece. The majority of the subheading and topics fed back into the main title. However, there were a lot of issues with the article, which is evident from the “talk” section of the page.

The talk section of the article has multiple debates about not only what is, and what isn’t a personal opinion, but also about the some of the (suspicious) sources that were used. Most of the sources that were called into question were the ones concerning the charts, tables, and other analytical data. Additionally, I noticed that there not a lot of books used in the author’s footnotes, and any books they do use have been marked “vague”. This is a signal to me that this page needs work, despite that it looks like a solid page

Lastly, in the “Conception of Black and prejudice” section, while information reinforcing how race is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, the source links are either not working as they should, or are not reliable, which is also on the author. I think the best way to fix some the crucial issues in this article is to find some books on the subject from academic authors.

The article Indigenous Peoples in Brazil was given a C rating in terms of article quality and the article is supported by two task forces: The History of Brazil task force, and the Geography of Brazil task force. It is part of the wikiproject Brazil. The article goes into detail about what several hundred tribes were like prior to European contact as well as their treatment and history after European contact. This history of interaction goes from the first landing of the Portuguese in 1500 all the way to today. The article is relevant to the Indigenous peoples of Brazil and attempts to include as much information as it possibly can in a summary about these currently living indigenous groups, but as addressed in the article hundreds of distinct tribes have gone extinct in the last five hundred years and their history and legacy is difficult to decipher as these groups kept no written records and built structures and tools from highly biodegradable materials.

One of the main issues with this article that is bought up a lot in its talk page is the lack of citations for information. While the article does a good job like many wikipedia article of displaying lots of information in a clear, easy to understand manner, citations are important to show where the information is coming from and so future revisions can be made to keep the information concise and current. The section pertaining to Jesuits and the Military Government section had no citations at all. They did contain hyperlinks to other related articles, but no citations or directions to a source in the bibliography. As such it is difficult to know where this information came from and if it was put into the article in an ethical manner. No doubt this helped contribute to the low rating the article as a whole received. One such example is the section that discusses the legal issues SPI (the former agency that dealt with indigenous affairs) faced in the 1960s. There is a vague description of corruption, intentionally starting outbreaks, and mass murder, but there is a lack of citations to specific instances or the Ministry of the Interior’s notes regarding the investigation. Any legal documents pertaining to SPI’s dissolution would be most helpful in revising this article and explaining the full severity of these supposed atrocities inflicted by the federal government of Brazil. What is a distraction is that dates regarding certain events (like SPI investigation, Banderias, et al) lack specific dates. This makes creating a timeline difficult for the reader and any dates given by sources should be put into the article and cited. Many of the ethnic tribes listed in the article have little to no information regarding them. More research should be done on the listed tribes and put into the article.

The talk page of a wikipedia article often contains relevant critiques of issues with the article to help the authors make changes that keep the information up to date, to fix simple grammar mistakes, and to identify false information and address it. There were several valid critiques to the article. One such critique came from most likely a Canadian user as they tried to synthesize treatment of Native Americans in Brazil to Natives in Canada and they asked why there was such a vague description as to the legal status of Native Americans in Brazil (IE: Citizenship, legal protections, rights, entitlements etc). Another user critiqued saying the percentages of religious figures (percentages of Natives that worship specific faiths) was wrong. There was also debate as to the actual population of Native Americans in Brazil with one user stating that FUNAI (The agency that oversees native affairs for the federal government) had differing numbers compared to the article. There was also debate as to the current number of contacted and uncontacted tribes. If these issues can be resolved, and if future issues are noted in regard to factuality, it is best to hope these issues are resolved quickly.

The bias of the article remains neutral for most sections, but can be interpreted in the final sections (Environment and land rights) to be heavily leaning towards siding with Natives on the complex issue regarding land rights. Most sources are not from Native American primary sources but documents relating to encounters, research article, government articles and news articles, but the natives did not keep many detailed records so hearing their histories is difficult. Most of the citations that are present are up to date. To summarize the article, it has a lot of potential to give the reader a good summary of the Natives of Brazil, their culture, history and present issues, but it is held back by lack of citations and vague details in regards to key sections that are important in understanding native cultures of Brazil. It is not hard to understand why the article was given a C rating after looking over the details.

The Brazil Wikipedia page in English covers a breadth of information about Brazil. It looks at themes like geography, government, economy, infrastructure, demographics, and culture. Many of the sources are quantitative from NGOs, IGOs, and other organizations that conduct quantitative research. It also focuses on superlatives (such as “the most,” “the best,” “the highest,” “the lowest,”) in keeping with the present-day emphasis of Brazil as an especially unique country.

In many ways the article reflects larger existing content gaps in mainstream academic study and does not utilize fringe academic knowledge. Its information is a reflection of the current interpretations and headlines of coverage in the media and academia. In other words, the article is secondary reporting and summarizing existing narratives.

However, some topics are more intentionally excluded. The article skirts around present day controversy and cautiously mentions the impeachment of Former President Dilma Rousseff and does not dive into the contentious present-day debate. This is done to keep the article from accusations of unnecessary bias.

Historical reasons behind existing inequality, especially racial inequality, are not overtly mentioned. For example, the rise of European immigrants from the 1880s to 1930s is referenced but the article does not mention that their arrival was incentivized by the government in hopes of whitening the nation.

The history presented sticks to traditional political themes. A quick assessment of the images shows that included portraits of important people are of white men, a clear remnant of Great White Male History. Contributions of people of African descent and/or indigenous peoples are undermined on multiple occasions. The following excerpt shows how European, Japanese, and Arab cultures are depicted as generally contributing to the culture while Indigenous and African cultures are portrayed as having influence in limited fields.

“Some aspects of Brazilian culture were influenced by the contributions of Italian, German and other European as well Japanese, Jewish and Arab immigrants who arrived in large numbers in the South and Southeast of Brazil during the 19th and 20th centuries.^[397] The indigenous Amerindians influenced Brazil’s language and cuisine; and the Africans influenced language, cuisine, music, dance and religion.”

It sticks to coverage of traditional ideas of culture like architecture, music, literature, food, cinema, theatre, visual arts, and sports. Oddly enough, there is no in-depth section on dance. Many other types of cultural activities go unmentioned since the Culture subsection structure is largely based on European categories of “high culture.” More surprising than the lack of coverage of dance is that Carnival is only mentioned twice, once as a caption to a photo and once in the section about music. This is surprising because basic coverage of Brazil in the US usually emphasize the importance of Carnival and other national celebrations.

I felt that most of the major topics in the article were very relevant to the main topic. I do feel that the structure on some of the sub-headings were much too long. For example, the first sub-heading “Afro-Brazilians”, could have been narrowed down to more specific topics. The content in general is present, and several aspects of Afro-Brazilians’ history is noted. The article is neutral overall, but there are several sentences that may have come from a personal point of view, rather than factual sources. In the sub-heading “Revaluation of Black Identity”, several claims are made with little to no sources. I feel that this could be a result of someone who may have lived similar experiences, but cannot find sources to support their contribution to the article.

The genetic demographic of Brazil are heavily emphasized and presented with several forms of evidence. There is one large section of the article dedicated strictly to the genetic build up of all Brazilians and related themes. They mention the colonial arrival genetic demographics, colonial rule demographics, and genetic demographics of today. I am not surprised, but I am curious as to why there is so much deliberation of genetic demographics by region of the country and what labels these genetic differences place on people. On the other hand, I am very surprised they did not mention large categories that are paramount to the Afro-Brazilian community. The Soccer/Football section was largely non-existent although most of the success in Brazil’s football history has come at the mercy of Afro-Brazilian players. Contemporary music and dance are also small portions of this article, although those same themes are world renowned today. Capoeira is also not discussed thoroughly, and after watching the documentary in class, I feel that section could definitely be expanded.

There are several missing sources in some sections. The section “Conception of Black and Prejudice” is one of the main sections with unreliable and missing links. It talks about the black identity, but is seriously missing several links. There is several information that could be added about culture and Afro-Brazilian contributions to the world today. There is a lot of discussion on what people think is factual and what others think is opinion. People are also urging others to contribute with evidence only. Although, some people may be right, they should always properly cite their work with credible sources.

It is currently part of three wikipedia projects at the moment. This article is different because it looks at several aspects of colonial history only while we look at that period and its effect on Brazil today. We talk about the gap between the colonial era and today. We talk about more themes that deal with the sentiments and human actions while this article does not make an argument for or against Afro-Brazilian experiences.

The article “Indigenous Peoples of Brazil” is what appears to be an in depth article with lots of information including specific dates and facts. While the article holds lots of information it was clear that whoever wrote the article made sure to keep her opinions out of it. While this is standard for wikipedia for this to happen I do feel as if the article was slightly harder to read because of this. I thought that all of the article was on topic and did go with the headline of “Indigenous Peoples of Brazil.” While the article was on topic I do feel as if the writer could have had more information on some of the subjects.

While this article did have a ton of facts and pieces there needs to be a better job on citations. There were clear instances in the article where more citations were needed. There were several instances where this occurred including the entire rubber section. While we could have used more information on this section instead we are left with a short paragraph and no citations. Not only was the rubber section inadequate but much of the article was cited poorly. When you click on several of the links they lead to articles that don’t exist or are clearly not a reputable source. The talk section on this article is also filled with people saying that there is poor citations as well as information that is wrong.

While this article lacked information in some spots as well as poor citations, this article had lots of information in some spots as well as facts that would keep in engaged. While I did mention that at times this was hard to read I thought that the majority of it was interesting as well as educational. Other articles that we have read make it more interesting as there is a stance taken. That being said it is not wikipedias job to develop a take but more so to deliver information to the general public. This article needs more citations and more information but I thought that the majority of the article did a okay job.

Overall, I found the “Indigenous people in Brazil” article to be informative with the authors providing appropriate links to topics related to indigenous peoples. However, it still needs some work. While the history was presented chronologically, I found the way some of the information was present to be distracting. For instance, the sections “Distribution” and “First Contacts” seemed counter-intuitively placed given the information they presented. Establishing contact and then the effects would allow the authors to provide more information that tied the sections together. For instance, the distribution section would help to explain the Europeans’ first encounter with indigenous people, and would offer a way to build more information about the groups instead of somewhat dismissing them with the introduction of European contact. However, these two sections are extremely relevant to the topic, and I found their relative placement acceptable. I especially appreciated the “Indigenous Rights Movements” section at the end, as it helped to give some modern information on the status of different groups.

In terms of bias, I saw a slight Western bias coming through, as some of the descriptors seemed to be based on Western terminology, such as “Indian,” and there were a few sections that focused on Westerners “parental” role toward Indigenous peoples, such as “The Jesuits: Protectors of the Indians.” This sections was interesting and somewhat relevant, though it did seem odd that it took up more space than the section on the contemporary situation of indigenous peoples. Finally, the full article did not made reference to or provide extensive coverage of any actual indigenous person beyond that of Rondon. I believe the failure to provide more coverage of indigenous persons themselves is the biggest downfall of this article. That being said, the article did not exhibit a bias that was so overwhelming so as to distract from the overall utility of the article.

Given these two points, I would rate the overall quality of the article as good. It contains an informative and understandable lead section that goes through the different points of the article without providing too much information. The actual article observes a fairly clear chronological order that logically follows from one point to the next, though it does not dedicate enough space to the current situation of indigenous persons, which I think is the article’s biggest failing. Some of that information comes through in the indigenous rights movements section, but that section overwhelms modern information somewhat. While the article makes frequent citations, not every factual claim is corroborated with a reference. The article also links to other relevant Wikipedia articles, which helped provide more background information where necessary. Looking through the sources, they seem to be reputable either from books, .org or .gov websites, or journal articles. However, many of the sources contain information from many years ago; one of the world bank studies is from 2004. Thus, while the sources do generally back of the claims, they are out of date. This, paired with the mild bias and some noticeable grammar and spelling errors, makes the article’s “C” rating seem appropriate, as it is good now, but it could be much better with a little updating and expansion.

Finally, the talk page does address some of the previously-mentioned issues. For instance, some of the discussion on the page revolves around missing links or the need to update links, while other discussion involves missing pieces of the article. An interesting talk page discussion focuses on the lack of coverage on the citizenship status of Brazilian Indigenous Peoples, something that I did not realize was missing, but that would significantly improve the article if added. Another discussion offers a rebuttal to the main article’s information about the religion statistics, something else I did not notice initially, but that now strikes me as odd. The talk page offers some good first steps to improving the article.

The Wikipedia article titled “Race and Ethnicity in Brazil”, overall is a thorough article that covers a wide complex topic. However, that does not mean it is perfect. The subsection on Race and Class has even been flagged by Wikipedia because there are many problems with it. First, there are statistics stated without a citation, which is against the rules of Wikipedia. Secondly, this section does not simply present the facts, which is the goal of the site since it is an encyclopedia, it synthesizes the facts and adds some opinion to them. This also violates the guidelines of Wikipedia.

In the talk section of this article there are many discussions going on, one of which is on the genetics section and whether it should be moved to a different article. The editors are suggesting that a new article be created titled “Population Genetics in Brazil”. They argue that it is not relevant in this article since it adds no information about what the races are and how they are defined. Even though they make good points I disagree with them because the genetic data allows you to determine more information about the racial makeup of the country. The genetic data provides objective numbers on racial makeup as opposed to census data which could be skewed due to false reporting and the subjective determination of race passed only on observation. The genetic data is not skewed like this since it is based on science not observations. For that reason, the genetic data is very relevant if not more relevant than the census data reported in other sections.

This article discusses many topics that we discussed in class. Some including Freyre’s construction of a racial democracy and how this is not really true. Also, the different classifications of race. We also discussed how after the abolition of slavery the government made efforts to “whiten” Brazil.