The Xavante indigenous people in the 2010 Population Census

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present, using the 2010 Census data, the geographical distribution and some sociodemographic characteristics of Xavante indigenous people in Brazil. The following variables of the basic questionnaire were considered: ethnicity; household residential situation; household location (inside or outside the Indigenous Land-IL); color or race; spoken language; income and literacy. The data were acquired from the Multidimensional Bank of Statistics (in Portuguese,,BME), a system to access aggregate data of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, considering all Xavante IL,15 municipalities with IL Xavante, three municipalities surrounding the IL and Cuiabá city, capital of Mato Grosso state. Of the 19,259 declared Xavante, 92% lived in rural areas and 86% speak indigenous language at home. The municipalities
Campinápolis, Barra do Garças, Nova Nazaré and General Carneiro, together added up, 75.1% of the population living in rural areas. Within the IL Areões, Pimentel Barbosa and Sangradouro-Volta Grande all declared themselves indigenous and as Xavante ethnicity. In Chão Preto and Marechal Rondon only the question on whether the person “considered itself indigenous” managed to identiffy the Xavante, because all declared themselves in other categories of color or race in the race/color question. In comparison to other data source, the health information system, the results show that the total population captured in the 2010 Demographic Census was similar in both sources. The 2010 Demographic Census has a great potential for Xavante demographic data analysis and could be evaluated for other ethnicities, since compared to socio-anthropological information.