Autobiography, widely present in bibliography written by or about the indigenous people in the US, is seldom found in equivalent texts produced in Brazil. This article raises and discusses reasons for this contrast. It brings to light problems involving cultural peculiarities of the autobiographic genre - profoundly connected to the formation of the occidental individual -, the possibilities of its Amerindian translation and the specific aspects by which the historical indigenous subject has been constructed in Brazil.
autobiography; ethnology; anthropology; indigenous people history