A Feathered Disguise: Cultural Appropriation, Congressional Edition

When Silvia Waiãpi walks into Congress wearing a feathered headdress, cameras follow. To the untrained eye, she embodies what Brazil’s right-wing Partido Liberal (PL) desperately wants to signal: inclusion, diversity, and indigeneity. But behind this carefully curated image lies a controversy that cuts to the core of Brazil’s ongoing colonial wounds — and a chilling reminder of how identity can be weaponized in politics.

Waiãpi, a federal deputy elected under the banner of the same party that backed Jair Bolsonaro, claims Indigenous identity. She asserts ties to the Waiãpi people, an Indigenous community native to the forests of Amapá. But a growing number of investigations — and, more importantly, testimonies from her own relatives and local Indigenous leaders — cast doubt on that claim.

Documents reviewed by journalists suggest that she did not grow up in an Indigenous village, did not live under traditional customs, and was not recognized by the leadership of the Waiãpi people. In fact, members of the community have gone public to clarify: they do not see her as one of their own. The Federal Indigenous Agency, FUNAI, has not issued any formal confirmation of her status. Yet, there she is, center stage — feathered, painted, and speaking in defense of a government that slashed Indigenous rights, promoted illegal land grabbing, and looked the other way as the Amazon burned.

This is not just hypocrisy. This is strategic impersonation.

At best, Silvia Waiãpi’s public persona is a case of opportunistic self-identification. At worst, it’s cultural appropriation dressed up as political representation — a calculated move by the PL to sanitize its image and create the illusion of diversity without actually supporting the causes Indigenous people fight and die for.

Such masquerades are not new. History is littered with examples of dominant groups adopting the aesthetics of the oppressed while silencing their voices. But in Brazil, a country where land defenders are murdered, and Indigenous communities are systematically excluded from power, the stakes are even higher.

To be clear: this isn’t a debate about blood quantum or identity policing. Brazil’s Indigenous reality is complex, and many urban Indigenous people maintain valid cultural ties without living in demarcated lands. But community recognition, lived experience, and ancestral accountability matter. What’s at issue here is not a fluid sense of self — but the political instrumentalization of identity for reactionary purposes.

Waiãpi’s presence serves a very specific function: to deflect criticism, to create confusion, and to offer cover. When a party with a track record of environmental destruction and racist rhetoric parades an “Indigenous” lawmaker, it seeks not reconciliation, but optics. It is the political equivalent of blackface in an ad campaign — performative, exploitative, and dangerous.

For Brazil’s right wing, Silvia Waiãpi is a dream come true: a feathered alibi for policies that dispossess and erase. She is, in effect, the decolonial cosplay of a party whose agenda is violently colonial.

We should not let the image fool us. Real Indigenous representation does not wear a costume — it brings land rights, linguistic protection, access to health, and historical justice. Until that is the reality for the Waiãpi and so many others, no amount of face paint can cover the lies.