Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
LAND, RECIPROCITY AND NHANDE REKÓ
Within the recently established arena of social studies of children, anthropologists
in Brazil have started turning their gaze towards Indigenous children's participation
in the making and remaking of the world experienced.
Criança Indígena. Ensaios
Antropológicos
(Lopes da Silva and Nunes 2002) represents the awakening of
Brazilian anthropologists' concerns with children as agents of their own destinies.
Xavante, Xikrin, Guarani, Macuxi, Assurini, and other Indigenous children who are
currently trapped within the apparatus of the world system increasingly demand to be
heard as they devise novel strategies that can provide them with ontological security.
The children in southern, northern, and central Brazil make very clear which dangers
and risks they want to take and which ones they want to ignore as they genuinely
participate in recreating their own cultures and social environments.
While childhood agency is not an invention of either modernity or globality, it is
precisely because Guarani children live today in a situation of extreme inequality
that decisions they make about their own destinies have the potential to promote
social change. Their efforts at visionary liberation are not overwhelmed by the
solid Mbyá, or rather loose Nhandeva constitutions of the Guarani family. Neither
are their efforts at liberation significantly hindered by the highly authoritarian
structures of Funai. First, studies on Indigenous education in Brazil have shown
that Indigenous children in general have greater liberty and autonomy in their
daily lives than non-Indigenous Brazilian children (Lopes da Silva 1986; Lopes
da Silva and Ferreira 2001a, 2001b; Melià 1979, 1989; Monte 1996). Second,
because childhood agency is intrinsically tied to forms of social organization,
particularly forms of political organization (Hart 1997; James and Prout 1997;
Lopes da Silva and Nunes 2002), structural transformations in kinship systems,
and the current participation of Guarani young adults in Indigenous movements in
Brazil have greatly empowered children to demand that their voices be heard and
their rights respected. Third, in spite of Funai's and other governmental agencies'
highly authoritarian and paternalistic structures, the fact that the Guarani are not
really considered “Indians,” but mendigos, paradoxically grants them quite a bit of
freedom.
The situation of the Guarani and other Indigenous children in Brazil is strikingly
different from that of the modern child in “first world” countries, such as the United
States, Canada, England, France, Switzerland, among others, where children
have become the focus of innumerable projects that purport to safeguard them
from physical, sexual, and moral danger (James et al. 1998:7). Unlike African
American children in the United States, for instance, where increased autonomy is
often hampered by increased surveillance (Chin 1999), Guarani children are faced
with the paradox of being neglected by the state, but enjoying a greater degree of
freedom because they are under less scrutiny and control. The perverse relationship
established between the Brazilian state and its children is well captured in the film
Ilha das Flores
or Island of Flowers (Goulart et al. 1990), a bitter film about Brazilian
