Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
question, posed by Mauro Samuel, a Guarani teacher at the Rio Silveira Village:
“So just how many soccer fields are we away from them?” “We are far away, more
than 2664 km [1655 miles] far. Let's use division to see how close we get to them.”
Mauro Samuel took a pen and explained it on the whiteboard: “I'll have to multiply
2664 by 1000 to get everything into meters, so that's 2,664,000, and then divide the
result by 100 meters, the length of the Macapá soccer field. That is 26,640 soccer
fields all lined up from here to there!” “Twenty six thousand, six hundred and forty.
That's very far, I see. Perhaps invite the Palikur to play soccer with us will make the
distance smaller,” said Márcio Rodrigues.
Pankararu teacher Dimas Nascimento added:
Far, yes; just as far away as Pernambuco, where we were brought from to São
Paulo in the 1950s, with lots of promises about land and riches, schools and
hospitals, work and leisure. If only we'd help build the
ferroviária
[train tracks]
across [the state of] São Paulo! That's all done. Now where do we live? In
favelas, across the huge city. No land, no garden, no clean water, no hospitals,
no schools, no jobs,
nada
. You talk about human rights? We have none. And do
we have our own soccer field? No. Here, I'll tell you: The Pankararu Village in
the Real Parque Favela, where 800 Pankararu men, women and children live, is
the size of maybe three or four soccer fields. That's tight. Wouldn't you think the
Pankararu must have more land if we want a soccer field? But where would the
field go, inside our land? It used to be like that, and so did we have a vast amount
of land in Pernambuco. Now we're here. As a teacher at the Favela Real Parque,
I want to learn all about Palikur mathematics, too. They are our brothers up there,
more than anybody else around here. So I feel close to them, not that far away.
The Palikur, who traditionally called themselves Pa'ikwené,
4
share a similar history
of colonization and genocide with the Pankararu, Guarani, Kaingang, Krenak,
Xavante, and most Indigenous Peoples in Brazil and all over the world, for that
matter. Mention of thousands of Palikur, as they are known today, already featured
in the travel diaries of Spanish navigators coming into the mouth of the Amazon
river as early as 1513. However, their population was greatly reduced due to various
epidemics, and extermination by slave-hunters. At the turn of the 20
th
century, after
Brazil appropriated the contested territory of Amapá from France, the Palikur faced
abusive treatment at the hands of Brazilian customs officers and other government
officials for not speaking Portuguese at the time, for “smuggling,” and ultimately for
just being “Indians” (Capiberibe 2002). Their population slowly started to recover;
in 2008 there were about 900 Palikur living in Brazil, and 470 in the French Guiana.
5
The Palikur Numerical System
One of the most interesting aspects of Palikur cosmology is how their theory of the
world is expressed in everyday life in terms of numbers and mathematical concepts.
When this Indigenous nation reckons time, measures space, and quantifies any living
