Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Dualism, and consequently the binary base of the Xavante socionumerical system,
also seemed clumsy and unqualified to the capitalist minds of the Salesians, invested
in training Xavante men to become cheap peons for the country's labor market.
A number system of base 2 invites partnerships and collaborations, and shuns
individualism and greed. Following the European tradition, however, the Brazilian
official system of weights and measurements, as well as its currency, are all based
on the decimal system. As Father Dídimo explained to me (in Portuguese) in 2001:
“God gave us ten fingers, five on each hand, for a reason. The Xavante have 10
fingers, too; they're creatures of God as well.” The missionaries thus undertook the
assignment of “transforming” the Xavante binary numerical system into a decimal
order. Let us take a close look at how this was done and the effects it had on the well-
being of the Xavante people.
The Expropriation of the Xavante Socionumerical System
Number names from 1 to 6 in the Xavante language were still allowed to follow the
“with/without a mate” designation. It helped legitimate the missionaries' invention
of a decimal system for the people, claiming it was based on “Xavante tradition.”
When numbers from 1 to 6 were inserted into the decimal system, however, they
lost their semantic meanings and became, instead, mere numerals. For zero, and for
numerals 7 and above, the missionaries replaced the sociological meaning by an
aesthetic description of the graphic sign. Zero, for example, was called
tomai' ã
or
“small dot,” describing the circular symbol for 0. According to Xavante thought, the
semantic meaning of zero is
babadi
, that is, something that is “empty” because there
is “nothing in it.” But the Salesians followed another syllogism, naming numerals
after what their indo-arabic graphic representation looked like and mixing them with
the Xavante words for numerals 1 to 6. So 7 became
wede
, the Xavante word for
stick or wood, because 7 sort of resembles an upright stick or piece or wood. The
name for 8 became
tomai'ã da'rã
,
or a
tomai'ã
,
small dot, with a
da'rã,
a head,
on top. The numeral 10 started out with the Xavante word
mitsi
for number 1 with
tomai'ã
, the small dot for 0 - rather than something like “five couples.”
A Totality is the Sum of its Parts
The graphic numerical system created by the missionaries was taught to the
community in the Xavante and Portuguese languages at Salesian boarding schools
on Xavante reservations. The system was later spread to most Xavante schools,
making it very confusing for the people to learn mathematical concepts based on the
place value of numbers in a decimal system. According to the Salesian missionaries,
tomai'ã
(“small dot”) is zero, but depending on its position within the numeral, it
can also represent tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. because of place value.. The zeros
in 10, 100, and 1,000 have very different values because of the position of the digit
in each number.
