Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The Brazilian judiciary system has been confronted with a fundamental sociological
dimension of Amazonian peoples' cosmologies: if knowledge is the major foundation
of culture (Barth 1995), then biocultural diversity is a product of what humans and
non-humans alike feel, think, say, and do in a world where the goods are often
intangible, and the resources symbolic.
SHAMANIC MAP-MAKING
The re-possession of ancestral territories by Indigenous Peoples has been the culprit
of numerous court cases in the Brazilian judiciary system since the second half of
the 20
th
century. In an attempt to regain control of traditional territories illegally
occupied by farmers, gold miners, and multinational companies in the 1950s, 60s,
and 70s, political and ceremonial leaders of the Suyá, Kayapó, Kayabi, and Juruna
nations in the Brazilian Amazon, among many other peoples, have evoked the power
of humans and non-humans over the environment, its goods and resources.
Shamanic Map-Making discusses the nature of the shamanic knowledge conveyed
in these litigations. In particular, I seek to understand how animal knowledge -
produced by anacondas, jaguars, turtles, fish, and birds - has enlightened and thus
empowered Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu Indigenous Park of central Brazil in
land litigations, as documented in judicial reports elaborated by anthropologists.
Because humans and non-humans, including plants and animals, are considered by
Amerindian societies as part of the same ontological order, a sociology of animals
can enlighten the process through which nature puts at the disposition of culture a set
of means for the construction of space within a symbolic order.
The Xingu Indigenous Park, located in the state of Mato Grosso, in the Brazilian
Amazon, was created in 1961 by the Brazilian federal government. It conveniently
confined Indigenous Peoples within arbitrary diminutive borders - peoples whose lands
were taken away by incoming settlers and multinational corporations. Indigenous Peoples
involved in the court cases under consideration in this Chapter, and that now inhabit
the Xingu Indigenous Park (XIP), include the Suyá, Kayapó, Juruna, Kayabi, Trumai,
Waurá, Mehináku, Yawalapiti, Kamayurá, Kalapalo, Nahuquá, Matipu, and Aweti.
They represent the four major linguistic stocks in Brazil: Gê, Tupi, Aruak, and Karib.
These peoples have recently had the chance to document their own versions of the world
experienced in judicial reports produced by anthropologists between 1985 and the year
2000 - the 15-year period immediately following the end of the military dictatorship.
Since the end of the military rule, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, anthropologists have
been hired by the Brazilian judiciary system to act as experts in land litigations between
large corporations and landowners, and the Brazilian federal government.
Shamanic knowledge was totally absent from court cases of the 1960s and 70s,
since land-mapping was surveyed exclusively by military lawyers and engineers.
These men (yes, they were all males) basically limited themselves to flying over
the Amazon and taking aerial pictures showing there were no Indigenous villages
whatsoever in the area (Lea 1997a, 1997b; Mendes 1988).
