Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In Mr. Russo's and the farmers' court testimonies, the Suyá people were portrayed
as “bloodthirsty, savage Indians,” and their leader Kuiussi Suyá referred to in court
documents as “the Indian with a scar on his face, large nose, and big ears” (Ferreira
1999f:104). Seeking monetary compensation from the State for alleged investments
made on ancestral Indigenous lands has become quite a profitable business in Brazil:
in 1987 alone, the Federal government paid 6 million US dollars to 2 private owners
who “proved” in court that the Xingu Indigenous Park (XIP) was not “ancestral,”
and therefore not deserving protection under the upcoming new 1988 Federal
Constitution. At the time, reimbursement claims of 54 other court cases added up
to 102 billion US dollars (Peter 1987, cited in Lea 1997a:193). In 1997, there were
more than 300 such cases in the Brazilian judiciary system, demanding financial
settlements that totaled more than the country's external debt of 235 billion US
dollars, in the year 2000.
Human and Animal Hybrids in Amazonian Map-Making
What I am mostly interested in discussing in this chapter, however, is the use of
shamanic map-making systems, particularly those that involve hybrids of humans
and animals, in court cases of the Brazilian judiciary system between 1985 and 2000.
Amerindian shamans portray themselves as simultaneously man and beast or as a
synthesis of both the human and the animal in the versions of the world they create
and disclose in contemporary Brazilian jurisprudence. They talk in the language and
under the skin or hide of anacondas, jaguar, electric eels, humming birds, and other
creatures of the Amazon forest (Ferreira 1994a, 1998a; Scheper-Hughes and Ferreira
2003, 2007). Shamans portray themselves as powerful and sentient beings precisely
because they have (1) the ability to communicate with non-humans; (2) the capacity
of acquiring extraordinary animal-like perceptions of the world experienced, and (3)
ultimately, the competence of symbolically transforming themselves into the beings
whose specific powers they choose to fashion the world.
The Suyá People of the Xingu Indigenous Park
The Xingu Indigenous Park (XIP) was officially created, and its physical boundaries
demarcated, in 1961 by the Brazilian government as a reservation that would
conveniently confine both local peoples (such as the Suyá and the Juruna) and
other populations brought from far away (including the Kayabi and the Trumai).
The ancestral territories of these peoples were heavily sought after for their large
supplies of gold, timber, arable land, and, of course, cheap human labor. With the
forced dislocation of these peoples by the Federal government from their traditional
lands into the XIP, the emptied lands became available for miraculous development
projects carried out by the military dictators in the 1960s and 70s. By “miraculous” I
mean these projects had no intention of securing the self-sustainability of Indigenous
Peoples. Such projects, instead, were geared towards securing lands into the hands
