Between the trail and the sound: the Awa-Guaja's poetics of predation

• Grant number: 11/12175-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2011
• End date: July 22, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Vanessa Rosemary Lea
• Grantee: Uirá Felippe Garcia
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project has a twofold objective: an ethnographic one and comparative one. In ethnographic terms, it is proposed to continue the research with Guajá-Awa, a small group of hunters, speakers of a Tupi-Guarani language, and inhabitants of the basins of Gurupi Turiaçu and Mearim rivers, in the west of the state Maranhão (Brazil). In a ethnographic way, the project aims to (1) study the healing process carried out from a shamanic technology, whose songs are the main articulators between different worlds; (2) study the complex communication between the living world and other levels of existence, populated by a class of beings called karawara, whose relationship with humanity is also through the songs, and (3) study the "poetic engagement" presents in hunting activities, which transforms the relationship between humans animals in a relationship of war. These three aspects, although independent, converge on a topic of major concern, which is the relationship between the Awa-Guajá and hunting. The ethnology of Lowland South America has a good analysis on cosmology, shamanism and hunting, but on the last issue specifically, compared to the theoretical discussion about hunting in other ethnographic regions (such as the Arctic and Siberia), there is so much to be investigated. In comparative levels, I want to think in what levels the Awa-Guajá is close or far from other peoples of the region, and formulate hypotheses to hold discussions with social-cosmologies not only the Tupi, but other South American ethnographic landscapes (such as Brazil Central, Amazon Northwest, Amazon Piedmont and Guyana, for example), both based on literature sources, and through dialogue with other researchers.