Chiefs, villages and their histories: indigenous autobiographies and the sociopolitical dynamics of the Matipu and Nahukwá peoples (Xingu Indigenous Park - MT, Brazil)

• Grant number: 16/04777-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): April 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Roberto Guerreiro Júnior
• Grantee: Diogo Henrique Cardoso
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/26676-0 - Transforming amerindian regional systems: the Upper Xingu case, AP.JP

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the complex interweaving between history and politics in indigenous autobiographical discoursing. Its point of departure is an analytical comparison of several autobiographical narratives created and performed by upper Xinguan leaders. Therefore, this project seeks to work with accounts of Matipu and Nahukwá chiefs (Xingu Indigenous Park, MT - Brazil), which will be placed in parallel with others indigenous narratives already noticed or recorded by other researchers. Doing this, the following research will contribute to our understanding of political processes involved in the production, objectification and fragmentation of villages phenomena within a multi­ethnic and a multilingual network. Finally, this work aims to emphasize how some particularities among indigenous discourses are important to construct their own history. In this sense, the following research will take too, as an ethnographic focus, some events experienced by Matipu and Nahukwá peoples between the last century and the present one. Those peoples have a long historical experience in common which involves even villages' amalgamation and divisions. Drawing on the analyses of oral performances, fieldwork research and a systematic study of the available literature about the Amerindian verbal arts, this study also intends to show how these autobiographies illuminate specific indigenous ways of dealing with otherness and how they are involved with the production of persons and political collectivities. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CARDOSO, Diogo Henrique. Chiefs, villages and their histories: memory and politics in the Upper Xingu. 2018. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.