To be Indian between the village and the metropolis: study on indigenous cosmopolitics and mobility, territory and population (Pankararu, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

• Grant number: 17/13731-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): February 02, 2018
• Effective date (End): September 01, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: José Maurício Paiva Andion Arruti
• Grantee: José Maurício Paiva Andion Arruti
• Host Investigator: Jonathan W. Warren
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Washington, United States
• Associated research grant: 14/04850-1 - Observatory of migrations in São Paulo: internal and international migrations in contemporary State of São Paulo, AP.TEM

Abstract

The general objective of this project is deepen the knowledge in the Ethnology and History of the Indigenism and the Indigenous people, through the partnership with CBS - Center for Brazilian Studies and LACS - Latin America and Caribbean Studies, both of the University of Washington (UW Seattle) . Our specific objective is to consolidate hypotheses and advance theoretical research on the continental phenomenon of migration or indigenous mobility to the big cities and the cosmological, organizational and identity transformations involved.This is a subject of growing interest in anthropology produced in the USA and Latin America, especially since 2000, but is still underdeveloped in Brazil, despite the first studies on the subject in Brazil are from the 1960s (with Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira). Besides that, the census data from the last three decades show that a very significant proportion (40%) of indigenous people live in urban areas - most of them in the Southeast region (where they represent 80% of the indigenous population).Our reflection on the theme had its starting point in an individual project (Indigenous Peoples in the Metropolis - Indianity, Urbanity and Cultural Reflexivity - CNPq, 2012-2017) and in a collective project (Migration Observatory in São Paulo: Migrações International Contemporary Internships - Thematic Project FAPESP, 2014-2018). This reflection is positioned in an area of liminality of the anthropological discipline - in which the indigenous ethnology meets the urban anthropology and the ethnography meets the demography - to account for an equally preliminary situation: the indigenous mobility between the countryside and great metropolis .The field work of this research includes the territories, populations, and flows of human and nonhuman objects and people comprised, on the one hand, by the Indigenous Lands occupied by the Pankararu people (the "Old Trunk" and its "Branch Tips") in Backlands of Pernambuco, Alagoas and Bahia and, on the other, by the popular districts of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. In the development of these projects we mobilized a methodology interdiciplinar: ethnography, life history / families, a survey with indigenous university students and a demographic census conducted with the participation of indigenous people themselves.The theoretical questions of this project are organized in three axes: (a) The cosmopoly of the Pankararu people; (B) The mobility in between Backlands and big city, and its transformative effects on ritual life, shamanic practices and indigenous performance; (C) The mechanisms of reproduction and reinvention of the indigenous condition in an urban context. (AU)