Objects and Other Stories: What Relationships Through Things Reveal Between Isolated and Contacted Indigenous Peoples in Southwest Rondônia

• Grant number: 25/07722-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: June 30, 2025
• End date: February 27, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Pedro de Niemeyer Cesarino
• Grantee: Amanda Villa Pereira
• Supervisor: Philippe Erikson
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/02185-4 - Objects and other stories: what the relations through things between isolated and contacted indigenous people in Southwest Rondônia tells, BP.DR

Abstract

This research proposes an investigation into the semiotics of materiality within the Massaco and Rio Branco Indigenous Lands in Rondônia, Brazil. To this end, I aim to explore the conceptions of alterity among the Tupari, Makurap, Aruá, Djeoromitxí, Arikapú, Kanoê, and Aikanã peoples regarding the materiality that circulates through the villages of the Rio Branco Indigenous Land, situated within a multiethnic context. This territory is contiguous to the Massaco Indigenous Land, the latter demarcated exclusively for a voluntarily isolated group. By examining the elaborations surrounding the objects they produce, offer, or encounter from their isolated neighbors, I seek to understand how these existences-geographically proximate yet ostensibly intangible due to their refusal of coexistence-are conceptualized. The proposed ethnography operates on two fronts: on one hand, it involves documenting material production and its respective conceptualizations within a territory that encompasses at least seven distinct ethnic groups (Rio Branco Indigenous Land); on the other, it explores how these groups perceive their daily coexistence, albeit at a distance, with these isolated indigenous peoples. Through an effort to trace the objects circulating across these territories, I propose to focus on the movement of artifacts, traces, vestiges, sounds, and sightings, with the intention of constructing an analytical framework for their relational context. (AU)