The Kaingang cosmology and its contemporary expressions in west of São Paulo state

• Grant number: 08/00738-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2008
• End date: April 30, 2009
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Edmundo Antonio Peggion
• Grantee: Marília Sene de Lourenço
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to investigate the bond between rituals and discursive practices of Kaingang Indians who live in the West of São Paulo state, more specifically in the village Vanuíre. It also attempts to understand the cosmological references that guide them. Their cosmology will be studied through field research and ethnographic literature. The aim is to articulate the presence of cosmological concepts associated with the figure of the old shaman and traditional rituals, with the discursive practices and rituals present in the worship of Pentecostal churches currently present in the village. Search is, by observation of daily Vanuíre and the collection of oral narratives between its inhabitants, look for particularities of social relations between the Kaingang, its forms of contact with the national society and the consequential changes in their cosmology.