The Kaiowá and Guarani organize themselves into bilateral kinship groups, bringing together a number of familial nuclei. Each group is articulated and politically directed by one or more elderly couples, the "house owners –“ ogajara, metaphorically recognized as the grandparents of the entire kin (ramõi and jaryi). Until 1988, the federal bodies for indigenous policy had forcefully displaced those groups from their traditionally occupied territories to legal reserves, where they implemented a regimen of political control through indirect administration devices, appointing a “captain” and several indigenous assistants. Such a regimen remains to this day, despite changes in legislation. This generates connections, oscillations, and counterpoints between a political system we call “presentation,” based on a leader following reciprocity between relatives, and an allegedly representative political system, where the person leading the “captaincy” tries to represent all the kinship groups in the reserve area by activating the categories “community” and “village.”
This article addresses indigenous political movements and actions based on the ethnography of expressive practices of a Kaingang collective called Nẽn Ga. These practices, described by the Kaingang as rituals [tỹnh], include songs, dances, body painting, ornaments, and are essential for holding festivals, which are linked to retaken movements and to indigenous struggle. It is proposed that indigenous mobilizations, as well as kanhgág festivals/rituals – of wich Kiki’s funeral celebration stands out – produce movements of distancing and approximation, construction and deconstruction of bonds, promoted largely due to the experience of singing-dancing together and mobilizing against common enemies. The annual Acampamento Terra Livre and other mobilization events are essential for renewing alliances between diverse groups and peoples, who unite especially against deadly governments. The existence of Apib, the largest network of the contemporary national indigenous movement, is, therefore, inseparable from these meetings, from face-to-face struggles, which are sung, moved by painted and rhythmic bodies.
Resenha do livro: SIMON, Scott; LAUGRAND, Frédéric. 2024. Feathered entanglements: Human-birds relations in the Anthropocene. Vancouver, UBC Press, 340p.
