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XAVANTE |
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Photo: Vladmir Kojak
Museu Paranaense, 1988 |
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Other
names:
A'uwe, Akwe,
Awen, Akwen
Language:
of Jê family
Where they live:
Mato Grosso state, Brazil
How
many people:
9.602 (in 2000) |
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The
Xavante, self-denominated Akwe, are together
with the Xerente the Acuen branch of the
peoples speaking the Jê linguistic
family in Central Brazil. Today they are
over 9,600 individuals, populating more
than 70 villages in the eight reservation
areas which comprise their present territory,
in the region delimited by the Roncador
range and by the valleys of the rivers Mortes,
Culuene, Couto de Magalhães, |
| Boti,
and Garças, in East Mato Grosso.
The Xavante experience with other indigenous
peoples and mainly with non-Indians has
been documented since the late 18th century.
What calls attention in this history --
and provides its uniqueness -- are three
essential points.
First and foremost, they are a people forced
into constant |
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migrations,
always in the quest for new territories
where to hide away and, in this trek, a
people in constant conflict or making circumstantial
alliances with other peoples whom they met
on their way to their present settlement
area.
Second, they are a people who, having accepted
and experienced daily life with non-Indians
since the 19th century (when they lived
side by side with other peoples in |
| the region,
in official settlements kept by the government
of the Province of Goiás and controlled
by the Army and the Catholic Church), rejected
contact and chose to withdraw from the regionals
migrating at some time between 1830 and 1860
towards the present state of Mato Grosso,
where they lived unbothered until the 1930s.
From this time on, they became sieged by private
and official interests upon their lands. As
the aftermath of dictator Getúlio Vargas’s
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National Integration Program ideology, in 1946 the
first local Xavante group is reached and subdued
by the Indian Protection Service by the Mortes river;
until 1957 the remainder, exhausted by epidemics,
persecutions and massacres were also forced to accept
contact.
Third, the Xavante have been hailed by public
opinion in the 50s as ferocious and belligerent
for resisting contact imposed upon them; in the
70s and 80s, however, they were known for yielding
chieftains such as Celestino and Mário
Juruna (former federal representative), who crystallized
the image of Indians who knew what their rights
were and were willing to struggle for them with
the authorities responsible for the survival guarantee
of indigenous peoples in the country.
In anthropological literature, the Xavante are
known mainly for the dual-type social organization,
that is, they are a society in which the live
and thought of its members are constantly permeated
by a dyadic principle which organizes their perception
of the world, of nature, of society and cosmos
itself as being permanently split into opposing,
complementary halves.
That in fact is the key to the cultural elaboration
of the Xavante, built and rebuilt throughout time
and myriad historical experiences, but always
nurtured as the fundament of their original way
of being, thinking and living.
Sources
of information |
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01. photo: Eredit
Werger, s.d.
02. Xavantina, agora
PI Areões
photo: René Fuerst, 1955
03.
photo: Eredit Werger, s.d.
04.
photo: David Maybury-Lewis, 1959 |
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Aracy Lopes da
Silva (†)
Extracted and translated from O Índio Imaginado
- Mostra de Filmes e Vídeos sobre Povos Indígenas
no Brasil, CEDI / SMC-SP, 1992, 63 pags. |
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