A'uwê substanciality on waradzu mirror: listening to indigenous xavante’s body within a spatial and cultural exchange context

Abstract

A better understanding of the white man's world and the ability to improve the natives' lifes are crucial skills for a Xavante leader. During the mid-20th century, Pimentel Barbosa's Indigenous Land Chief Apöena established bonds with a group of white men from Ribeirão Preto, SP, and ordered the migration of eight of his male grandchildren to the countryside city. This study focuses on the story of a few of the current protagonists of this cultural exchange. Their perspectives on self, future and its effects on identity construction and transformation were probed, including the manifestation of these elements in corporal practices. To achieve this objective, we conducted non-structured interviews with the young indigenous men and their host white families, which were later analyzed under the ethnopsychanalysis methodological framework. It became clear that this cultural exchange resulted in active and singular ways of identitary construction and meaning construction about Xavante memory and tradition for these young men, in what it relates to their biographies, and the understanding of them as a way to respond to the mission that was bestowed on them by their people. In this perspective, it becomes evident the importance of going beyond conceptions of acculturation of indigenous individuals in contact with the urban setting, and the necessity to take into account their particular sociocosmologies.