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News
Brazil's Kayapo Indians Beset by a Golden Curse
31/05/1984
Autor: LEA, Vanessa
Fonte: National Geographic, vol. 165 n. 5, mai. 1984, p. 674-694
Documentos anexos
Brazil's Kayapo Indians Beset by a Golden Curse
By Vanessa Lea
Photographs by
Miguel Rio Branco
"WHY ARE KUBEN so hungry for gold?" Chief Kanhonk asked me with an air of sadness.
There really was no answer, since his culture and mine were worlds apart.
To Brazil's Kayapo, the term "kuben" includes all non-Indians. And, long before the garimpeiros - the gold miners - reached Kayapo lands, other outsiders had violated their domain. Rubber workers, Brazil-nut gatherers, hunters. Then squatters, ranchers, loggers, land speculators.
The Kayapo had fought all of them.
I knew that history well. While doing my research for a doctorate in anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, I had lived for 13 months among the Kayapo Indians on the banks of the Xingu River in the eastern part of Brazil's Amazon Basin (map, page 678). Now I'd come to stay with another group of Kayapo in the village of Gorotire, about 300 miles to the north. They had welcomed me, for I spoke their language and knew their ways.
As forest villages go, Gorotire is large, with close to 90 houses. Its layout is a curious mixture of tradition and modernity. Some villagers, including Kanhonk and his fellow chief, Toto'i, live on the "main street," a wide avenue between the Fresco River and the traditional men's house, in a plan devised by the Brazilian government agency that preceded the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). Others live on paths branching off the street. One part of the village maintains the traditional plan a large circle of houses at the foot of steep but low-lying hills.
Íntegra da reportagem em pdf.
National Geographic, vol. 165 n. 5, mai. 1984, p. 674-694
By Vanessa Lea
Photographs by
Miguel Rio Branco
"WHY ARE KUBEN so hungry for gold?" Chief Kanhonk asked me with an air of sadness.
There really was no answer, since his culture and mine were worlds apart.
To Brazil's Kayapo, the term "kuben" includes all non-Indians. And, long before the garimpeiros - the gold miners - reached Kayapo lands, other outsiders had violated their domain. Rubber workers, Brazil-nut gatherers, hunters. Then squatters, ranchers, loggers, land speculators.
The Kayapo had fought all of them.
I knew that history well. While doing my research for a doctorate in anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, I had lived for 13 months among the Kayapo Indians on the banks of the Xingu River in the eastern part of Brazil's Amazon Basin (map, page 678). Now I'd come to stay with another group of Kayapo in the village of Gorotire, about 300 miles to the north. They had welcomed me, for I spoke their language and knew their ways.
As forest villages go, Gorotire is large, with close to 90 houses. Its layout is a curious mixture of tradition and modernity. Some villagers, including Kanhonk and his fellow chief, Toto'i, live on the "main street," a wide avenue between the Fresco River and the traditional men's house, in a plan devised by the Brazilian government agency that preceded the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). Others live on paths branching off the street. One part of the village maintains the traditional plan a large circle of houses at the foot of steep but low-lying hills.
Íntegra da reportagem em pdf.
National Geographic, vol. 165 n. 5, mai. 1984, p. 674-694
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