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Like the other Jê societies who inhabit Central
Brazil, the Apinajé bear in common a sophisticated
social organization comprised of several systems of
ceremonial moieties and ritual groups, as well as relatively
populous villages. They are predominantly hunters and
gatherers, although they practice - more in the past
than today - horticulture focused only on root crops.
The adaptation of these societies to the environment
of the scrub forest reached such a sophisticated level
that it impressed the first Europeans who studied them
who, perplexed, investigated how it was possible that
societies so sophisticated could have developed, given
that they had such a poor material base (that is, with
no ceramics, no developed agriculture, no weaving),
yet were demographically important and, above all, expansionist.
In fact, prior to the disastrous contact with the Europeans
- which began at the end of the 17th Century -
these societies had circular or semicircular villages
with 2 to 3 thousand people.
The region of the cerrado [open land with patches
of stunted vegetation], with its wide horizons -
that facilitates easy movement (all Jê peoples
are walkers and runners) and the possibility of simultaneously
exploiting the diverse plant compositions that characterize
the cerrado (galley forests, tracts of barren land,
fields, etc.) has produced among the Jê what is
called the "cerrado culture".
Until the 1940s, the Apinajé firmly maintained
their ritual system in operation - and with it
all of the social and cultural structure that both drew
them close to, and set them off from, the other Timbira.
The photographs taken by Curt Nimuendajú among
these Indians in the 1930s, are dazzling: the men are
still naked, race logs are strewn throughout the village
(a sign of the intensity of ritual life), the formality
of the adornments and ornaments used by the young men
and "associated girls" at the heights of
the initiation rituals.
The drastic depopulation that they suffered,
together with their imposed involvement organized by
the SPI and later by the FUNAI in productive activities
of gathering and breaking coconuts, deeply interfered
in their traditional system, particularly in their abandonment
of the ritual calendar as a guide for their economic
activities. Presently, after having their area demarcated
and after a more intense re-approximation with the other
Timbira groups, mainly through their participation in
the Vyty-Cati Association, the Apinajé
are revitalizing with great interest several of their
rituals.
In order to understand what constitutes a "territory"
for the Timbira in general and the Apinajé in
particular, it is necessary to know that a Timbira village
constitutes an autonomous "local group",
that is, it acts and presents itself politically before
other villages as a unit. This autonomy is generated
in and through a process of fission that leads several
families to disconnect themselves from the mother-village,
for various reasons (in general, accusations of witchcraft
and rumors). But this autonomy only becomes complete
when the new group really has the conditions for performing
the most important rituals of the annual cycle without
competition from the other villages. The unity of the
local group is also shown in the position of chief (the
pa’hi receives a mandate from the domestic groups
to act autonomously in the interests of the village
- krï) and in the exclusive use of a portion
of the territory for hunting and gathering (when a new
village is formed, the place where it is built is generally
agreed upon with the remaining members of the original
village, in such a way as not to overlap with their
hunting territory, a constant source of conflicts between
the villages). Thus, each village has its "chief"
(pa’hi) and has autonomy in making decisions;
there exists no other power, greater than the village-level,
that would represent all the Apinajé villages
(like a council of chiefs or something along those lines).
The daily activities in the villages follow
a ritual calendar that is regulated by the activities
of the "patio", center of the circular villages
and locus of political life properly speaking, and place
of the men. There, every morning and at the end of the
day, the men get together with the "governors"
to decide on or evaluate the activities of the day (who
will go to the garden, who will hunt etc.) or the activities
necessary for the conclusion or continuation of a ritual
in progress. The "governors" (always two
young men) are chosen by the eldest men and necessarily
belong to the seasonal moiety that "dominates"
the village: if in the "Summer" (dry season)
they belong to Wacmejê moiety; in the "Winter"
(rainy season), they must belong to the Catãmjê
moiety.
The dynamics and fabric responsible for Apinajé
social structure are provided by two connected systems
of exchange: the exchange of names and exchange of spouses;
these systems are the basis of, and determine the relations
of alliance among domestic groups and residential segments
of any and all Timbira villages.
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