Sobre a pele, paredes e papéis: a escrita entre os Xikrin do Bacajá

Abstract

This thesis constitute a ethnographic study concerning the appropriations that the Xikrin of Bacajá, Jê speaking people in the state of Pará, made and makes of non indigenous writing. It seeks to highlight the manipulations as well as the effects that these graphics cause in their relationships. Writing is brought to them by non natives and its learned by children at school. Regarding the Xikrin people, it was aimed for the younger ones of the tribe and it began to compose the set of knowledge shown by this public. It has been incorporated into a indigenous logic that organizes the exhibit of knowledges from the gender and stages of one’s life. Furthermore, the Xikrin group chooses for the disarticulation between orality and writing and it becomes evident in different situations. Finally, writing is not a form of expression that spontaneously mobilizes these people. It depends on foreigners requests to be shown. However, graphics are made freely by the young ones when they write their personal names on various supports. This action that Xikrin people makes of writing in different contexts, its use - and mainly the refusal to use - allow us to observe relations through other forms of expression. Thus by tracking non native visual manifestation that reflections were constructed on the meanings the Xikrin acknowledge on the writings.