Kayapo Ethnoecology and Culture (Studies in Environmental Anthropology)

304 Pages·2002·3 MB·English

by  Darrell A Posey

Kayapó Ethnoecology
and Culture
Darrell A. Posey died in March 2001 after a long and distinguished career in
anthropology and ecology. Kayapó Ethnoecology and Culturepresents a selection
of his writings that result from 25 years of work with the Kayapó Indians, one of
the Amazon Basin’s most famous indigenous peoples. The Kayapó originated
from one village, Pyka-tô-ti, or the ‘Beautiful Village’. However the modern
Kayapó live in several dozen villages scattered over nearly four million hectares
that encompass a vast diversity of ecological systems linking the lowland Amazon
Basin with the Planalto of central Brazil.
These writings describe the dispersal of the Kayapó subgroups and explain
how, with this diaspora, useful biological species and natural resource manage-
ment strategies also spread. Detailed accounts of their permanent and nomadic
agricultural systems, past and present, as well as of the regional ecology, provide
a rich and essential record for future study and environmental management.
However the Kayapó are threatened with extinction like many inhabitants of
the Amazon Basin. The author is adamant that it is no longer satisfactory for sci-
entists to just ‘do good science’. They are increasingly asked and morally obliged
to become involved in political action to protect the peoples they study.
In the Kayapó village of Gorotire [Darrell Posey] encountered a thriving and
complex ancient tribal culture, whose rituals were intimately linked to the
forest and the cosmos. His research became far more than a piece of acade-
mic fieldwork as he learnt the Kayapó language and came to know the
Kayapó, not only as friends but as a people whose culture reflected a sophis-
ticated understanding of the lands that support them.
Darrell Posey’sObituary, The Times, 31 March 2001
Studies in environmental anthropology
Edited by Roy Ellen
University of Kent at Canterbury,UK
This series is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs on particular issues
in particular places which are sensitive to both sociocultural and ecological fac-
tors. Emphasis will be placed on the perception of the environment, indigenous
knowledge and the ethnography of environmental issues. While basically anthro-
pological, the series will consider works from authors working in adjacent fields.
Volume 1:A Place Against Time
Land and Environment in Papua New Guinea
Paul Sillitoe
Volume 2:People,Land and Water in the Arab Middle East
Environments and Landscapes in the Bilâd as-Shâm
William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster
Volume 3:Protecting the Arctic
Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival
Mark Nutall
Volume 4:Transforming the Indonesian Uplands
Marginality, Power and Production
Edited by Tania Murray Li
Volume 5:Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations
Critical Anthropological Perspectives
Edited by Roy Ellen, Peter Parkes and Alan Bicker
Volume 6:Kayapó Ethnoecology and Culture
Darrell A. Posey, edited by Kristina Plenderleith
Kayapó Ethnoecology
and Culture
Darrell A. Posey
Edited by Kristina Plenderleith
London and New York
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane,London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street,New York,NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2002 Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic,mechanical,or other means,
now known or hereafter invented,including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system,without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their
permission to reprint material in this book.The publishers would be
grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged
and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions
of this book.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Posey,Darrell Addison
Kayapó ethnoecology and culture / Darrell A.Posey;edited by Kristina
Plenderleith.
p.cm.– (Studies in environmental anthropology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Cayapo Indians – Ethnobotany.2.Cayapo Indians – Ethnobiology.3.
Cayapo Indians – Agriculture.4.Indigenous peoples – Ecology – Brazil –
Gorotire.5.Gorotire (Brazil) – Social life and customs.6.Gorotire (Brazil)
– Environmental conditions.I.Plenderleith,Kristina II.Title.III Series.
F2520.1.C45 P58 2002
630'.89'984–dc21
2001058583
ISBN 0-203-22019-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-27519-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–27791–4 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables x
Preface xii
Foreword xiv
Acknowledgements xvii
PART I
Kayapó history and culture 1
1 The science of the Me˜bêngôkre 3
2 Contact before contact: typology of post-Colombian
interaction with the Northern Kayapó of the Amazon 14
3 Environmental and social implications of pre- and
post-contact situations on Brazilian Indians 25
4 Time, space, and the interface of divergent cultures:
the Kayapó Indians of the Amazon face the future 33
5 The Kayapó origin of night 42
6 The journey to become a shaman: a narrative of
sacred transition of the Kayapó Indians of Brazil 47
PART II
Ethnobiology and the Kayapó Project 53
7 Report from Gorotire: will Kayapó traditions survive? 55
8 Indigenous knowledge and development: an ideological
bridge to the future 58
9 Wasps, warriors and fearless men: ethnoentomology of
the Kayapó Indians of Central Brazil 82
vi Contents
10 Hierarchy and utility in a folk biological taxonomic
system: patterns in classification of arthropods by the
Kayapó Indians of Brazil 93
11 Additional notes on the classification and knowledge of
stingless bees (Meliponinae, Apidae, Hymenoptera) by
the Kayapó Indians of Gorotire, Pará, Brazil 112
~
with JOAO MARIA FRANCO DE CAMARGO
12 Keeping of stingless bees by the Kayapó Indians of Brazil 134
13 Ethnopharmacological search for antiviral compounds:
treatment of gastrointestinal disorders by Kayapó
medical specialists 139
with ELAINE ELISABETSKY
14 Use of contraceptive and related plants by the Kayapó
Indians (Brazil) 149
with ELAINE ELISABETSKY
PART III
Kayapó land management 163
15 Preliminary results on soil management techniques of
the Kayapó Indians 165
with SUSANNA B. HECHT
16 Indigenous soil management in the Latin American
tropics: some implications of ethnopedology for the
Amazon Basin 182
with SUSANNA B. HECHT
17 The keepers of the forest 193
18 Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems:
the case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon 200
19 The continuum of Kayapó resource management 217
PART IV
Continuing adaptation by the Kayapó 219
20 From warclubs to words 221
21 The Kayapó Indian protests against Amazonian dams:
successes, alliances, and unending battles 223
Contents vii
Appendix: management of a tropical scrub savanna by
the Gorotire Kayapó of Brazil 235
Notes 246
Glossary 254
Bibliography 262
Index 281
Figures
1.1 Location of principal Kayapó villages. 5
1.2 Schematic views of apêtê, showing variations in micro-
ecological zones that allow for maximum diversity of
useful plant concentrations in these ‘forest islands’. 6
1.3 Schematic of new field (puru), showing planting and
cultivation zones. 8
2.1 Model of village fission of the Northern Kayapó. 22
4.1 Kayapó model of the world showing parallel earth and
sky disks in a circular universe. 36
4.2 Spatial model of the Kayapó world. 36
4.3 The idealized Kayapó village (kri-metx). 37
8.1 Idealized cross-section of Kayapó forest ecological
zones and subzones near Gorotire. 62
8.2 Ecological zones surrounding the village of Gorotire
as perceived by the Kayapó. 63
8.3 Trek from Kube˜n-kra˜-kein village to abandoned
village site (Pyka-toˆ-ti) showing resource islands and
campsites associated with forest fields. 72
9.1 Insect sequences and complexes (based on drawings by
Ira˜ Kayapó). 87
9.2 A drawing by Ira˜ Kayapó of the wasp nest (amuh
u˜ru˜kwa). 91
9.3 Cross-section of a wasp nest (drawing by Ira˜ Kayapó). 91
10.1 Organization of BOL categories into four
morphological sequences, only one of which is named
(nhy/ñy). 95
10.2 Subdivisions of ma`ra`. 97
10.3 Subdivisions of ipoishowing some subclass overlap
between ma`ra` and ipoi, ipoiand kapo(indicated by
dotted lines). 99
10.4 Two possible models of set relationships between
kapo, kapotiand krytkañet. 100
Figures ix
10.5 Category relationships within flies and kin (kopre). 104
10.6 Idealized hierarchical model showing superordinate
and subordinate levels. 109
11.1 Reproduction of a drawing by Pedro Kayapó (made in
Gorotire in 1979) showing the external form and
internal structure ofku-krãi-ti(Trigona amazonensis). 114
11.2 Nests of Meliponinae focal species recognized by the
Kayapó. 116
11.3 Schematic structures of Meliponanests with Kayapó
nomenclature. 117
11.4 Types of Meliponinae entrance tubes recognized by
the Kayapó with their respective ‘focal species’. 118
11.5 Ontogenetic stages of Meliponinae (represented in this
figure by Melipona compressipes fasciculata, ngài-re)
recognized by the Kayapó. 119
11.6 Major morphological structures recognized and named
by the Kayapó. 122
12.1 An overview of the me˜-kutoˆm, showing major symbolic
components. 136
12.2 A lateral view of the me˜-kutoˆm, showing the symbolic
relationships between earth (pyka) and sky (ka`ikwa). 137
18.1 Apêtêformation: planting zones. 210
18.2 Ethnoecological units on the bà-kapôtcontinuum. 212