Indigenous in Canarana: Urban Notes about the Park-Xinguan Creativity

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach to the park-xinguan indigenous peoples from the city of Canarana (MT), a municipality that composes the southeast portion of the Xingu National Park (in portuguese, Parque Indígena do Xingu, PIX). Hosting the main institutions of social care, the regional FUNAI and several branch offices of indigenous organizations, Canarana is a city of reference for PIX’s indigenous peoples. The city is ruled by a logic that insists on compressing the indigenous under the image of the poor, and each day it is also more filled with park-xinguans. These facts challenge the indigenous existence and philosophy,and result in an absolutely creative moment in the life of these people,of their philosophical practices and imagination. Starting from my experiences in Canarana from 2014 to 2016, this paper explores two different images of the white men from the city formulated by the park-xinguan indigenous people – the “peon” and the “chief” – highlighting the consequences of the complexification of these category to the indigenous theory of transformation. Lastly, it turns to the indigenous movements and expectations for their relations with different white men from the city, and proposes a reflection about some of the most salient incongruities between the park-xinguan perspective and the ways in which the Brazilian State intent to update this relations in the urban landscapes of the municipality.