From enemy to ally: Kaingang revisions of the understanding of the dead in the state of São Paulo

Abstract

This article presents different Kaingang perspectives regarding the dead in the small population in two Indigenous Lands of São Paulo, a state in which a genocide of this ethnic group was perpetrated in the recent twentieth century. For this purpose, a combination of ethnographic procedures with psychoanalytical listening was used, a methodology compatible with the purpose of preserving the natives as protagonists of the construction of their theses and proposals, listening not only to their conscious representations, but also to their unconscious elaborations. By literally listening to the Other Kaingang regarding what is enunciated through attitudes, acts, memories and narratives in relation to the dead, the aim is to provide subsidies for discerning strategies of struggle and mourning mediated by a new conception and transformation of relationships with the dead in course among the Kaingang of São Paulo state, through ethnographic clippings that illustrate progressive displacements from the position of enemy to the condition of ally. A process of redefining relationships with the dead was found that can provide support and usefulness for facing the vicissitudes caused by white rule. The death of indigenous people due to colonization, both through massacres and contagious diseases, seems to encourage this transformation. If previously the dead were enemies and borders needed to be created and maintained between them and the living, today they can help to develop and defend native people from the harm caused by colonization, as well as to restore a condition of embattled spirit among the survivors.