The History of the Waiwai from the Arrival of the Missionaries to the Demarcation of Land: an indigenous point of view
Rodrigo Waiwai, from the indigenous village Mapuera, in the northern
part of the Brazilian Amazon, is in London to research the collections
of Waiwai objects at the British Museum, and will give a talk on the
history of the Waiwai taking as a departure point the first contact with
the missionaries that settled in the area in the late 1940s. Rodrigo
will discuss the impact of the arrival of the missionaries to their ways
of life, from the translation of the New Testament to Waiwai to drastic
social-organisational changes that led them to abandon small villages
near the headwaters of rivers to settle in bigger and more densely
populated ‘mission-villages’, as well as the gradual process of
de-signification of shamanistic knowledge and discontinuation of several
rituals and parties.
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This project is part-funded by the Language Acts and Worldmaking Small Grants Scheme.