KAGWYRI’PE JIHOI: O TERRITÓRIO COMO FUNDAMENTO DO SABER TRADICIONAL PARINTINTIN NA ALDEIA TRAÍRA DA TERRA INDÍGENA NOVE DE JANEIRO, HUMAITÁ - AM

Abstract

Throughout time, indigenous peoples have been developing their traditional knowledge and building a transcendental relationship with local territory and nature, inherent not only to practical elements, materials, but symbolics, spirituals. Geography ends up awakening interest for the indigenous peoples, for their traditional knowledges, which address with the ways of living in the world (relation to the territory and territorialities), the know-how (practices and skills), and deals with the world in which live (cosmogony and cosmology). In particular, Cultural Geography understands as elementary, the translation of local complexity not in order to simplify it, but with a view to making it more intelligible to the eyes of science, from references such as territory, territorialities, (geo)symbols, territorial identity and their sociocultural and environmental implications. About the above, the guiding objective of the thesis was to understand the importance of the territory for the existence of traditional knowledges Parintintin in the Village Traíra of the Indigenous Land Nove de Janeiro, Humaitá-AM. In methodological terms, it was sought to value at experiences and daily knowing, from the participatory research. Among the methodological procedures and the techniques adopted, stand out: semi-structured interviews, excursions to the forest, participatory workshop, daily living with the indigenous, use of field notebook, photographic records, among others. In the living with social actors, it was observed that in contact and relationship with the non-indigenous society its traditional knowledges and customs provided a relative resistance to external culture, being that their cultural system has adapted, internalizing new material and immaterial hybrid practices. Therefore, relationship with the territory and forest management, despite having suffered with external influences, is guided by traditional knowledge, supported in a conception of a less utilitarian and exploratory nature than that of surrounding society. The territory is seen as its material and symbolic basis, on which their traditional knowledge are based, has origin its myths, legends and beliefs, where they hunt, fish, practice agriculture and manage elemental vegetable species for their physical and cultural survival and, in particular, where they co-evolve with nature. Regarding the interpretation of indigenous knowledges about vegetation, is evidenced that identify and classify, in particular, those species used for the treatment of health, know the best way to manipulate them, and the environments in which they are, being closely associated with their territory. They understand that must respect the phases of the moon, the beings of forest (Curupira, Kagwyrajara and Pirakwera‘ğa) and their beliefs, in which situations certain plants can be used for practical purposes (teas, syrups, massages, etc.) or symbolic (benziments, body painting). Therefore, are not only practical know-how that meets their primary needs, but also fruits of aesthetic, intellectual and/or spiritual observations. Are transmitted orally from the olders to the youngers, but equally acquireds by his curiosity, by an intellectual capacity to associate the presence of certain elements (naturals and culturals) to determined territories. Finally, stands out that traditional knowledges has a totalizing form of classifying and interpreting the world, through a human sensibility (material and symbolic elements).