Mito, Rito e História: uma análise da sociedade indígena Ticuna

Abstract

The indigenous Ticuna group, inhabitants of the Amazon region - Alto Solimões - located in the Brazilian territory, have been suffering over the years with recent changes produced through contact with the national society. However, they continue to preserve their most important cultural values, such as their native language and the female initiation ritual. This work has as its starting point the Ticuna Ethnographic Collection preserved in the Ethnology Technical Reserve of the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi. The pieces were classified into dance ritual garments and ritual instruments, which are somehow linked to the female puberty ritual. Such artifacts could be compared between pieces collected more than 60 years ago with pieces that were recently brought back in 2000/02, the goal here was to observe the iconography inscribed as a way to go back to the past in order to understand the present. As well as, to compare the prescriptive actions with the performative actions of the Ticuna society. In order to analyze the myths with the purpose of understanding how they have changed throughout history, and how these changes have contributed to the maintenance of their knowledge and traditions in the face of the impositions established by the contact society. It was found that despite the discontinuities produced in the course of history, the myths were re-elaborated according to the transformations, thus registering a Ticuna survival strategy, since the narratives about the origin of the Magüta people - the first Ticuna - are present in the ritual, as a form of giving continuity to their cultural existence. The performative actions are ways for these aborigines to continue following their traditions and cultural values. Culture, for being dynamic, undergoes transformations and strategies found by the society itself to maintain itself as a people differentiated from the national society, with its specific identity.