IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012, 173-190 International Review of Social Research

Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons With Outboard Engines, Mosquito Nets and Images

Bárbara Maisonnave ARISI• Federal University of Santa Catarina ISCA - Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Oxford

Abstract: This article provides an ethnographic analysis of lessons given by an Amazonian Indian elder called Txema concerning transactions of objects and images. Txema has lived until 1978 in the Amazon as a hunter and farmer in very small communities spread in the forest mainly avoiding conflict with non-indigenous people. The Matis established contact with the Brazilians in 1978 and now Txema deals with British TV crews and researchers. This paper brings detailed information on how Txema transacts many objects like outboard engines and mosquito nets for images and care. Values are discussed in those transactions. Drawing an ethnographic description as the way to achieve reflection, this paper tries to show a close approach to what kind of transformation a lot of industrialized objects provoke in an indigenous community. Material culture exchanges are closely related to values and Txema teaches us what is valuable for this elder Amazonian man.

Keywords: value, economy, transaction, Amazon, Pano, Matis.

‘The outboard motor you brought us won’t last long but the images you take will last for ever’, said the tribal chief [Txema Matis] knowingly to Parry, while also making it clear that he and his people were underwhelmed by film crews asking them to go native for the camera.’ (Flett 2007, newspaper) The Matis indigenous people live in the had had sporadic relations with non- Terra Indigena , located in Indigenous outsiders until they made the Amazon forest, the second biggest contact with the Brazilian government indigenous land in with 8.5 in 1978. Men and women who told me million hectares, close to Brazil, their memories from when they use to and Colombia triple border. The Matis live as ‘isolated Indians’ - as the media

•email: [email protected]. Barbara M. Arisi (PhD in Anthropology) currently holds a post-doc position at NIGS - Núcleo de Identidades de Gênero e Sexualidades (Sexualities and Gender Identities Group) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. This research was funded by CAPES, FAPESC/CNPq, Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia Brasil Plural, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and Núcleo de Transformações Indígenas (NuTI/ Pronex). Her PhD dissertation was directed by Dr. Oscar Calavia Saez from the Federal University of Santa Catarina and co-directed by Dr. Laura Rival from the University of Oxford. Acknowledgments: My thanks go to Sandra Rubia Silva for the careful editing and to Carlos Carvalho for the help with the images. Special thanks to the Matis for accepting me and for all the care they offered.

© University of Bucharest, February 2012 174 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 and the Brazilian government use to made starring the Matis, spreading call them (Arisi, 2007) - are the same their images in the world. who in 2009 negotiated to perform One of the recent films with the monkey hunting and animal parties Matis people was part of BBC’s with a South Korean and a North series Tribe, made by the famous UK American TV crew. journalist Bruce Parry. The epigraph The Matis work hard in the economy of this paper is a comment written by of their culture and the exchange of the journalist Kathryn Flett (2007) on goods, technology and knowledge with Parry’s work that was published in foreigners. This is not new for them as The Guardian, an English newspaper. while hunting, farming, gathering, and Flett reproduces a dialogue recorded living their lives in the forest, they have in the documentary, where Txema, a always been participating in global Matis elder, confronts Parry with the networks of trade. The Matis have differences in values he attributes to always been exchanging with forest the images captured by him versus the dwellers such as animals, different outboard engine, the counterpart, one indigenous groups, loggers, rubber of the payments agreed with the Matis tappers and the tsussin (vital forces, to let the cameras document their lives. disencorporated potencies that for the This brief Txema’s discourse shows Matis circulate in the many layers of how much the Matis worry about the cosmos) (Arisi, 2011). This article the economy that they are involved focus on two lessons given by Txema, in, exchanging with foreigners their the elder, concerning mosquito nets beauty, their knowledge and their and outboard engines. images. What kind of stuff and In order to introduce the Matis quality of relationships can pay for community recent history in summary, that? ‘Stuff’ is understood here in it is enough to mention that, in less than Miller’s (2010) broad sense, objects 30 years; the Matis made their official that make us, small things that can contact with the Brazilians and entered encompass ‘intimate relationships’, in full speed in the whirlpool that comes ‘material objects are viewed as an with all the usual transformations integral part and inseparable aspect brought by this sort of event. They of all relationships’ (Miller, 2008: faced sickness and death. They got 286). What do the Matis want from some access to new medicines and foreigners? What kind of stuff are different food. Industrialized objects they interested in from the world that such as machetes, axes and pans were exists outside their villages and the obtained in a larger scale, on a smaller huge forest? What is Txema teaching scale they got other technological us when stressing the impossibility of items like 16 mm rifles, outboard paying back things for social relations? engines, generators, solar panels, converters and more recently mobile phones and digital cameras. Soon, film makers disembarked to shoot them in the forest. Many documentaries were BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 175

Figure 2. ISA/CTI map of the area Figure 1. Map of the Amazon biome. studied. Source: adapted from Arisi, Map: Frank Koopman Cesarino and Francisco (2011: 7).

Industrialized goods and other made. Decisions not only about their Indigenous people in Brazil life style, but also about their staying away from the many new people that entered their territories. Invasions After 1978 contact, together with the increased by the rubber booms during tragic demographic debacle and the the First and Second World Wars and arrival of a few foreign film makers, later on by the logging activities. I journalists and Brazilian workers, the suspect that in many aspects the Matis biggest novelties and transformations are similar to other Amazonian groups that occurred in the Matis economy like, for example, the Huaorani. were due to the huge amount of They are indigenous people that industrialized stuff that came to play an live in Ecuador and choose trekking important role in their lives in the last as their way of living, according to thirty years. Almost all of the artifacts Rival (2002). She sheds light on the the Matis had before 1978 were made ‘correspondences between Huaorani´s by themselves, such as their weapons particular mode of subsistence and use (four meter long blowpipes, arrows and of the forest and their system of social bows), household objects (ceramic pots alliances based on a strict closure of and water containers, palm tree bags the Huaorani social world onto itself, to carry fruits or fishes, hammocks), as well as on the partial isolation’ adornments (bracelets, earrings, (Rival, 2002: 178). collars, nose pendant), tools (paddles), So, to continue following the communication instruments (calling/ changes that a lot of industrialized hunting ceramic wooden horns), etc. stuff brought to the lives of the Matis, The men used to dress with a natural I would like to point out that a debate fiber string holding the prepuce and about ‘primitiveness’ should take into sometimes body painting. The few account that nomadic trekkers living in industrialized tools they had were small groups ‘may represent cultural metal axes and knives, probably traded and political choices already present in with or stolen from neighboring Indian preconquest values and social forms’, groups, loggers or rubber tappers. as Rival suggests. That is important Of course, this autonomous life was to stress because the majority of the partly a result of choices the Matis had 176 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 people are strongly prejudiced against and worries but also pleasures these Indigenous people, based on a very sort of fast track historical events and old fashioned evolutionary mindset the arrival of industrialized objects that considers that people living with have brought to them. less are also ‘less’; so maybe a lot of Gordon (2006) studied the spreading people would erroneously consider that of industrialized goods among people living the way the Matis used Amazonian indigenous communities (or use) to live were primitive. I shall in a new approach, different from digress just to make this point more the theoretical perspective common clear, because ideas about ‘primitive’ in the studies carried out in the 70’s societies have been changing lately due and 80’s that considered indigenous to the ecological movement activists’ transformations as acculturation. Many discourse. Many environmentalists academic books published in the last now consider that humanity is very decade in Brazil present ethnographies close to an enormous environmental that tried to follow the indigenous crisis, so they now call ‘primitive’ associations and to understand people living in industrialized cities that indigenous theories about their contact go on consuming without considering with the non-indigenous collectives the scarcity of our planet´s resources. from an indigenous perspective It also became common to consider (Gordon, 2006; Andrello, 2006). One that the way some Amazonians live is pioneer publication is Pacificando intelligent and sophisticated and the o branco: cosmologias do contato industrialized societies are what we no Norte Amazonico (‘Pacifying the should call ‘primitive’. Evo Morales, White: cosmologies of contact in current president of Bolivia, became North Amazon’), edited by Albert and a sort of spokesman of people that Ramos (2002). In this book, different claim importance for the indigenous Amazonianists showed how ‘white knowledge and the Aymara concept of people’ objects were resignified and buen vivir (living well). This concept how their incorporation sometimes guides the new Bolivian Constitution, stresses the differences between the approved in 2008 (Gonçalves, 2011). Indians and their Others. I do not want to enter this debate, so In the same collection, Lucia Van let’s consider there is not such a thing Velthem affirms: ‘the penetration of as ‘primitive’ nowadays. This debate is industrialized objects constituted a related to this paper and it can be seen fundamental link in the interethnic as a background for all topics discussed contact since the first encounters’ here. (2002: 61, my translation). She shows After this digression, I hope we how the people would first hold can decide not to judge either type those industrialized new belongings of collective or society as primitive, captive in order to domesticate but as people that have made their them. They would try to keep those own choices. So, let’s focus now on ‘captured white people objects’ under the Matis. Based on almost a year of their control by embedding them in fieldwork living experience, I hope to their native aesthetics, decoration and show not only what kind of difficulties functionality (Van Velthem, 2002: 73). BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 177

By doing it, the Wayana were trying or captured from outsiders, to offer to neutralize and to tame the ‘white a quick translation). All those items people’, those ‘cannibal enemies’ and belonged previously only to foreigners, to incorporate them into the wayana animals and kube, until they were humanity conviviality rules. Catherine ‘captured, taken and appropriated’ by Howard discusses the diversity the Mebêngôkre. Gordon also calls of ways Indigenous people resist attention to the high risks implied western hegemony focusing on how in such a rapid and wild economy the Wai Wai indigenous people also because the Mebêngôkre get afraid intent to control the arrival of ‘white of becoming white by transforming peoples’ industrialized goods, trying to themselves too much or too quickly. assimilate and waiwai-ing the relations He concludes that the Xikrin were and the alliances with foreigners and able to produce more and more beauty, also those exchange-objects in order to beautiful names and beautiful people, ‘channel them towards their own goals, vitalizing their sociality. In dialogue that are, to increase the vitality of their with the ideas of Gordon, Diana own society’ (Howard, 2002: 51, my Rosas Riaño (2008) has followed the translation). circulation of goods and money among In a thesis devoted to a detailed indigenous communities living by the ethnography of the economy of Miriti-Paraná river in the Colombian Xikrin-Mebengokre, Cesar Amazon. She has also concluded that Gordon (2006) comes to almost the such circulation increases the flow of same conclusion. Gordon shows how travels and transformations that occur; the Kayapo were experiencing an so the end result is a more active inflation of money circulation due to community life (Rosas Riaño, 2008). mining contracts with the company Also studying the Kayapó, Terence Vale do Rio Doce and an increasing Turner concludes that the real products flow of industrialized goods that of these societies are ‘social persons’. followed it. These mining contracts The production of social persons, aimed ‘assistance’ and compensation for the Kayapó and other to the Indians for the impacts of the Amazonian peoples, is culturally Vale do Rio Doce’s operations in the defined as a process of imbuing Conservation Unit Floresta Nacional them with symbolically mediated de Carajas that borders their Indian qualities of beauty and power. The territory (Gordon, 2006: 36). The social relations through which Mebêngôkre use the word kukràdjà as a this process is organized enable translation for ‘culture’ – ‘the kukràdjà1 the appropriation of surplus increments of these qualities by is what distinguishes them from the those in control of the key means of animals and savages (kube)’ (Gordon, production (the segmentary matri- 2006: 377). The word is related to the uxorilocal household and its junior start of using domesticated fire to cook, female members). The values thus the agriculture, names, songs, feathers acquired are “realized” not at the use, ceremonies, adornments, goods, point of production in the internal money and nêkrêjx (beautiful names, relations of the extended family ornaments, songs and objects stolen household itself, but in contexts of public circulation through 178 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012

symbolic media of performances become the headquarters of the AIMA that function as claims to status – Associação Indígena Matis Tsasibon and personal value, where they Wintê. In 2011, the Matis owned three are ‘consumed’ by the witnesses houses in Atalaia do Norte. Some of (spectators) of the performances them live there; others sleep, cook and (Turner, 2003: 25). hang around there during their city I will come back to his paper in the visits and shopping trips. They were conclusions. also planning to build up their own hostel. The Matis consisted, in 2009, a Matis and their lives full of population of 331 persons living along industrialized stuff the Ituí and the Coari (Itui’s tributary) rivers in three communities located In 2009, when I carried out most of my in the center of the Vale do Javari fieldwork experience, most of the Matis Indian Land. Eighteen of them were men and women were very excited about permanently living in Atalaia do Norte, their access to industrialized goods that the nearest city by boat from the Matis they had started recently to consume villages. A boat trip from Atalaia do in bigger scale. They had just begun to Norte (circa 15,000 inhabitants) to their circulate more at ease and comfortably communities by dugout canoe sped up in the city of Atalaia do Norte (AM). In by a 8HP or 13HP outboard engines 2003 and 2006, when for the first time takes three or two days, depending on I was in Atalaia do Norte, the only few the season (rain or dry). Before they Matis in the city were the ones living had access to outboard engines the as students in a house that belonged to Matis travelled paddling; so, as they the Civaja (Conselho Indígena do Vale were people living in the river heads do Javari, an interethnic organization). and in small creeks, they didn’t use to The house where the students could travel by canoe covering big distances. live for free was very old and badly Now, the Matis are always traveling maintained. In 2008, the Matis bought from their communities to Atalaia their first communitarian house with do Norte, located in the Javari river, the money one of their villages won as on the water border with Peru, and a government prize (Premio Culturas sometimes to Tabatinga, in the Brazil, Indigenas - Xikao Xukuru). In 2009, Colombia and Peru triple border. they bought a second house with the They go to those cities mainly to deal savings of three families that wanted to with bureaucracies imposed by the have a better place for their children to Brazilian government, to do shopping live and a base for them to sleep and to and to seek health assistance. cook while being in the city. Finally a Many Matis have money from the third house was bought with the money few salaries available for those that they charged a South Korean TV crew. work for the Brazilian government as The Matis were happy with this third teachers, Indigenous health assistants house because it was not a wooden one, (Agente Indígena de Saúde),or as but made of bricks, so they considered an agent responsible for sanitation it stronger and better, good enough to (Agente Indígena Sanitário). Two or BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 179 three men also get paid to work three A mosquito net gift: Txema’s months shifts as a FUNAI (Indian teaching children how to behave Affairs Federal Government office) assistant in the control office located The first time I went shopping with at the confluence of Ituí and Itacoaí a Matis was in 2006. I was trying to rivers. Some revenue also comes from please Txema, the same elder man who social benefits that the government said to Parry his outboard engine would pays such as pensions (in Brazil there not last. In the Amazonian fashion is a minimum salary for rural workers of incorporating anthropologists via aged above 60 for men and 55 for kinship terms, Txema adopted me and women), maternity leave benefit or called me nukun txampi (that means family benefit. Sometimes, the Matis ‘my girl’ or ‘my daughter’). He wanted work with tourists or journalists to me to get a mosquito net for his first make extra cash and some of the wife Kaná Ëxkó who was sleeping in young ones also get minimum wages the Casai (Casa do Índio – a special for services as forest guides or jungle infirmary for indigenous people) with lodges personnel. They also make their pregnant daughter, expecting money selling bananas and other food, their grandchild baby to be born in the bracelets and other stuff they produce. city. Txema was caring for his wife With this money they go shopping. I and was teaching me how a daughter joined them in many of those shopping should behave. We bought the nicest expeditions. mosquito net available in town.

Figure 3. Txema. Photo: Barbara Arisi In 2011, I was back in Atalaia do mosquito net so I can bring it to your Norte working for an anthropological “mother” in the village? I will tell her health research to be delivered to the that you were here worried about her Brazilian Health Ministry (Arisi, health and that you will look after her Cesarino and Francisco, 2011). I got a so she doesn´t get malaria again’. It new gift request from Txema. He took was the second time that Txema tried one of his murumuru seed collars that to teach me how I should behave to be he wears like a bandolera crossed on his wife’s good daughter. At the same his chest and put it around my neck time, he also gave me a gift, one of asking: ‘Could you please buy me a his very beautiful collars. I felt myself 180 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 immersed in a tiny Kula ring where Ëxkó he was doing the same, he was our relationships were then clearly acting in order to teach me how I should objectified in the transactional stuff. I behave. It was an example of ‘action- also understood that Txema and I were oriented’ demonstration. participating and involved in a ‘value In his dialogue with Bruce Parry, transformation’ act that was offered the one I have reproduced as an by him to me as an opportunity that epigraph to this paper, Txema called I should take to make it become a the Englishman’s attention to the ‘positive productive possibility’. Both perishable nature of his gift, or the terms were proposed by Munn (1986). limited lifespan of the outboard engine, When studying, for example, acts of versus the images he was allowing giving food or the Kula speech, Munn Parry to take from the Matis. Txema examines that Gawans bring the: stressed that he considered their images intersubjective conversions or would last forever. To further present outcomes implicated in these the issue of values, needs and desires actions, thus bringing the and what perishes and what lasts in this intersubjective dimension into fast transformational ground that is the the analysis from this action- Matis way of life nowadays, I present oriented perspective: For instance, some descriptions of some other Matis I discussed the way in which shopping expeditions. At the end we´ll Gawans may attempt to influence come back to the outboard engines and others to remember them over the images. I understand they are related time so that a given type of act to what I have tried to show above with performed by one actor may project the possibility of future the transaction of mosquito nets. hoped-for acts by another into the immediate present, and eventually yield a desire objective outcome. Shopping expeditions (Munn, 1986: 270, emphasis added) The majority of the young Matis men As an elder, Txema invests his time in enjoys shopping for tennis shoes, jeans, teaching and guiding all his children in shorts, and T-shirts in bright colours. the community or in the city. I noticed If they are interested in a girl they him doing so with Tëpi Wassá, his might also buy a necklace with a heart older son, and with his other children; pendant, something for her hair, skirts never he did so by lecturing them but or products like shampoo or creams. If by acting. Txema would wake up early married, always a priority is given to in the morning to start working alone baby clothes and little plastic toys. If a in Tëpi’s new house construction, man is older, he is likely to be already for example. His reprimand or married, in that case, buying would take comments of his children came more the direction of a gross sale market in as demonstrations ‘action-oriented’, in order to spend almost the whole amount the sense explained by Munn (1986). I of money available in what is called understand that when Txema requested rancho - gross buying of processed me to buy the mosquito nets – in 2006 food big packages such as rice or items and again in 2009 – for his wife Kana like soap, cooking oil, salt, sugar, juice BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 181 powder and some canned fish (good after once I went with two women alone. The unsuccessful hunting trips), matches or majority of women prefer not to speak lighters, batteries for hand lamps. Some Portuguese, even though some of them money is saved for some extra clothes, understand and speak it; and that is flip-flops or rubber boots. one of the reasons why they rarely go Old men are also focused on as a group of women alone. Another industrialized equipment that is now reason why they prefer to go with the also used along with the traditional researcher or someone from their family ones in the activities of hunting and as the intermediate person is that just a fishing. They will ask their sons and few girls know how to calculate. daughters to bring home ammunition The capability of making calcu- (16mm bullets to shoot monkeys, lations is increasing rapidly. By 2006, peccaries, tapirs and birds), as well just one Matis young woman had as fishnets, fish hooks and fish lines studied in a city school and some of to catch fish. The fishing equipment them had indigenous schooling in their changed their fish diet, nowadays they villages. As a result, some girls could eat bigger fishes compared to times make simple calculations – additions before the contact when they just used of numbers with two digits – and just to catch smaller fish with timbo (a vine one of them could add numbers that that smashed in the water helps to kill would sum more than three digits. In fish), used in the past mainly in small 2011, two girls aged eleven were in creeks and water holes. Rarely did they the school in Atalaia and their parents used the pussá (handmade net), arrows wanted them to go on studying so they and bows as the water is too murky can become proficient in big numbers in the small creeks and headwaters. and long texts in Portuguese. They said There are no big fishes in these smaller they made this decision to get more waters. To buy a rifle, one needs to acquainted with the Brazilian world save money equivalent to one and half that is located in Atalaia do Norte minimum month salary; some save for and Tabatinga, the two cities where a long time when they intent to replace they travel the most to. They want their old guns. their children to master mathematic Women have their priorities, calculation, as it is considered an differences of what to buy depends on important new skill to avoid being their age, the amount of children they cheated by shopkeepers. have, the access to money her family Young women, from thirteen to has and, of course, individual choices. eighteen years old, like to buy colorful So, the majority of young women clothes, toilet products like shampoo would ask for stuff they want, like soap, and nail polishers; after they are a bit shampoo, new clothes or flip-flops, older, they will probably have babies although some of them receive social and then the shopping items change. benefits from the government such as They start getting more focused on motherhood or family support, they house and cooking utensils - a stove, would not buy the items themselves. gas bottle, big or tiny aluminum pans. A woman usually goes shopping with Once, when I was coming back to her partner or her brother or father; just the village carrying a heavy load of 182 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 manioc from the manioc fields, one of on the European side, as “Adam the three women said that now I could Smith´s global agent”, he was understand with my body why they likewise the spirit incarnate of liked stoves and metal pans. ‘We are the peaceful “penetration” of the the ones who carry the heaviest items market place: of a commercial expansion promising to bring in the village, bringing logs to cook, civilization to the benighted and manioc and water’, she said. The small riches to the entire earth. Cook pans are specially favoured because was to chart the course: determine their children can use them to distribute the routes, the resources, the food around in other relatives’ homes. markets. Harbringer thus of the This is not to affirm that the desire for Pax Brittanica, Cook was also a industrialized stuff is driven just by bourgeois Lono. (Sahlins, 1987: practical reasons, but to call attention 131). to the fact that the lightness of some materials plays an important role in their choices as well. Intertribal exchange, women Those technologies have brought fashion easiness to women’s lives. All Matis women keep on using ceramic big pots Among the Matis, women, specially to cook monkeys, for example, as they the older ones, like also to buy cloth have a bigger mouth diameter and are around 50 cm x 1,80 meter size. They lower, fitting perfectly well for this hand made new skirts by folding the purpose, but consider that the ceramic rectangular piece of cloth and stitching ones are not so nice to bring water the short sides together. They then from the creeks, as they are too heavy dress this basic design skirt later on and break more easily. The Marubo by stepping inside the opening and women keep on using their tëtxu matsu wrapping it around the waist. They (pan with a neck, literally translated squeeze the skirt tight around the waist from Matis), but the Matis women and and the left over flap they fold back in children prefer to use PVC bottles or front of their belly and tuck this slip in alumiun pans for this task. and roll a little bit the whole top part Sahlins called the attention for the of the skirt a bit downwards making role played by Hawaian women in the a nice termination. It is a fashion the time of Capitain Cook’s events. The Matis women learnt with the Marubo women had a strong participation in women. The Marubo live in the same transforming what were until then Itui river and in the Curuçá river and more stabilized structures (Sahlins, they are also indigenous people that 1987). He also writes about the role of speak a Panoan language; they had Capitain Cook in the European market had sporadic contact with Peruvians expansion: and Brazilians around 1900, and more established after the 1950s. Those mini For Hawaiians Cook had been skirts were a fashion in 2006 in the a form of the god who makes the earth bear fruit for mankind: Matis villages, the right dress to have a seminal god, patron of the for parties. peaceful and agricultural arts. Yet In 2009, I observed that there was BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 183 more variety in Matis’ women hair Marubo men dress more like urban cuts. They got tired of Marubo fashion non-indigenous men, except from their that had been the favorite hair cut in collars and bracelets. With the Matis 2006. I believe the transformation it is quite the opposite, the men keep happened because the women are on being pierced and wear almost all following the advice of Tëpi, a current their wood and shell face ornaments increasing-in-power-shaman. Tëpi has and the Matis men are more likely asked some young women to cut short to just wear collars across their nude their hair in the ‘older fashion’ (the chests. The Matis women dress more fashion of the years before contact with in the fashion of the non-indigenous’ Brazilian officials, before 1978). Just a city girls. It seems that the Matis and few women maintained their long hair the Marubo have an interesting reverse with a fringe (the Marubo style), the gender concerning their city wear majority keep theirs just covering the when in their respective villages. In ears. Also the Marubo fashion of ‘one many other aspects, both of them – cloth basic skirts’ is fading away a bit. Marubo and Matis - keep on changing More and more young Matis women rapidly, specially while apprehending start wearing mini shorts to replace the and learning how to domesticate and once super fashionable Marubo skirts. to use technology equipment. The Marubo keep on having their hair In December 2009, Tëpi was also long with a fringe and keep on using inviting Matis women and girls to start their hand made skirts decorated with drinking tatxik (vine traditional drink) a belt of beads and little shells they with the men (Arisi, 2011). Before, carefully weave. The Matis women just Erikson (1996) and I (Arisi, 2007) dress those skirts in party occasions had noticed that just men use to drink and not all of them have a bead belt to it, women would get it once in their finish the decoration of the skirt. The lifetime at the day they got their face shaman’s political role calling women tattoos. So, nowadays women are being back to wear traditional fashion called by the shaman to participate in the deserves attention. daily traditional and bittering beverage The Matis women adopted moment. I believe the shaman is trying Marubo’s fashion in the first years to stop the women transformation, after contact - as Erikson noted in his calling them into sharing with men early fieldwork (1996), but after 30 the traditional beverage and back to years they are coming back to some of their previous hair cuts’ fashion. The their more traditional style, but leaving Marubo were the ones that became behind still the noses trills piercing and the main intermediaries of the ear lobe expansion. The Matis went Matis relation with outsiders in the back to some traditionalism, but not beginning of the interethnic relations. completely. Another difference worth Getting industrialized clothes and the noting between the two neighbouring Marubo´s fashion influence are always people is one that concerns gender remembered by the Matis as their first differences. The Marubo women keep self transformation after contact. on dressing with their bead ornaments and their handmade skirts but the 184 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012

Nakedness and clothes as a corrupting force that undermines traditional cultures. ‘Real’ natives don’t use VCRs. A Indigenous bodies are seen as ‘index of second, more subtle message in authenticity’ (Conklin, 1997: 712) as Gary Larson’s sketch concerns the nakedness or ‘traditional ritual clothes’ importance of exotic body images are among some non-indigenous in defining cultural integrity. Hide expectations when concerning the television, but keep the grass Indigenous’ images (see for other case skirt, and the ‘authenticity’ of studies, Albuquerque, 2011; Nugent, the natives goes unquestioned. (Conklin, 1997: 711) 2007). I find it incredible, but when it comes down to Amazonian Indians Larson’s cartoon sheds light on the strong stereotypes persist through the tensions and the different expectations media and ‘common sense’ – it lingers that surface in those (dis)encounter on in those imaginary images that the situations and the role stuff or material real Indians are those naked, with no culture plays in such situations. I have clothes or dressed with feathers, penis recorded them taking place especially string or body painting. It seems that between tourists and the Matis. On many people cannot admit that Indians one hand, I have observed the Matis deal very well with technology and ‘going native’ in front of camera lenses clothes. Conklin has written a text or stripping some pieces of clothes or where she calls the attention to this taking away some metal necklaces, matter by commenting on some famous what Latour called ‘purification’ cartoon made by North-American artist (Latour, 2005). On the other hand, I Gary Larson: have also noticed the tourists asking Every connoisseur of anthropology the Matis to do so, to clean the scenario department bulletin boards knows to be filmed of photographed, for this Far Side cartoon (Larson example. I also witnessed a situation 1984): A grass-skirted native where the girls ‘went native’ by taking man in a tall headdress stands at their bras off and the journalist didn´t the window of a thatched hut. He like it, as he had watched Bruce Parry’s has just spotted a couple of pith- film shot in the village where the helmeted, camera-toting creatures women were always with their bras on. coming ashore and sounds It is important to remark that even the alarm: ‘Anthropologists! if a lot of tourists and journalists ask or Anthropologists!’ His two companions, similarly attired have asked the Matis in the past to ‘go with bones through their noses, native’ in front of the cameras, it doesn’t rush to unplug their television, mean that all of the camera-people do VCR, lamp, and telephone and the same. I once saw one tour guide stash them out of sight. The trying to strip them, asking the men to cartoon captures a persistent undress their T-shirts while they were stereotype about native peoples hunting and paddling with the tourists. and cultural authenticity. The Another picture available in an internet first, obvious idea is that outsiders page was taken in 2008. It shows six (anthropologists included) tend to Matis men dressed the traditional see complex Western technology way, with their penis strings and BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 185 adornments, and one woman dressed to the forest in Tikuna territory trying just with traditional collars and holding to spot some monkeys for the gringos her baby whom she was breastfeeding. to shoot with their cameras and the They stripped just to be photographed; Matis to shoot with their blowpipes. As those pictures were available on the soon as we stepped outside the Tikuna internet and one FUNAI worker tried village, the women took off their bras to forbid the images to be on the to the astonishment of the cameraman. internet by denouncing it to the Public He then came to me to ask me why Ministry. He tried to stop this image the women did so, as he had seen the to circulate as he considered that the already mentioned Bruce Parry’s film guide had abused the Matis’ naivety. where they always had their T-shirts or This picture explicits a controversy bras on. I answered him that I believed that we should consider from its many the women took off their bras because possible angles. One of the most tourist- they were probably asked to strip many experienced Matis man, who always times before requested by tourists or is trying to organize camping-sites or journalists. day-trips with tourists explicitly, asked The cameraman was frustrated, me to record and to write down his because he favoured more aesthetically opinion on this particular matter. Binan realistic documentaries so he did not Tuku, a Matis man in his forties, said want to film them without their bras. I to me: ‘Barbara, this is my penis, I advised him to do whatever he wanted used to walk around with my penis tied to do, he could talk to the women about upwards like in this picture until I was it if it bothered him. Later on, the fifteen. Well, I believe I was fifteen by women laughed when I told them what then… There were no workers from the happened. I said that the cameraman Brazilian government, there were no was intrigued about why they had tourists, no foreigners. So, that was and taken their bras off to be filmed in the still is my penis and I am old enough forest. The two women - around 25 to know to whom I want to show my and 20 years old – replied to me: ‘We penis or not’. find ourselves more beautiful when we When I was together with the Matis are walking in the forest without our and the tourists, if the guide would ask bras’. They were also giggling and them to undress the T-shirt in order having fun because they had noticed to get nicer pictures, most of the men that the cameraman was not expecting would simply refuse; others undressed them to show their breasts. So, it was and said they did not care. Once, also a joking relationship they tried to with North-American journalists, the provoke. opposite happened. We were staying On the same day, the women had in a Tikuna village in Colombia by the fun asking me which one of the film Amazon river for logistic reasons - to makers I found more good-looking. go around the many difficulties TV They teased me because my husband crews have to get authorization of the was accompanying us; they said I Brazilian government to enter Indian should also have undressed my bra land, besides that it is very expensive to because otherwise my husband would film in Matis communities. So, we went have just their breasts to look at as 186 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 mine were kept hidden. There was the ones that will be filmed (providers one Tikuna man they also considered of images). The Matis, the ones that good-looking, but they commented as will be filmed, prepare themselves to well that Indian men don’t pay so much provide their images, like the women attention to women naked breasts as when taking their bras off for the US the non-indigenous men do. So, seeing film makers or Matis men and women from the women’s perspective, taking when revealing their breasts for the the bras was also a way of controlling village group photo. The Matis try to and cheasing the film makers and the meet image consumer’s expectations other non-Matis men. but also they try to fulfill their own In another occasion, when they expectations and desires. posed for a community group picture during a big party held in October 2009 to celebrate the inauguration of a new Conclusion: outboard engines for longhouse which had been built in the images Aurelio matis community, the majority of the women also took off their bras and At last, let´s go back to the initial showed their murumuru seed collars problem posed by Txema’s comment and their breasts to be photographed. on the differences between the values They were dressed also with the basic of an outboard engine and images. skirts (without Marubo belts). The men I understand Txema’s comment as were also dressed with collars crossed related to his investment in teaching in their nude chests and shorts. That is white people how to behave properly the image they preferred to build up towards the Matis. As reproduced to for their own consumption in that above, Txema said to Bruce Parry, the particular situation. UK film maker: ‘The outboard motor So, this is an example of the you brought us won’t last long but tensions present in some encounters the images you take will last forever’. with tourists and journalists. Wearing I understand that what Txema was or not ‘traditional’ clothes? What is stressing was that the outboard engine considered to be more ‘authentic’? would perish, it would not last, but Naked or dressed without industrialized the images would last forever. But clothes? How to know what the others we can also consider that images may consider to be more ‘authentic’? perish as well (even though probably The question of showing or not their BBC have better means to make the naked bodies nowadays depends very images last longer than the Matis have much on each context and on each to keep an outboard engine running in relationship that is established among the hardship conditions of the Amazon the Matis and the outsiders. It is a forest). Images also fade, old printed negotiation that takes place whenever pictures change colours, even digital they meet tourists and journalists. media images get old, formats are not Not only the negotiations rely on the longer supported by new technological expectations of the camera people devices and sometimes images can get (consumers of images), they depend lost or be erased. But that is not the also on the desires of the other party, main point. BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 187

For me, what is important is to de Saussure. I have suggested understand that again Txema is trying that there are other possibilities, to teach a white person about how we especially one that treats Marx’s should behave towards him, his wife analysis of value as a symbolic and his people. For Txema, images analysis and looks at ‘value’ as a way people’s own actions become are more valuable than an outboard meaningful to them, how they engine. Txema also taught me that for take on importance by becoming him beauty is one the greatest, more incorporated into some larger powerful and dangerous powers that system of meaning. (Graber, exist. But, as I have shown above, the 2005: 453) outboard engines serve as important Indeed, gifts, values, barter, exchange means of transport and they are crucial and shopping are very complex for the transformation that takes place phenomena, they are immersed in now in the Matis communities, Txema ‘larger systems of meaning’ as Graeber have also taught me that. The outboard points out. About barter, Humphrey engines take the Matis to the city and and Hugh-Jones have written: they are valuable items as well, they are powerful agents of change. The Anthropology’s earlier pre- engines enable people to move, to occupation with ‘societies’ change and to transform themselves. as bounded units has led to a disastrous undervaluation of the The outboard engines open up new socioeconomic relations between possibilities in the Matis’ relations, groups which are actually connecting them in this new path that essential to the reproduction of link city and village lives. cultures. Bartered objects in such Devoted to study value and regional trade systems are not economy, Graeber (2005) concludes: simply items of humble everyday use. In fact they were rarely such. Anthropologists, on the other Cultural distance itself and the hand, have tended to see their exceptional significance attributed special expertise as lying in to objects from mysterious precisely the areas that economics places, made these items pivotal abandoned. However, it appears in the legitimation of religious that anthropologists have only and political power internal to tried to develop explicit theories of the receiving group (…). What value when they find themselves is essential as far as barter is in a crisis brought about by their concerned is not so much the inability to understand how mystery as the fact of difference: flesh-and-blood individuals are the existence of a realm where motivated to maintain and re- there are objects of desire, that is, create the abstract systems that objects one has not and for which anthropologists have always been one is prepared to sacrifice what so good at discerning. Since the one has. (Humphrey and Hugh- failure of Kluckhohn’s ‘values Jones, 1992: 3-4) project’ in the 1950s, this has usually led anthropologists to work Maybe we do not have to consider the with some variation of economic barter situations as moments where models, or with linguistic models one has to ‘sacrifice’ something he/ in the structuralist tradition of 188 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 she has. Maybe the link between gift creative powers: and sacrifice has been overvalued by Humanity is not defined by the anthropologists. I would like to call the contingency of creative action attention to the fact that it might be felt (in thought/mental operation) but and viewed as an opportunity for the by the necessity of embodying Matis to enjoy different pleasures, to and acting creatively. Relations have fun like the women have taught established with others create me in the gringo’s bras’ affair and in those others and oneself in the the shopping expeditions. They also work of differentiation. We come consider that the filming or ‘image to this insight through the contrast with intellectual property rights, making’ (the counter payment of which make creativity into a Txema to Bruce Parry’s outboard specific resource, its presence engine) can be moments of fun, not contingent upon certain conditions just tension. Not a sacrifice but a way of emergence. The notion of to pleasure, fun and joy. resource implies scarcity, and The items exchanged were not scarcity is a measure of value. But simply ‘items of humble everyday use’, creativity is not scarce in Reite3. to repeat the words of Humphrey and Resources for these people lie Hugh-Jones quoted above. Outboard elsewhere. People themselves are engines are not such humble things, valuable, not what they produce as objects. As Wagner points out, they are very powerful agents of ‘Westerners’ value the objects, change, transport and transformation. the outcomes of creativity: ‘we The Matis have also requested me to keep the ideas, the quotations, bring them in the future - as a gift - an the memoirs, the creations and outboard engine. Some of them said let the people go. Our attics … to me: ‘you will give it to us, if and [and] museums are full of this when you can afford it, Barbara’. They kind of culture’ (Wagner 1975: told me that Philippe Erikson – their 26). (Leach, 2004: 171, emphasis previous anthropologist - has brought added) them one outboard engine already What Txema is doing when bringing and that they have named it after him. down Parry’s gift in the moment of the They also listed me which TV crews exchange agreement is to increase the gave them 5HPs or 8HPs engines value of his/his people own image, the and other valuable stuff. Of course, power of his elders and of his sons and Txema also knows that the value of an daughters. Txema is trying to call the engine is high (not talking about the attention of Parry (the white man) to price here, but again about the power the fact that the Matis are so beautiful, of engine as object/ transformation so wonderful, so full of potential agent). Outboard engines are good and capabilities that, of course, an currency, as knowledge gained with the outboard engine does not pay off their 2 animals , because they teach us new images and their time spent with the ways of living and they enable people TV crew, but ok, they will do it for to transform and to create new social now. The Matis keep on trying to gain relations. James Leach comments on control over the bases on which their the value of creativity and of people economy is developing (the exchange BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 189 of goods, technology and knowledge mosquito nets, but only if together with outsiders). I believe that Txema with Txema’s values’ lessons and is trying to teach us – in the mosquito ‘action-oriented’ lecturings. Lessons net and the outboard engine situations that stress the Matis’ value. analysed here – about values, very valuable values indeed. The values that Terence Turner was talking about in Notes the article commented above. Txema is trying to teach me and Bruce Parry to 1dTo understand widely the Xikrin terms give value to them, the people we want kukràdjà and nêkrêjx, I suggest the reading to build up relations with. If we want of Gordon (2006: 371 – 397). Kube is a word used also as a term to refer to ‘White to learn, to film or to be with them, it people’ and ‘non-indigenous people’. For can be done via exchanging valuable a in-depth explanation of the term nêkrêjx, objects in ‘action-oriented’ situations, see also Gordon (2006: 208). but just after Txema gives us his lessons 2 My PhD dissertation brings information about values, what is valuable for him on the economy carried out with the and his people. That is the way Txema animals (Arisi 2011). wants to create personal relations with 3 Reite is the name of the place in Papua us. Those relations can be built via the where Leach carried most of exchange of outboard engines or via his fieldwork experience.

References

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