Copyright by James R. Welch, 2009 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT AGE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY AMONG THE XAVANTE OF CENTRAL BRAZIL James R. Welch This dissertation examines age organization as an aspect of social identity among the Xavante, an indigenous people in Central Brazil. The Gê-speaking Xavante are among Brazil’s most populous indigenous peoples, with over 10,000 individuals in indigenous reserves located in Mato Grosso State. Xavante society, particularly its dual structural aspects and ceremonial expressions, factored importantly in anthropological discussions regarding social structure of Central Brazilian indigenous societies. The objective of this research was to investigate ethnographically how notions of age are implicated in the contemporary experience of daily social life. In this dissertation, simultaneously emphasizing structure and praxis, I seek to show that multiple configurations of age engage in a lively and specific manner a complex field of perceptions of sameness and otherness with important implications for other ethnographic issues of broad relevance in Xavante society. It is based on fourteen-months of fieldwork carried out in the Pimentel Barbosa/Etênhiritipá community, with a total population of over 575 people. This community comprises descendants of the same population studied by David Maybury-Lewis in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that age is a conspicuous and multifaceted feature of the social experience that attests to the mutuality and non- opposition of similarity and difference in its diverse manifestations. Thus, Xavante social organization is considered to be profoundly contingent, with age statuses and other aspects of social identity being plural, simultaneous, and interdependent. Evidence to that effect may be found in how the social experience implicates multiple systems of age reckoning, including informal age grades, secular and spiritual age group systems, age set moieties, and genealogical seniority in conjunction with gender and other aspects of social identity. This presentation involves an ethnographic reassessment of the Xavante life cycle that takes into account both its formal and informal properties, attending to previous scholarship regarding the Xavante and other Central Brazilian and Gê societies by demonstrating that age is implicated in diverse aspects of Xavante social life, such as dual organization, notions of relatedness, and cultural traditionalism. In loving memory of Robert P. Welch David W. Peri ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful for the generous support of the Xavante people at Pimentel Barbosa/Etênhiritipá who shared their lives with me and trusted me with the data I obtained. I am particularly grateful to my adoptive parents, Valdo Pari'õwá and Aparecida Penherewé, my adoptive grandmothers, Maria Sinhose’õ and Iara Rẽzẽ, and my adoptive siblings, Eugênio Sere’u’té, Lazinho Sõwa’õ, Denoque Sadaps'o'owe, José Moreira Wasiwadi, Cidália Sinhoseheriwẽ, Dedé Sutupara, Valdinho Homodi'iwe, Hernan Soro’õ, and Portela Sere’ré. Although the entire community cared for my wellbeing and participated in my research, several people were particularly integral to my fieldwork and the ideas presented in this dissertation. In addition to my adoptive family, these were Suptó Xavante, Paulo Supreteprã, Roberto Wawe'ru, Goiano Serema'á, Vinícius Supreteprã, Sereburã, Antônio Ru’wẽ’warazu’ata, Barbosa Sidowi, Adalton Serewaipó, Francisco Sitomowê, Kouti Ruzane, Alceu Parawãtö, Caimi Wai'asse, Agostinho Seresu, Conceição Pezé, Darú Serenhimirami, Iraní Ro'o'si'mãrí, and Maria Cristina Pehösi’õ. I would also like to thank all members of the êtẽpá age set for graciously receiving me as their peer and including me in their activities. Every stage of this study benefitted from the insight and assistance of other scholars and colleagues. I share with them credit for all of its accomplishments and none of its defects. I thank my advisor William Balée for eight years of unfailing guidance, loyalty, brilliance, and inspiration. He is responsible for my learning to think like an ii anthropologist. Also, this dissertation benefitted greatly from his careful and repeated readings. I thank Carlos Coimbra and Ricardo Ventura Santos for taking a leap of faith when it was most needed, introducing me to the Pimentel Barbosa/Etênhiritipá community, sponsoring my research in Brazil, and lending me their constant academic and personal support. I thank my dissertation committee and other professors at Tulane University who read drafts, offered guidance, and lent encouragement: Robert M. Hill, Judith Maxwell, Olanike-Ola Orie, Adeline Masquelier, and Victoria Bricker. I thank Eduardo Viveiros de Castro for initially serving as my academic sponsor in Brazil and helping me through the many usual and unusual challenges entailed by that process. I thank Nancy Flowers for her insights regarding Xavante society and access to her census data, field notes, and photographs. I thank Laura Graham for her kind support and timely ethnographic hints via e-mail. I thank Rui Arantes, Maurício Oliveira Gomes de Oliveira, Aline Ferreira, Silvia Gugelmin, Noé Klabin, Edmundo Peggion, J. Michael Norris, and Walter Neves for their collaboration and companionship. I thank José Carlos Levinho and the staff at the Museu do Índio for graciously receiving me and my occasional Xavante companions. I thank Euvaldo Gomes da Silva Filho and the staff at the Núcleo de Apoio Local de Água Boa, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) for their excellence and eternal patience. I thank Paulo Cipassé Xavante and Severiá M. Idioriê Xavante for graciously hosting me during a visit to Wederã Village. This research was made possible with a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education (award no. P022A040016). Preliminary site visits were made possible with the generous financial support of Sigma iii Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research, Tinker Foundation and Stone Center for Latin American Studies Summer Research Grants, and intramural summer field research grants from the Anthropology Graduate Student Fund at Tulane University. Writing this dissertation was greatly facilitated with a write-up grant from the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University. This dissertation also benefited from continued visits to Pimentel Barbosa/Etênhiritipá as a collaborating researcher for public health studies funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (Edital MCT/CNPq 15/2007 – Universal and Edital MCT/CNPq/MS-SCTIE-DECIT 38/2005 - Saúde dos Povos Indígenas). I thank FUNAI, CNPq, and the Tulane University Institutional Review Board for issuing permits in a very timely manner. I thank the Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz for hosting me as an affiliate research following my initial dissertation fieldwork. iv Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Prologue ............................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Gê and Central Brazilian studies..................................................................... 10 1.3. The Xavante of Pimentel Barbosa/Etênhiritipá community ........................... 19 1.4. Fieldwork ........................................................................................................ 30 1.5. Ethics............................................................................................................... 34 1.6. The Problem of age and its terminology ......................................................... 35 1.7. Objectives and organization ............................................................................ 40 Chapter 2: The male life cycle .......................................................................................... 44 2.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 44 2.2. Pre-adulthood .................................................................................................. 48 2.2.1. Conception and gestation .......................................................................... 48 2.2.2. Child (a’uté), boy (watebremí), and male adolescent (ai’repudu) ........... 53 2.2.3. Reevaluation of male childhood age grades ............................................. 63 2.3. Pre-initiate (wapté) .......................................................................................... 65 2.3.1. Introduction and findings .......................................................................... 65 2.3.2. Reevaluation of the pre-initiate age grade .............................................. 66 2.3.3. The pre-initiate coresident experience ..................................................... 71 v 2.3.4. Traditionalism and pre-initiation .............................................................. 79 2.4. Novitiate adult (ritei’wa) ................................................................................ 88 2.4.1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 88 2.4.2. The novitiate manhood experience ........................................................... 91 2.4.3. Traditionalism and novitiate manhood .................................................... 97 2.5. Mature adult (iprédu) and elder (ĩhi) ............................................................ 104