Kaingang movements in the landscape: houses, villages, inter-village political-ceremonial clusters and their consequences for relations with the outside

The Kaingang village replicates, in its historical transformations, the cosmology, the social and political organization, and the very foundation of sociality resides therein. Ethnography shows that the house connects the domestic and public spheres, hence its centrality in the socio-spatial configuration, from local groups to inter-village political-ceremonial clusters, but also in the relationship with white people. The mythical narrative of the construction of the primeval house highlights an implicit tension, as a consequence of the incorporation of external powers, sometimes by the jaguar, sometimes by the deer and, later, by the monkey, contrasting with the importance of the mediations carried out by the exogamous halves kamë and kanhrukrë and by the shamanic perspective in social life. In various historical contexts, it is found that these diametric and concentric relationships involve the house, the clean space and the forest, translating the transformations in the landscape, such as the increase in the village's infrastructure (churches, health posts, schools), whether in the demarcated Indigenous Lands or in the “reclaimed” ones.

Keywords:
Kaingang; house; landscape; territory