Getting noticed, getting away: an ethno-historical journey on the isolated indigenous peoples of the Massaco Indigenous Land

• Autor(a) principal: Villa, Amanda
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/ling/article/view/44513
• topic: Povos isolados; Terra Indígena Massaco; Cultura Material; Etnohistoriografia; Comparação Intercultural; Isolated Peoples.; Massaco Indigenous Land; Material Culture; Ethnohistoriography; Cross-Cultural Comparison

The protection of Brazil’s isolated peoples, and therefore of the territories they occupy, is a task legally assigned to the Ethnoenvironmental Protection Fronts, decentralized units of the National Indian Foundation. As a general rule, their work is based on research strategies: searches for vestiges in situ are added to oral interviews and records of ethno-historic occupation. In this sense, this article intends to contribute with an ethno-historical overview of the occupation of the middle Guaporé River, more specifically of the stretch between the Branco and Colorado Rivers, where the Massaco Indigenous Land has been established. Occupied by indigenous people whose defining characteristics of their ethnic belonging are essentially based on their material culture, since their language has never been described, the territory is a reference in protection and mystery. While the abundant placement of traps (estrepes) expresses their desire to be left alone, their traces give clues to their identity and are read with curiosity by indigenous and non-indigenous people, who rely on the analogy with oral and written stories to do so.