Corpo e história do povo yurok

Abstract

Yurok perceptions of the body as the inscribed surface of social and environmental change are explored in this paper. To the violence and brutality of Spaniards, fur traders, gold miners, American soldiers, and Indian policies of the US government since the eighteenth century, Yurok women attribute the high incidence of degenerative diseases, drug abuse and criminality in northern California. The piece contemplates the lives of eight generations of sixteen Yurok extended families, mapping intergenerational shifts in Yurok social relations and political practices. It considers the mutation of knowledge in the constitution of the natural and social sciences and the effects of this knowledge when implemented in Yurok country. Here, Critical Medical Anthropology values the correlation between body and history in the works of Foucault (1977), Sahlins (1985, 1995), and Scheper-Hughes & Lock (1987). This historico-critical investigation shows how certain events mark their power and engrave memories on individuals’ bodies. It is within a hybrid set of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary practices that a more fruitful understanding of Yurok body imagery can be fashioned.