Abstract
Abstract This article analyses the role of Kaingang ritual life in understanding the social, political, and cosmological dimensions of their relations to alterity, which requires contextualizing sources and historical processes. I reflect on aspects of the funeral rites in historical sources, reported along with war “feasts”, both of which concern intervillage life. These rituals hence pay a fundamental role in understanding the performances carried out in the Kujá Meeting (Morro do Osso Village) and in the Kiki Ritual (Xapecó Indigenous Land). The ethnography focuses on the rules of etiquette and the ritual prestations that guide relations between the exogamous moieties. Inspired by Americanist debates, one of its aims is to highlight the place of laughter as an alternative to relations of avoidance, arguing that humour in these societies has a range of mediatory roles, particularly in what concerns the incorporation of external powers and foreigners into the interior of the collectivity.
Highlights
The Kaingang speak a language from the Gê family
The second part of the article is a comparative investigation of ethnographies of the Kujá Meeting at the Morro do Osso village, and the Kiki Ritual in the Xapecó Indigenous Land, in which ceremonial specialists mediate the relation between the living and the world of the dead
In this work we find, along with a record of the kiki ritual – kiki being “the name of drink made of honey and water [which] was served in this, the most important of Kaingang rituals, the kiki-koi (“eating kiki”) – the ethnographer’s knowledge of the Kaingang language, which allowed him to see elements of Kaingang social segmentation in their rituals, and aspects of their spirituality
Summary
The Kaingang speak a language from the Gê family. With Xokleng, it constitutes the Southern Gê linguistic group.1 Following received anthropological convention, I use ‘Kaingang’ to designate the people or ethnic group. The second part of the article is a comparative investigation of ethnographies of the Kujá Meeting at the Morro do Osso village, and the Kiki Ritual in the Xapecó Indigenous Land, in which ceremonial specialists mediate the relation between the living and the world of the dead (nugme).2
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