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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Doing ethnography with tikmũ'ũn children: resistance, joy and learning

presenters

    Barbara Rocha da Silva

    Nationality: Brazil

    Residence: Brazil

    UFMG

    Presence:Online

    Ana Maria R. Gomes

    Nationality: Brazil

    Residence: Brazil

    UFMG - Federal University of Minas Gerais

    Presence:Online

Our research investigates the everyday learning processes among Tikmũ’ũn children and other inhabitants of their villages (including non-humans) through participant observation and ethnography. The Tikmũ’ũn live in small Indigenous Territories in Minas Gerais and, in addition to the Maxakali language, preserve ancestral practices of interaction with enchanted beings called yãmĩyxop. Through these interactions, children learn to become Tikmũ’ũn people, incorporating shamanic abilities and being cared for by them through different processes of bodily formation throughout their growth (Rocha da Silva, 2019). During fieldwork, in addition to adapting our schedules and activities to the ways of life of the people who host us, we experience firsthand the difficulties the Tikmũ’ũn face daily. Issues of food security, public health, land regularization, among countless other contingencies, make evident the failures of public authorities in protecting this people, among many others in Brazil, from social vulnerability. Despite this context, our observation highlights a characteristic already pointed out by the Tikmũ’ũn as inherent to children: joy. The lively, sonorous, and inventive presence of the children is a sign of the village's "health" (Rocha da Silva, 2019, p. 98-99), and their resilience in not being swayed by delicate situations gives us a sense of the power of the kakxop, which we are interested in investigating. Ana Gomes et al. (2019, p. 133-134) observe that fieldwork constitutes a long learning process, with "the ethnographic practice itself being emblematic of the learning process." In line with indigenous discourses demanding respect for their epistemes and political arbiters in the sphere of knowledge production, we aim to conduct a collaborative research with many hands, including those of the children, who inform what adult interlocutors cannot (Toren, 1999, p. 178) from their autonomous, inventive, and keen perspectives.

Keywords:

indigenous children, research with children, ethnography, Tikmũ’ũn, learning