“Aukê/Aukeré was Mehim who became Cupen”: The view of indigenous people about (the Other) the white man in different discursive practices

Abstract

The contact between indigenous and non-indigenous people (‘white’) has not been a friendly relationship in almost all Brazilian indigenous community, which has brought devastating consequences. Moreover, the presence of indigenous people in the history of this country has been portrayed from an outsider and Eurocentric perspective prompting a stereotyped image. In mass media, the indigenous people have generally been described from a non-indigenous point of view; however, little reflection is made upon the view of indigenous people about this Other. This work aims at displaying, from a discursive view, the indigenous people’s perspective on white people, a complete strange being, known as the Other, the different. To incite this reflection, the current study has as its object the narratives that explain the origin and contact with white men for two distinct communities: Timbira (Aukê/Aukeré) and Ikpeng (“Pïrínop my first contact”). The study is based mainly on the theoretical framework proposed by Michel Foucault and his contributions on regularity, discursive formation, discursive practices and hierarchy of knowledge, and power, aiming at recognizing and understanding regularities, in terms of performing enunciative functions, which sustain the discourse event in indigenous narratives in interethnic relations; it also examines the regularities as well as the formulated singularities which underlie the varied practices about the relation of the otherness. Hence, it is expected that this work can reaffirm the importance of preserving existing cultural traditions and indigenous languages in Brazil, as well as promote spaces of circulation of knowledge underestimated by the hierarchy of knowledge, but whose resurrection potential should continuously expand, mainly within a historical context in which the colonialist domination predominates over black people, indigenous people, foreigners, etc.

Keywords: discursive practices, otherness, Timbira/Ikpeng, non indigenous people.