Suchergebnisse

Abstract In this paper, I describe how the Matis animal feasts are important events for the Matis to try establishing relationships with strangers, especially with the animalumans, animals that are humans. These rituals are an important cosmo-socio-logical investment for the Matis as they are a constituent part of the Matis economy of culture. I also comment on the matis' morphological scientific observation, with its emphasis on the plant's body parts named after animal's organs. I intend to show how the predominant aesthetic in these animal parties is minimalist and mimetically subtle, especially when it concerns the animal clothes, masks and patterns the Matis produce and reproduce when en-acting animals and weaving their clothes (bracelets and anklets). I reflect on the sort of mimesis they produce as a valuable way of weavestablishing relations with the foreigners (be they animals, disembodied beings or other foreigners).

Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Why It's Important to Look at Gay Natives' History -- References -- Chapter 2: "Between the Cross and the Crown": Missionaries and Indigenous Sexuality -- 2.1 Colonization and Missionary Vision: Historical Background -- 2.2 Sodomy in Colonial Brazil: Vice vs. Nature -- 2.3 Sexuality and Savagery: Cannibalism and Lust as Seen by Chroniclers -- 2.4 We Show Them the Disciplines that Tamed the Flesh -- 2.5 Concluding Considerations -- References -- Chapter 3: Becoming "Useful Citizens:" The Control Over Natives and Their Sexualities -- 3.1 "Ceasing to Be Ignorant May Be Useful to Themselves, the Dwellers and the State" -- 3.2 While His Majesty Does Not Order the Opposite (1757) -- 3.3 Regulations on the Missions of Evangelization and Civilization of the Indians (1845) -- 3.4 Making the Indian an Improved Indian -- References -- Chapter 4: Race, Sex, and Civilization: The Colonization of Indigenous Sexualities -- 4.1 Intersecting Parallels: Race, Sex, and Civilization -- 4.2 Points of Contact -- References -- Chapter 5: To Exist Is to Resist -- References -- Index

This book unveils an ignored aspect of the Brazilian history: how the colonization of the country shaped the sexuality of its indigenous population. Based on textual research, the authors show how the government and religious institutions gradually imposed the family model considered as "normal" to Brazilian indigenous gays through forced labor, punishment, marriages with non-indigenous and other methods. However, such disciplinary practices didn't prevent the resistance of the natives whose sexuality operates out of the hegemonic model, and the book also analyzes the impact of these forms of dissent on the development of indigenous movements, interethnic relations and indigenous policies in Brazil. Building upon Post-Colonial and Queer theories, the authors present a historical overview of the ideas and practices employed by the religious and governmental authorities to repress homosexuality among indigenous peoples since the beginning of the colonization process, on the 16th century. They also show how this process of colonization of indigenous sexualities goes beyond the formal colonization period, which ended with the Brazilian Independence in 1822, and is part of a wider process of compulsory heterosexualization and heteronormativity of native peoples, based on scientific, theological, social and cultural assumptions that inspired religious, civilizing, academic and political practices throughout Brazilian history.