“O celular é o avô dos WaiWai”. Tecnologias e domesticação das redes e mídias sociais entre os WaiWai

Abstract

We propose to address some aspects of the media and social networks in the context of the social organization of the WaiWai indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon. The focus of the description is the residents of the Anaua community, located in the municipality of Sao Luiz do Anaua in the southern state of Roraima. The WaiWai, as they are called today and so call themselves, is a complex and diffuse collective that for 60 years has lived in large clusters, taming the world of whites and transforming the cultural traditions of their pre-Columbian ancestors. Modern western technologies, outboards, shotguns, automobiles, appliances, cell phones, computers, etc. are part of their lives. Nowadays, the Waiwai are often seen circulating around the villages, cities and Amazonian capitals, carrying cell phones and connected in social networks. To describe some relationships established between them, from the transformations provided by the media and social networks, in articulation with their own forms of organization and territorial management, is the central point of this article. In agreement with the majority of the youngsters approached, the cellular occupies an important place in the registry of their differences against the whites. As one of them observed, the cell phone is the WaiWai s grandfather, it keeps our memory and can explain everything we do not know. Occupying three Indigenous Lands in Brazil and a Reserved Territory in Guyana, connected by social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, the young people began to circulate messages, photos, videos and articulate virtual and real encounters.