Robin M. Wright

Doença, cura e serviços de saúde. Representações, práticas e demandas Baníwa

The research for this paper was conducted in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the northwestern Amazon, with the Baníwa indigenous people, in partnership with indigenous organizations, seeking to understand the relations among the groups cosmology, their system of representations of sickness and healing practices, and their transformation through inter-ethnic contact. The recording of myths showed the origin of the diseases and demonstrated the existence of several traditional categories of sickness, guiding traditional healing practices and the incorporation of biomedical knowledge. The Baníwas cosmology operates like a reception system for biomedical information, which the people grasp according to the logic of mythical thought. Similar cognitive strategies are used to generate the demands that indigenous leaders submit to the Health Councils and Health Services.

In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia

Introduction: Dark Shamanism / Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright 1 The Order of Dark Shamans among the Warao / Johannes Wilbert 21 Dark Shamans and the Shamanic State: Sorcery and Witchcraft as Political Process in Guyana and the Venezuelan Amazon / Silvia Vidal and Neil L. Whitehead 51 The Wicked and the Wise Men: Witches and Prophets in the History of the Northwest Amazon / Robin Wright 82 Sorcery Beliefs, Transmissions of Shamanic Knowledge, and Therapeutic Practice among the Desana of the Upper Rio Negro Region, Brazil / Dominique Buchillet 109 The Glorious Tyranny of Silence and the Resonance of Shamanic Breath / George Mentore 132 A Blend of Blood and Tobacco: Shamans and Jaguars among the Parakana of Eastern Amazonia / Carlos Fausto 157 The Wars Within: Xinguano Witchcraft and Balance of Power / Michael Heckenberger 179 Siblings and Sorcerers: The Paradox of Kinship among the Kulina / Donald Pollock 202 Being Alone amid Others: Sorcery and Morality among the Arara, Carib, Brazil / Marnio Teixeira-Pinto 215 Sorcery and Shamanism in Cashinahua Discourse and Praxis, Purus River, Brazil / Elsje Lagrou 244 The Enemy Within: Child Sorcery, Revolution, and the Evils of Modernization in Eastern Peru / Fernando Santos-Granero 272 Commentary / E. Jean Langdon 306 Afterword: Substances, Powers, Cosmos, and History / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart 314 Contributors 321 Index 324

In Darkness and Secrecy

In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.” Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity. These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Marnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright

History, Ritual, and Myth: Nineteenth Century Millenarian Movements in the Northwest Amazon

Nineteenth century millenarian movements in the Northwest Amazon region are interpreted through an analysis of the ways in which Venancio Kamiko, an indigenous shaman and millenarian leader of the 1850s, improvised upon the symbolism of indigenous Arawakan myth and ritual to formulate a strategy of resistance to the oppressive political-economic conditions imposed by non-native peoples and institutions. Illustrations of this process include a detailed reconstruction of Venancio Kamikos life and the culmination of his movement in the 1850s, an overview of the history of interethnic relations in the region, a discussion of indigenous mythical concepts and ritual activities that entered into Venancios movement, and spoken narratives about Venancios millenarianism. Venancio Kamikos millenarianism is best understood as a reorientation of indigenous social relations in which the refusal to cooperate with the external, dominating order of the white men became elevated to a sacred cosmological postulate.

Introduction: Dark Shamanism

Shamanism is a burgeoning obsession for the urban middle classes around the globe. Its presentation in popular books, tv specials, and on the Internet is dominated by the presumed psychic and physical benefits that shamanic techniques can bring. This heightened interest has required a persistent purification of the ritual practices of those who inspire the feverish quest for personal meaning and fulfillment. Ironically, as Fausto points out in his essay in this volume, given the self-improvement motivations that have brought so many into a popular understanding of shamanism, twodefining aspects of shamanism inAmazonia—blood (i.e., violence) and tobacco—have simply been erased from such representations (see also Lagrou, this volume). Such erasure is not only a vain self-deception but, more important, it is a recapitulation of colonial ways of knowing through both thedenial of radical cultural difference and the refusal to think through its consequences. This volume is intended to counteract that temptation. All of the authors whose works are presented herein are keenly aware of the way in which salacious and prurient imagery of native peoples has serviced the purposes of conquest and colonization over the past five hundred years. Inmissionarywritings, for example, ideas about ‘‘native sorcery’’ and the collusion of shamans with ‘‘satanic’’ forces meant that such individuals were ferociously denounced and their ritual equipment and performances were banned from the settlement of the converts. In this context no distinction was made between the forms and purposes of ritual practice: curers as well as killers were equally persecuted. Thus, the rehabilitation of shamanism as a valid spiritual attitude and a culturally important institution that has taken place over the past twenty years through the enthusiastic, if ill-