"The Camera is our Weapon": Kayapó video warriors featured in new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York

The Kayapó (Mebengôkrê) people of Brazil are living proof of the resistance and adaptability of Indigenous cultures. A new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York highlights the dynamism and creativity of this warrior tribe, and their historical struggle to preserve their lands and culture. Originally inhabiting the dry savannahs of central Brazil, the Kayapó were pushed farther north and west by Portuguese invaders, ultimately moving into the Amazon basin hundreds of miles from their ancestral homelands. In order to survive in this new environment, the Kayapó had to conquer, capture and appropriate new lands, technologies and knowledge from their enemies and retool them for their own ends. The Kayapó people maintain this warrior heritage through the present day, as they have seized on video cameras, international media visibility and even "Kaya-pop music" to broadcast their voices and defend their culture.

Self-portrait of video warrior Bepunu Kayapó, July 2020.

The exhibit is centered on a striking self-portrait of Kayapó warrior Bepunu in full ritual regalia gazing back at the spectator armed with a video camera. This image creates a dialog with an existing exhibit case in the American Museum's Hall of South American Indians that contains a mannequin depicting a Kayapó warrior brandishing a traditional war club. During the course of creating the exhibit, I was able to locate Kubei, a Kayapó activist who had visited the American Museum in 1990 in the company of anthropologist Terence Turner. Kayapó film maker Pat-I recorded an interview with Kubei in March of 2020, especially for this exhibit, in which he reflects on his visit to New York 30 years ago, describes his reaction to meeting his Kayapó "friend" (his name for the mannequin) and responds to how Kayapó culture was displayed at the museum. 

Above: Kayapó activists Kubei and Tapiet visited the American Museum in 1990 and gifted their Kayapó "friend" with a feather headdress and other body ornaments that remain in the exhibit case to this day (photo: American Museum library). Below: the Kayapó warrior mannequin at the American Museum (photo: David Harvey). 

The exhibit was designed by a group of graduate students at Columbia University's Museum Anthropology program in collaboration with American Museum curator Laurel Kendall, exhibit designer David Harvey and other American Museum staff as part of an annual practical course that invites outside specialists like myself to help develop a new exhibit case every Spring. Because of the COVID pandemic, installation of the physical case was postponed, and instead we prepared an online version that includes a 3D virtual reality visualization of the actual exhibit case containing various Kayapó cultural objects. 

Virtual reality 3D visualization of the exhibit case

The online exhibit includes a series of short films made by Kayapó film makers, an activity booklet for children as well as information and donation links regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Kayapó and other indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Playable audio files present the pronunciation of key Kayapó language terms and provide an example of the lively rhythms of "Kaya-pop" music. The exhibit also features images by photojournalist Dado Galdieri. A Portuguese translation of the exhibit website was prepared in a co-launch with the Goeldi Museum in Brazil:

The Camera is Our Weapon: Kayapó Video Warriors in the Amazon

A Câmera é nossa Arma: Video-Guerreiros Kayapó na Amazônia

Read our recent paper on Kayapó film-making in Current Anthropology 

Related stories from this blog: 

Might at the Museum: Indigenous groups revisit their heritage at the Goeldi Museum

Between the Cross and the Pleaides: Missionaries, museums and a Baniwa shaman's heritage

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Special thanks to Laura Zanotti, Janet Chernela, Pat-I Kayapó and Bepunu Kayapó for their invaluable contributions to this exhibit.  

Amazon under Fire: A letter of protest by Brazilian scientists published by the New York Review of Books

As Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stood before the United Nations in September of 2019 downplaying media reports of increasing forest fires under his administration and denouncing world-renowned indigenous leaders such as Raoni Mektuktire and Sonia Guajajara, who he claimed were being manipulated by foreign interests, the Brazilian Amazon continued to burn. Enormous fires have broken out in different parts of it as deforestation has reached levels not seen for over a decade, with an area of forest the size of Hong Kong cut down in the month of August alone. 

During the first dry season after Bolsonaro's inauguration, forest fires in the Amazon were up 80% over the previous year. Photo: Dado Galdieri / Wall Street Journal (2019)

Since taking office in January of 2019, President Bolsonaro has used his powers to undermine the cultural, territorial, and human rights of indigenous peoples that are guaranteed in the Brazilian Constitution. His public statements have contributed to a climate of lawlessness and impunity, and to a tacit understanding that legislation protecting indigenous territories and other areas will not be enforced. Over the past year, indigenous lands in Brazil have seen a surge in invasion by illegal loggers, gold miners, and land speculators, and there has been an alarming increase in aggression against indigenous peoples. In early September, 2019, Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, a contractor for FUNAI, Brazil’s federal Indian agency, who had over a decade of experience protecting isolated indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley, was murdered execution-style on a busy street in the town of Tabatinga. A little over a week later, men associated with illegal loggers and hunters staged an armed attack on a FUNAI guard post in the region. 

Photo: Agencia Jovem de Notícias (2018)

Scientists such as ourselves have documented how the traditional knowledge and management strategies of Amazonian indigenous peoples have contributed to safeguarding global biodiversity and climate stability. To an outsider, these territories may seem “uninhabited” or “unused,” but in fact the vast expanses of intact forests that constitute indigenous lands are essential to their sustenance. Indigenous peoples occupy and use their land in ways that take advantage of hundreds of species of plants and animals while preserving the place of other organisms in the ecosystem; in many cases, landscapes have been enriched with useful plants and groves of fruit and nut trees such as the Brazil nut and the açai palm. Villages and communities are surrounded by gardens that produce staple foods, old gardens in various stages of regeneration, and rivers, forests, and mountains, all of which provide a rich and dispersed base of resources—such as fish, game, fruits, garden lands, and the raw materials for adornments, canoes, houses, and so on—that have sustained indigenous peoples’ way of life for centuries or millenia, dating back to pre-colonial times when indigenous populations were much larger. These lands may also constitute sacred spaces, places of mythical origin, or sites of ancestral history.

Since 1988, the Brazilian Constitution has recognized the central importance of indigenous lands for these peoples’ continuing existence and has guaranteed a legal process for demarcating them for indigenous peoples to inhabit and use. Once they are demarcated and signed into law, indigenous lands become inalienable assets of the Brazilian state.  

A recent unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brazil overturned the administration’s attempt to remove the legal responsibility for indigenous land demarcation from FUNAI and give to the Agriculture Ministry, which is controlled by the ranching lobby. Despite this victory, the ongoing and wide-ranging initiatives to weaken environmental, indigenous, and scientific institutions remain deeply troubling. Moreover, expressions of hatred and aggression, widely disseminated in the media, have further encouraged illegal invasions as well as violent actions against indigenous peoples in different parts of our country, including the Wajãpi of Amapá state, the Awá-Guajá of Maranhão, the Kayapó, Munduruku and Apyterewa-Parakanã of Pará, the Karipuna and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau of Rondônia, and the Yanomami of Roraima and Amazonas states. The current administration’s ongoing actions of dismantling and defunding FUNAI, Brazil’s federal indigenous protection agency, only increase the risk of further violence to these people.

Illegal gold miners have expanded their activities with impunity in indigenous territories such as the Kayapo Indigenous Lands in southern Pará state. See more reporting by Jon Lee Anderson in The New Yorker. Photo: G.H. Shepard Jr. (2019).

Ranching and mining lobbies have spread a false dichotomy between indigenous peoples’ rights and economic growth. There are currently large areas of abandoned farm- and pastureland that could be put to productive use without having to cut down a single acre of indigenous lands. Furthermore, the destruction of forest cover to serve the agricultural industry is short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating, since well-established scientific evidence points to the necessity of the Amazon rainforest in creating an “aerial river” that delivers rainfall to the rich agricultural lands of southern Brazil. Scientists fear that deforestation in the Amazon could soon upset rain patterns throughout Brazil and further destabilize the global climate. 

Bolsonaro insists that development in the Amazon is a question of Brazilian sovereignty, and that foreign interests should not intervene. Yet Brazilian indigenous representatives and environmentalists are calling for nothing more nor less than the enforcement of existing laws and the protection of indigenous rights as enshrined in the Constitution and in multiple international agreements to which Brazil is a signatory. International treaties and economic accords should include provisions to guarantee these constitutional, human, cultural and territorial rights of indigenous peoples.

Kayapó warriors rehearse battle maneuvers in a war dance to protest the administration's hostile policies. Photo: G.H. Shepard Jr. (2019). See additional reporting by Andres Schipani and photos by Dado Galdieri in The Financial Times.

The struggle for land remains a perennial source of political mobilization for indigenous peoples, as backlogs of land demarcation claims remain unresolved, and many other issues related to their rights remain unfulfilled. Anthropologists, cultural heritage professionals, and other researchers have been crucial allies of indigenous peoples in these struggles. Moreover, indigenous leaders and intellectuals today increasingly speak in their own names, defend their own interests, elect their own political leaders, and have an ever-greater role in protecting their cultural and territorial heritage. While there are a plurality of indigenous voices in contemporary Brazil, including a small number who favor the opening up of indigenous lands to mining and other outside interests, to date all of the historically recognized, broadly representative indigenous organizations who have expressed their views on the current administration have condemned its assaults on indigenous territories and rights. 

As scientists working in Brazilian research institutions and universities, we are deeply concerned about these grave threats to indigenous peoples’ territory, heritage, and well-being, which are inextricably connected to the well-being of Amazonia, global biodiversity, and climate stability.

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This letter, signed by 65 Brazilian scientists in protest of president Jair Bolsonaro's attacks on indigenous peoples, was first published by the editors of the New York Review of Books on November 7, 2019. 

Signatories: 

Adriana Queiroz Testa, anthropologist 
Alexandre Clistenes, biologist
Aline da Cruz, linguist 
Ana Rosa Guimarães Bastos Proença, tourism researcher
Ana Vilacy Galúcio, linguist
Bruna Franchetto, linguist
Caio Ferrari de Castro Melo, lawyer
Camila Loureiro Dias, historian
Carmen Lúcia Reis Rodrigues, linguist
Carlos Fausto, anthropologist
Carlos Zimpel, archeologist
Claide de Paulo Moraes, archeologist
Claudia Lopez, anthropologist
Cristiane Barreto, archeologist
Cristina Adams, human ecologist
Décio Guzmán, historian
Denny Moore, linguist
Edithe Pereira, archeoloigst
Eduardo S. Brondizio, anthropologist
Eduardo Góes Neves, archeologist
Eduardo Nunes, anthropologist
Eduardo Ribeiro, linguist
Fabíola Andréa Silva, archeologist
Felipe Milanez, political ecologist 
Gabriel Soares, anthropologist
Gabriela Prestes Carneiro, archeologist
Geraldo Andrello, anthropologist
Gessiane Picanço, linguist
Glenn H. Shepard Jr., anthropologist
Hein van der Voort, linguist
Helena Pinto Lima, archeologist
Ian Packer, anthropologist
Ima Guimarães Vieira, botanist
Isabela Galarda Varassin, botanist
Julia Otero, anthropologist
Juliano Franco Moraes, ecologist
Kristine Stenzel, linguist
Lucila de Jesus Mello Gonçalves, psychologist
Lucia Hussak van Velthem, anthropologist
Lúcia Sá, Professor of Brazilian Studies
Márcio Meira, anthropologist and former FUNAI president
Marcos Magalhães, archeologist
Marcos Vital, biologist
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, anthropologist
Maria Candida Barros, linguist
Maria Carolina Loureiro Fernandes, social scientist
Marília Fernanda Pereira de Freitas, linguist
Marinus Hoogmoed, zoologist
Mark Harris, anthropologist
Marta Amoroso, anthropologist
Myrtle Shock, archeologist
Nelson Sanjad, historian
Orlando Calheiros, anthropologist and photographer
Nicole Soares-Pinto, social scientist
Regina Oliveira, biologist
Renato Sztutman, anthropologist
Ricardo Ventura Santos, anthropologist
Rita Natalio, artist, anthropologist and member of the Indigenous Forum of Lisbon 
Roberto Araujo, anthropologist
Roberto Ventura Santos, geologist
Ruth Monserrat, linguist
Sidney da Silva Facundes, linguist
Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, anthropologist
Teresa Avila Pires, zoologist  
Tiago Gomes dos Santos, zoologist

A Welcome of Tears, and Farewell to Chief Mro’ô

When you cry for someone you’ve lost, you cry for everything you’ve ever lost.

Although it is perhaps the most universal human emotion, grief weighs uniquely upon each of us, and we each must find our own way through the wastelands of loss and bereavement, shadowed by the patterns and compulsions of our distinctive personalities, families and societies. Modern American society seems bent on classifying, five-stepping and pressing on through grief; other societies across the globe give witness to a wide diversity of strategies, from strong repression[1] to cathartic indulgence.[2]

The Kayapó people of Brazil enact the lingering toll of grief through the ritual “welcome of tears,”[3] in which friends or family members who haven’t seen each other for some time cry, wail, embrace and wipe tears away as they remember loved ones they have lost since their last meeting. This custom attracted international attention in 2011, when a photograph of Kayapó chief Raoni in tears was circulated widely with a caption stating (incorrectly) that he was crying over the approval of the Belo Monte dam project. In fact, he was enacting the tearful ritual of greeting with a relative.

Kayapó chief Raoni greets a relative in the traditional "welcome of tears"

When a young Kayapó filmmaker called me at 2 AM on the second of January this year to tell me that the chief of Turedjam village, Mro’ô, had died, I thought I must have misunderstood. This just couldn’t be: Mro’ô is younger than I am. I had seen him a little more than a month before, if ever preoccupied with the burdens of leadership on a violent frontier, still alive, healthy and happy, surrounded by his grandchildren at an idyllic small village where one of his daughters had moved. 

Mro'ô Kayapo, 1969-2015

When I had last seen him, Mro’ô was proud to learn that yet another of his many ambitious dreams would soon come true: three Kayapó film makers, including one novice cameraman from his own village, had been invited to travel in March of 2015 to represent his people’s concerns and show images from Kayapó culture at an international event on digital media in the United States. I had come to Turedjam in late November of 2014 with anthropologist/journalist Felipe Milanez to convey the good news to the people of Turedjam, and to begin the complex and time-consuming arrangements for obtaining passports and U.S. visas for the Kayapó film makers who would be traveling.

A soft-spoken yet determined leader, Mro’ô had first approached me at the Goeldi Museum in Belem during my first month curating the ethnographic collections there in 2009. He was visiting the museum with French anthropologist Pascale de Robert, and asked me for help to obtain ongoing support for this exchange with the Goeldi Museum. He was especially eager to equip and train a cohort of Kayapó youth to use video cameras and digital editing equipment to record Kayapó culture, both material objects preserved in the Goeldi Museum collections, and the living culture of traditional dances, songs, orations and ceremonies that still take place regularly in modern Kayapó villages : “The old people are all dying,” he had said. “We need to register our culture so that our children and grandchildren will not forget.” 

Indigenous Engagement with Digital and Electronic Media: InDigital Conference at Vanderbilt University

Update Nov. 2016: Call for papers now open for InDigital Latin America II at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, March 16-18, 2017

A cartoon by Gary Larson from 1984 shows natives in grass skirts rushing to hide TV, VCR and telephone before the anthropologists arrive. As these devices have become smaller, cheaper, and more widely available, the penetration of electronic media into indigenous cultures has only grown.

Native peoples of the Amazon and elsewhere in Latin America have become engaged consumers of electronic media, while also making use of video cameras, cell phones and laptops to create and transmit their own artistic and cultural productions and political views. The results can be complex and surprising, ranging from videos about traditional ceremonies to catchy electronic music and even a native-language cover of the Beatles. Among the works made by Kayapó film makers I trained as part of an indigenous media project at the Goeldi Museum in Brazil are films documenting tug-of-war at an interethnic sports competition; a professional soccer game in Rio de Janeiro; the “Miss Kayapó” beauty contest at a local fairground; and a concert by the indigenous pop star Bepdjyre, who composes his own lyrics in Kayapó but sets them to popular Brazilian dance rhythms.

Bepdjyre's stage show includes Kayapó girls showing off sensual dance moves gleaned from watching TV and DVDs.

This conference, held March 25-28, 2015, sponsored by Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee University, brought together anthropologists, media scholars and indigenous filmmakers to reflect on the appropriations and interpretations of digital media by indigenous peoples, and to discuss the transformations this use of technology is bringing about.

The "Miss Kayapó" beauty contest captured by film maker Tatajere.

Faye Ginsberg of the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University gave the keynote address at the event. Kayapó film makers Bepunu, Krakrax and Kiameiti showed works produced on their own village-based laptop editing suites as part of the Goeldi Museum media project. Richard Pace of Middle Tennessee University presented results of a study financed by the National Science Foundation on the uses and impacts of satellite TV, DVD players and cell phones in a Kayapó village. 

An edited volume including many of the works presented at the conference is currently in preparation at Vanderbilt University Press.

A call for papers is now open for InDigital II to be held at Vanderbilt University, March 16-18, 2017. For more information, visit vanderbilt.edu.

Updated from the original posting by The New York Review of Books.

A letter of protest: In defense of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional populations in Amazonia

We, the researchers, professors and technicians in Anthropology and Linguistics at the National Museum/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Goeldi Museum/Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, honoring a tradition of more than a century working with diverse indigenous peoples and traditional populations, hereby declare:

Our repudiation of proposed Complementary Law No. 227 of 2012 in the Brazilian House of Representatives, which aims to make changes to Article 231 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 defining the public interest in demarcating Indigenous Lands. These changes threaten the rights of indigenous peoples to the exclusive use of their territories, thus allowing the legalization of large private landholdings, hydroelectric dams, highways, and mining and other resource extraction projects on Indigenous Lands;

Our repudiation of the murders of indigenous Terena and Guarani people, killed in the context of defending their territories from invasion by ranchers in the state of Mato Grosso. Elsewhere in Amazonia, many other indigenous people have been murdered over conflicts involving land and access to natural resources, though the press does not always cover these stories nor do the authorities adequately investigate these crimes;

We express our support for the struggles of indigenous peoples and traditional populations in defense of their ancestral territories, and our solidarity with indigenous groups of Pará such as the Munduruku, Arara, Xipaia-Curuaia and Mebêngôkre-Kayapó, who have resorted to lawful protest to publicly express their resistance to government policies that infringe on their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. They oppose the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam but they have sought peaceful dialog with the Brazilian authorities; 

Based on the recognition of indigenous rights expressed in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 and Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization as ratified by the Brazilian Congress, we pronounce ourselves against government policies that seek to restrict the demarcation of indigenous and quilombo (traditional Afro-Amazonian community) lands. In this respect we join our voices with popular movements that protest against the hollowing out of agrarian reform and the delays in identifying and demarcating indigenous lands and quilombos. The only solution to the current wave of violence in rural Amazonia is to address the socioeconomic inequalities, socio-environmental injustices, illegal land seizures and political and criminal impunity that reign today in Brazil. 

Finally, based on the principles of socially engaged science, we consider the ethnic and cultural diversity of Brazil and Latin America do be one of its greatest riches. This diversity of life ways and knowledge systems is a collective heritage of the Brazilian nation and the Latin American continent. We recognize native peoples and other traditional populations in Amazonia, including those currently emerging to demand their collective rights, as a fundamental element of this continent. Our ethical role as scientists is also to fight together with them in defense of their territories and other rights, for the preservation of indigenous and traditional peoples’ knowledge, including their full recognition in the educational system and interaction with other knowledge systems. 

August 8, 2013

This text is an English translation of the letter, "Em defesa dos direitos coletivos dos povos indígenas e das populações tradicionais da Amazônia" drafted and circulated by Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and Museu Nacional/UFRJ.

"Why Do They Want to Destroy Us?": Letter from the Munduruku

In the past we, the Munduruku, were feared for our fame in the art of group warfare and we had strategies for attacking our enemies. We did not easily give up the pursuit of our enemies and our trophies were human heads that symbolized power.

With these ominous words the leaders of the Munduruku indigenous people introduce an open letter to the Brazilian government protesting the planned construction of several hydroelectric dams within their traditional territory and adjacent indigenous lands in the Brazilian state of Pará. 

"Why do they want to destroy us?" (Photo source: ARQUEOTROP).

The letter, drafted on June 8, presents an overview of Munduruku social norms and shamanic knowledge:

The shamans take care of the functions of the ecosystem of planetary life so that nothing bad happens, they maintain the balance of the perfect functioning of nature We know how the law of nature works through the teachings of the ancients and how we should respect nature.

These traditional values are compared with the invading European worldview, both by way of contrast and as a dire and urgent warning:

There are no rich or poor within our indigenous society, we do not favor some over others and much less discriminate. In our world such things do not exist, just love, respect, peace, humility, sincerity... We, the Munduruku, this is how we are: we value that which is around us...

So much research is being done, involving scientists, intellectuals, people gifted with scientific knowledge, but they discover nothing about themselves and they remain in the dark about the precious things that interest us. Every day nature gets farther away and hides itself from us because we are destroying it. Such a precious treasure, and people want to turn it into business. How far will they go with this destruction?...

Mankind is not just destroying nature, but also destroying its very own human nature, but they don't understand this: they are destroying themselves.

The letter includes a detailed presentation of Munduruku history and mythology as inscribed in geographical landmarks both within and beyond current Munduruku territory. The long and fascinating list includes important episodes from Munduruku myth and legend, battles with Portuguese invaders, sacred places that coincide with proposed dam sites, and even the distant Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro:

For us, Munduruku, the city of Belém is Kabia’ip: A meteorological phenomenon that controls the dry season. It is a scepter planted deep in the ocean, and when someone manages to pull it a few centimeters it reacts and causes a change in climate. It should never be pulled beyond its limit, as it would result in grave problems during that season. We recognize this phenomenon when there is intense drought... 

Guanabara Bay [in Rio de Janeiro] is Murekodoybu: The Giant Anaconda, an ancient warrior who taught the arts of war to Karodaybi. His movements are visible in the phenomenon of the tides, when the waves become agitated, and our spiritual leaders, the shamans, are able to hear his voice...

 São Luiz do Tapajós [a proposed dam site] is Joropari kõbie: An ancient locality of Munduruku presence, they lived along those rapids... According to the spiritual leaders, the shamans, they warn that absolutely no kind of alteration can be made to that place or it will destroy this sacred locality, which belongs to the mother of fish, or else disgrace will fall unto people's lives: this is a risk for all societies. But this, a non-Indian will never understand...

 It is just not possible to list here all the sacred places that exist in Munduruku territory. There are various others...

The letter goes on to note the presence of isolated indigenous populations within remote parts of Munduruku territory. 

After this extensive preamble, the letter addresses the Brazilian authorities in the most stringent of terms:

Dear sirs,

Given the facts related above about our situation, we hereby state that we are outraged by the way the Brazilian government has been treating us. We see the disrespect done to our peoples, the Constitution being torn to shreds, becoming invalid, in order for our rights not to be guaranteed by it. Now, our own territory has become a battleground, where we are being exterminated, assassinated at gunpoint by the government's armed forces...

Why do they want to destroy us, are we not Brazilian citizens? Are we so insignificant?...

May our demands be met with urgency:

• That the armed forces leave our lands
• That research studies be halted
• That dam construction be halted
• That they explain everything that is going to happen on our lands, and that they listen to us and respect our decision

A commission of indigenous peoples traveled to Brasilia last week to present their demands to the Brazilian government. A total of 144 Munduruku made the trip, and a group of representatives entered the presidential palace. Though their demand for a face-to-face meeting with president Dilma Roussef was denied, they did meet with one of the president's top advisers, Gilberto Carvalho.

Indigenous peoples in Brasilia protest hydroelectric dams (Photo source: Survival International)

The Munduruku letter was first translated into English for Survival International by archeologist Bruna Rocha. 

Below you will find the full text of my own revised translation as reproduced by Cultural Survival in a recent news story. 

Kaya-Pop: The brave new world of indigenous music in Brazil

The lead singer crooning catchy pop lyrics, the gyrating chorus-line of girls in mini-skirts, the ecstatic crowd of teenagers swaying and snapping photos with their cell phones, the infectious beats pumping out of an electronic keyboard -- it would all be a typical Friday night forró dance party in the Brazilian Amazon if it weren't for one essential detail: practically all the participants, from the singer to the scanitly clad dancers to the raucous audience armed with digital cameras and cell phones -- everyone except the keyboard player, in fact -- are Kayapó Indians living in a vast expanse of protected forest lands in southern Pará.

Kayapó pop star Bepdjyre

This past 19th of April, the Kayapó village of Turedjam hosted an elaborate festival to celebrate Brazil's National Indian Day. Some 800 people from 15 villages as well as special guests from neighboring Brazilian towns attended the two-day event that included traditional dance presentations, an inter-village sports competition, the 2013 Miss Kayapó and Mister Kayapó beauty contests, and the high point of the evening, a concert by Kayapó pop star Bepdjyre.

The festival included sporting events and the "Miss Kayapó 2013" beauty contest

Bepdjyre, who comes from the village of Kabaú, composes his own lyrics in Kayapó but sets them to popular Brazilian dance rhythms such as forró, brega and sertaneja. He records his CDs in the city of Novo Progresso in southern Pará near the Mato Grosso border. Pykatire, from Las Casas village, has posted a video on YouTube of an acoustic performance in a lovely natural setting. Tewakrã is another young Kayapó singer who, in addition to his own compositions, has covered the Beatles. Mokuká is a 50-year old Kayapó chief from Moikorakô village who composes and performs as avidly as these younger musicians, and has posted a number of lively tunes on YouTube. Live and studio recordings by this handful of emerging Kayapó pop artists circulate virally through villages and Brazilian towns on CDs, cell phones, pen drives, SD cards and portable MP3 players.

One of Bepdjyre's most popular songs, played constantly in Turedjam in the weeks following the concert, is "Waiter bring me another soda" (Pidjo kangô nhoro ondjwy amry ja on dja), borrowing a common refrain from Brazilian drinking songs but adapting it to the Kayapó's tee-totaling prohibition of alcoholic beverages in many villages. 

Bepdjyre onstage with a chorus-line of Kayapó girls

Five girls from Turedjam practiced for several weeks before the show to master the hip-swaying choreography, and they danced in perfect synchrony onstage. They wore matching white mini-skirts bought especially for the show, but underneath the skirts they had on traditional Kayapó ornaments and body paint, adding bright red lipstick to the typical geometric designs in black Genipa and red annatto on their faces.

Teenage fans sing along and snap photos with their phones and cameras

Appearing with Bepdjyre was Mokuká who, unlike Bepdjyre -- in his tight-fitting jeans, white tennis shoes and rhinestone-studded "Tribe" T-shirt -- appeared onstage in traditional Kayapó body paint, bead ornaments and feather headdress. And yet Mokuká swayed and dipped onstage as well as any Brazilian teenager. He sang an extended, encore performance of his contagious Portuguese-language composition, "Tem, tem, tem mulher bonita" ('There are lots of pretty women'). A crowd of teenage boys in the audience sang along with the refrain, "In the village too, in the city too, in the world too: There are lots pretty women!" and pointed out their favorite girls in the crowd or on the stage.

Mokuká sings "Tem mulher bonita"

Alongside Mokuká, a high school student from the remote village of Kuben-Kan-Kren showed off highly erotic, hip-thrusting dance moves wearing ultra-tight, ultra-short-shorts: the Kayapó incarnation of Brazilian dance goddess Carla Peres. As men, both young and old repeated to me, in awe over her performance, "She's the only Kayapó girl who can dance like that. She practiced for months in front of the DVD player." 

"The Kayapó incarnation of Brazilian dance goddess Carla Peres"

The Kayapó cameramen and film makers I have trained over the past three years captured the concert on film and immediately edited a DVD which they distributed in the village and throughout Kayapó territory. On my recent visit to Turedjam, this DVD, as well as MP3 knock-offs of the live audio, was playing constantly. Kayapó men and boys alike are especially enamored of Mokuká's song, "There are lots of pretty women," and the sexy choreography of the girl from Kuben-Kan-Kren.

There is a distinctively masculine gaze in productions by the current all-male cadre of Kayapó film makers: even in traditional ceremonies, women strip down to their underwear for the duration of the dancing, while men wear the same shorts they use in daily life. As the inherent machismo of Kayapó culture blends with the sexism implicit in erotic lyrics and choreographies from Brazilian pop music, I get the impression that Kayapó men and teenage boys don’t just watch home-grown films like Miss Kayapó and the Bepdjyre concert documentary: they ogle.

Kayapó cameramen exhibit a distinctively male gaze

At first glance, this indigenous aping of Brazilian pop music genres and sexually charged dance styles seems shocking, disorienting, even degrading: an affront to traditional Kayapó aesthetic values. And yet a closer examination of Kayapó culture reveals the fundamental role of appropriation and re-invention in their relationship with outsiders. Prior to sustained contact with Brazilian society, the Kayapó raided neighboring groups and among themselves, and placed a high value on capturing ornaments, weapons, names, songs and other material or immaterial goods from the enemy, incorporating them into their own cultural repertoire and displaying them as signs of personal and group prestige.[1]

Kayapó body ornamentation is continually evolving to incorporate new materials and aesthetic references

Even after inter-group raiding ceased, the Kayapó continue to value the capture and appropriation of trappings and technologies of the kuben -- Brazilian "white" society -- such as firearms, trade goods, territorial maps[2] and video cameras. The Kayapó made especially powerful use of video cameras in the late 1980s to mobilize an international protest movement[3], blocking international funding for the Belo Monte dam project and paralyzing the project until just a few years ago. The Kayapó continue to use their technological and political savvy and their penchant for spectacle to draw international attention to their cause. 

With funding from the National Science Foundation and approval from Brazil’s National Research Council (CNPq), Middle Tennessee State University anthropologist Richard Pace and I are currently studying how the Kayapó use video cameras and other digital media in their increasingly complex interactions with Brazilian and global society.

A Kayapó film maker at work in his home village

According to Kayapó film maker Tatajyre, having young, sparsely clad Kayapó women strut and dance like Brazilian pop stars does not degrade traditional beauty standards: "We are showing Kayapó beauty to the Brazilians."

Rather than seeing culture as a stark choice between opposing, exclusive categories such as "Kayapó" and "Brazilian" or "traditional" and "modern," the Kayapó today, as always, see culture as an additive process, continually appropriating, incorporating and re-signifying new ornaments, weapons, goods and knowledge from enemies and rivals as a way of highlighting their own strength and perseverance. Does any of this make the Kayapó less "authentic" or "indigenous" or "Kayapó"? Of course not. On the contrary.

Miss Kayapó: "Beautiful as Indians and as Brazilians"

With local village girls dressed both in mini-skirts and traditional body paint, showing off trendy dance moves alongside a native-language pop singer like Bepjdyre, the Kayapó get to have it both ways: they get to be beautiful as Indians and as Brazilians. As Mokuká sings: "In the village too, in the city too, in the world too: There are lots of pretty women."

As I was packing my bags to leave Turedjam, I heard the distant strains of a hauntingly familiar tune: No, my ears were playing tricks on me, it couldn't be. So I followed the sound towards a thatched hut where I found a group of teenage boys listening to a portable MP3 device playing Tewakrã's electronic Kayapó-language cover of, yes: "Hey Jude." 

A brave new world indeed. 

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First published in "Knowledge Exchange" in the June 2013 issue of Anthropology News (link no longer active, available to AAA members only).
  Special thanks to Amy Goldenberg for editorial input. 

Cite as:

G.H. Shepard Jr. (2013) Kaya-Pop: The brave new world of indigenous music in Brazil. Anthropology News 54(6): 47-48. 

Video stills courtesy of Tatajyre Kayapó, other photos by G.H. Shepard

References:

[1] Lea, V. 2012. Riquezas Intangíveis de Pessoas Partíveis: Os Mebengkokre (Kayapó) do Brasil Central. São Paulo: USP.

[2] de Robert, P. 2004. Terre coupée: Recompositions des territorialités indigènes dans une reserve d'Amazonie. Ethnologie Française 34(1): 79-88.

[3] Turner, T. 1990. The Kayapó Video Project. Revue de la Commission d'Anthropologie Visuelle, Univ. Montreal.