Native and National in Brazil: Indigeneity after Independence

Introduction: Indians without Indigeneity: The Colonialist Renderings of the Present

1 introduction INDIANS WITHOUT INDIGENEITY The Colonialist Renderings of the Present playing indian, brazilian style In a crowded theater decorated with giant animated figures, multicolored helium balloons, costumed musicians, and thousands of tiny, flashing lights, dozens of small children sing, jump, and wave colored flags and pompoms in the air. Behind them, a huge pink spaceship looms above stage. In the foreground, blond teenagers dressed in toy soldier costumes and pointy feather headdresses hop around in circles. They surround another blond woman, slightly older, who wears a waist-length headdress resembling that of a Sioux warrior. Though she dances in a Rio de Janeiro TV studio, her jacket, embroidered and embellished with long fringe, is reminiscent of the U.S. Southwest.1 Shaking a wooden maraca and bouncing until her huge headpiece finally slips off, she leads the group in a cheery tune: “Vamos brincar de índio!” (“Let’s Play Indian!”). In broken Portuguese, meant to imitate “Indian talk,” they all sing: Let’s play Indian, but without anyone to capture me! Come, join my tribe! I’m chief and you’re my partner. Indian make noise. Indian have pride. Come paint your skin so the dance can begin. I grab my bow and arrow, my canoe, and I go fish. Let’s make a fire, eat the fruit of the earth. Indian wants whistle but knows how to yell! Indian doesn’t fight. Indian doesn’t make war. 2 / Introduction Indian once owned this land. Indian all alone. Indian want affection. Indian want back his peace [sic].2 Lost among the feathered performers, the ecstatic children, and the giant UFO is a small group of Xavante—four men and four young boys— who stand wide-eyed and stiff in the midst of the circuslike festivities.3 Although they physically occupy center stage, they appear uncomfortable and out of place, making no sound or movement to accompany the performers or their audience. Holding spears and wearing red and black body paint and a few corporal adornments (but no headdresses), they serve as props behind the all the glitter, noise, and excitement. Since they say nothing, we can only imagine what they might have thought of the performance and their own awkward role in it. While the Xavante stand ignored in the middle of the crowded stage, the blond powwow continues on for several minutes, complete with “Indian-style” drumming, tomahawk chops, and a chorus of shrill handover -the-mouth “war cries.” Finally, star performer Maria da Graça Meneghel—better known as Brazil’s most popular children’s entertainer, Xuxa—stops dancing long enough to approach one stone-faced Xavante man and shouts in his face: “Little ones! Let’s play Indian and teach people how to respect the Indian, which is living nature!” She then grabs the hand of one terrified Xavante boy and begins to skip around, dragging three others with her while showing them, presumably, how to dance like Indians. Goaded on, the humiliated children trudge forward while their blonde doppelgangers yell and wiggle until the song finally comes to an end. While it is difficult to choose the most troublesome aspect of this ostensible appeal to the then-burgeoning ethos of multiculturalism, the conclusion of the presentation, when the “Indians” are shown how to “play Indian,” is particularly jarring. Unfortunately for Xuxa and her Xou (“show”), the Xavante (perhaps chosen for the alliterative quality of their name) do not perform their assigned task particularly well. Alongside the costumed, hand-chopping, war-crying dancers, they seem, in fact, rather plain and uninteresting. Fixed on a stage where the performance of “Indianness ” eclipses any presumable will to self-representation, the flesh-andblood Natives cannot begin to measure up to their rendering by and in dominant Brazilian society, here represented by media giant Globo TV. Xuxa’s flat and mocking rendering of “Indianness” is a common one in Brazil, laden with sociocultural assumptions, political hierarchies, and interpretations of the past so deeply engrained in dominant society and Introduction / 3 cultural production that they make such performances seem not only unremarkable and acceptable, but also pleasurable, entertaining, and worthy of celebration. Since the time this show was produced in the late 1980s, its commodification and commercialization of Indianness have been witnessed by millions of spectators at home and abroad who have never have had any contact with indigenous peoples in Brazil or elsewhere. Even in a...