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9 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Woman: Fertility Cultism and Historical Dynamics in the Upper Rio Negro Region jonathan d. hill This chapter has two interrelated goals.First, I will explore the concept of culture area as it developed in the ethnology of Lowland South America in the twentieth century and suggest ways in which the concept can be retheorized to restore its utility in current anthropology.Particular attention will be given to rethinking culture areas in Lowland South America in relation to the concern for culture,power,and history.A second goal of the chapter is to demonstrate how such a retheorized concept of culture area can be used in developing a dynamic regional interpretation of long-term historical processes that have generated contemporary ethnolinguistic geographies in the northwest Amazon/Upper Rio Negro region. Drawing on ethnographic research with the Arawak-speaking Wakuénai of Venezuela and previous analyses of their complex mythic and ritual practices, I will argue that northwestern Amazonia , as known through twentieth century ethnographic studies, emerged through a complex intertwining of two distinct historical processes: indigenous fertility cultism and Western colonial and national state expansions. The northwest Amazon region provides a highly suitable context for retheorizing the culture area concept in South America. Beginning with Goldman ’s (1963) monograph on the Cubeo,ethnographers have documented the cosmopolitanism of the region’s indigenous peoples and the complex historical relationships between communities with diverse cultural and linguistic practices.Jackson’s (1983) regional analysis of social and linguistic organization among the eastern Tukanoan groups of theVaupés basin in Colombia demonstrated the complexity and fluidity of regional ties.There are no comparable regional studies of northern Arawakan peoples living in the Isana09 .223-247/H&S 6/4/02, 10:13 AM 223 224 jonathan d. hill Guainía drainage area east and north of the Vaupés basin, in part because of the tripartition of their ancestral territories among three separate national states (Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela). However, recent ethnographic works on the Baniwa of Brazil (Wright 1998), the Curripaco of Colombia (Journet 1995),and the Wakuénai of Venezuela (Hill 1993) support the emergence of a more balanced perspective of the northwest Amazon region as a whole.In addition,studies of eastern Tukanoan peoples who live in the transitional zone between the CentralVaupés basin and the Isana-Guainía drainage area have provided important clues to the region’s historical and cultural dynamics (see Chernela 1993 on the Wanano; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985 on the Desana; and Goldman 1963 on the Cubeo). In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers working in all three subregions (eastern Tukanoan, northern Arawakan , and transitional) began to focus greater attention on long-term processes of colonialism, missionization, rubber gathering, and the role of indigenous cosmologies and ritual practices in interpreting and acting on these processes (see Hill 1996b for an overview of these sources). What sets the northwestAmazon region apart from other areas of Lowland South America is the existence of strongly hierarchical forms of sociopolitical organization. Among both eastern Tukanoan and northern Arawakan groups of the region, local communities are linked together into phratries, or confederations based on ideologies of shared mythic descent from a group of brothers. Descendants are ranked according to the birth order of mythic brothers,with highest rank attributed to the oldest brother’s descendants and lowest rank to the youngest brother’s descendants.Among eastern Tukanoan peoples living in the central Vaupés basin, phratric ranking occurs in the absence of geographic localization of communities within a shared territory , and there is no linkage between principles of rank and marriage practices (Jackson 1983).Among the Arawakan Wakuénai and Baniwa of the IsanaGuain ía drainage area,marriage is linked directly to rank,especially for highly ranked men and women. Highest-ranked men intermarry with women of highest rank in different phratries. Among lower-ranked individuals, there is little or no concern for relating rank to marriage. This linkage between marriage and rank, or “rank endogamy,” among Arawak-speaking peoples was combined until the fairly recent past with localization of phratries in shared riverine territories.Taken together,the features of rank endogamy and localized phratries institutionalized the reproduction of hierarchy and its political implementation among Arawak-speaking peoples of northwestern Amazonia.The absence of these same features among eastern Tukano-speaking peoples has led to the conclusion that phratries there are epiphenomenal (Jackson 1983). The distribution of ranking principles in northwestern 09.223-247/H&S 6/4/02, 10:13 AM 224 [3.133...

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