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2. The Perils of New-Style Villages
- University of Nebraska Press
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Kim — U of N Press / Page 34 / / I Foresee My Life / OAKDALE [First Page] [34], (1) Lines: 0 to 64 ——— 0.02pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [34], (1) 2 THE PERILS OF NEW-STYLE VILLAGES I’ve changed my name to “Young-Man.” stone-arm, 1992 I’ve changed my name to “Money.” jacaré, 1992 One afternoon as I lay in my hammock, a young girl from Stone-Arm’s neighboring household poked her head under my mosquito netting and said, “Come eat. Bring your plate.” This sort of invitation usually happened once a day and sometimes more often during my stay in Kapinu’a. 1 On some days Jacaré’s daughter, Thorn, had made a sweet pumpkin soup; on other days Chest’s wife, Pretty-Eyes, had made a corn porridge. Many times a monkey had been killed, and one household or another had sent a young girl to invite people for monkey and manioc stew called mutap. Over the course of the wet season, when monkey is most frequently hunted, I even started to like this pungent, robust meat. As time wore on, I realized that I would almost never have to open the tinned foods I had brought from town. Indeed, the few times I did eat from them, the food tasted overly salted or sugared. On this afternoon I was being beckoned to eat small delicate fruits gathered from the surrounding forest along with roasted fish—both procured by some of Stone-Arm’s many grandchildren. As I entered his house, Stone-Arm was lying in his hammock, his pet paca carefully stepping on her delicate guinea-pig-like paws around the baby birds, housed in shallow gourds underneath his hammock. After his granddaughter handed me the food, Carol, his wife, brought me a low stool and handed me a plastic bag of store-bought salt with which to season my fish. While his adolescent granddaughters turned the fish on the fire, Stone-Arm told me that he had changed his name to Young-Man (Kunumi’uu) because when he asked the young girls in his household who they wanted to marry they all said, “I want a young man.” Past generations of Kayabi women, as a rule, married men who were much their senior. Laughing with me at his joke, he surprised me by Kim — U of N Press / Page 35 / / I Foresee My Life / OAKDALE the perils of new-style villages [35], (2) Lines: 64 to 75 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [35], (2) saying I could go tell his neighbor Jacaré about his new name. Stone-Arm and Jacaré, who were once quite close when they lived at a distance, had grown argumentative with each other and spoke only through intermediaries like myself, if at all, since becoming neighbors in the village circle. Realizing that a momentary break in hostilities was rare indeed, I eagerly went to visit the elderly Jacaré as soon as I had finished eating. Upon arriving, he motioned from his hammock for me to sit down at his family’s wooden table. Suffering partial paralysis from a recent stroke, Jacaré could not walk. Always very tidy, his white hair was cut short, and his hands, sporting several carved tucum nut rings, rested in his lap. While his wife and granddaughters looked over dress fabric on the other side of the house, I relayed Stone-Arm’s joke, trying not to laugh as I did so. No sooner had I finished when he quipped, “You tell Stone-Arm I’ve changed my name too. I’ve changed my name to Money [Karan’uu]. That is what all the young girls in my household are asking for in marriage!” As a result of their move to the Xingu Indigenous Park, Kayabi individuals have had to negotiate not only new facets of Indian identity and the concept of culture but also changes with respect to how they relate to each other. The park administration has encouraged smaller family homesteads to aggregate in large multifamily villages in order to provide people with more resources.2 Living in large multifamily groups has brought new sorts of tensions and problems.Forexample,theseniormaleleadersofextendedfamilyhomesteads tend to be extremely autonomous. Living in close proximity to each other has presented interpersonal challenges, as seen in the rift between Jacaré and Stone-Arm. Because senior family headmen all consider themselves to be equals, a challenge has also arisen with respect to choosing a leader for these new...