| Popis: |
Departing from the ethnographic account of an improvised farewell ritual of a belated Angaité shaman, Agapito Navarro, whose people inhabit the north of the lower Paraguayan Chaco, this chapter analyzes how the Angaité engage in a process of ethnopoiesis to presently ascribe as an ethnic group with an external ethnonym as their own. This chapter illustrates how the Angaité have suffered the colonization of their territory and intervention in their lifeways for more than a century, first by tannin companies, cattle ranches, and Anglican missionaries and more lately, by the presence of multifarious Christian denominations, state agencies, NGOs, and anthropologists. It goes on to show how the shaman’s death ritual both reveals the current circumstances of the Angaité and some larger and more lasting characteristics that have been conspicuous amongst the indigenous groups of the Chaco, particularly their ever-changing ethnonyms, taking as example the case of the Enlhet-Enenlhet linguistic family of which the Angaité are part. Finally, it demonstrates that the death ritual and mourning grief, while realigning the relations with the dead, helps to establish and assure relationships within and external to the indigenous participants, including those foreigners to whom they are represented as a distinct ethnic group. |
