From socio-politics to kinship dynamics among the Kaingang

Abstract

This article is based on ethnographic data on the social and political organization of a Kaingang collective that is currently requesting the demarcation of the Terra Indígena Sêgu [Sêgu Indigenous Land] (in Rio Grande do Sul State in southern Brazil). Ethnographic data observed in various indigenous Kaingang lands in southern Brazil point to an intricate and rhizomatic network of social relations within and between groups and families, which, beyond their locations of origin or residence, articulate socio-cosmic-political principles that mark distinct processes of reciprocities and divisions. Here, the movement for land claims and internal tensions within the collectives either result in distancings or approximations that are translated into principles of inclusion or exclusion of individuals and groups in relation to territories that are already occupied and or being claimed. Thus, if for non-Kaingang the Kaingang- as for other Amerindian populations - project an ethnic identity based on the idea of a generalized kinship, at the level of their intra- and inter-group relations, the fluidity with which the ties among those who are considered relatives (kanhkó) or not, can be easily made or unmade, strengthened or broken.