O conhecimento e o dom: uma etnografia dos curadores e rezadores Kariri-Xocó

Abstract

This paper is the result of a field research that I undertook in the months of December 2018, February and September 2019 among the Kariri-Xocó Indians in the Kariri-Xocó Indigenous Land, on the right shore of the São Francisco River, near the city of Porto Real do Colégio, state of Alagoas. The main objective of the research was to understand the socio-cultural processes that cause certain individuals to be recognized as prayers and healers. My intention was to understand the personal trajectories of these individuals and relate them to the social contexts that involve the transformation of ordinary men and women into agents considered to have the power to heal several illnesses. Within this perspective, the research focused on individual and collective processes that contribute to the redefinition of social roles, status and the social reinsertion of these people in the religious context of healing. Within this scenario, the research offers important elements for understanding the social rules, cultural patterns, individual and collective behaviors that make the figures of prayers and healers emerge. I also address the distinct meanings of healing and disease, the prescriptions that are given to patients and the local interpretations of the affliction that affects people. As I was able to perceive throughout the research, the notions of the body are especially important in the understanding of what is health, disease and healing. This question refers to an attempt to associate, albeit superficially, the ethnographic material of the Northeast Indians and the issues involving the Amazonian Amerindian notions of body. Finally, the “gift” and the “knowledge” appear as important social categories as they are directly related to the healing powers of prayers and healers.