Os donos do cocar: indígenas em contexto urbano e a técnica no Parque Amazonas de Imperatriz-MA

Abstract

This research intends to investigate the relationship between technique and ethnicity among the indigenous people of the Tenetehára/Guajajara People, who occupy an area of the Amazonas Park on the outskirts of the city of Imperatriz-MA, and who use handicraft work as a source of income and strategy collective resistance of their traditional knowledge, this activity being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, a literature review was conducted on the anthropological approach to technique and the body and studies on indigenous peoples in an urban context. Based on the concepts of Mura (2006) and Barth (2011), the aim is to examine how social relations on interethnic borders and their frictions with other groups influence the selection and acquisition of materials, the adaptations of their functions, as well as the use of handicraft making techniques and their circulation. Highlighting in the observation of these interactions the role of political technique as a transforming act. Methodologically, the ethnographic work mobilized data through photographic records, participant observation and interlocutors' reports.