Como o Japiim ensina as crianças waiwai a aprender as línguas

Abstract

This book is the result of a collective effort to give written, sound, and visual form to the knowledge of the peoples who inhabit the Trombetas-Mapuera Indigenous Land.

It is a shared journey over three years, undertaken by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers who listened attentively, walked with the knowledgeable people through the communities, forests, and rivers, living together with respect and learning from one another. Listening, observation, and curiosity guided each record.

Organized within the scope of the Heritage and Territoriality project, the book brings together ancestral knowledge that the Waiwai have been developing for many generations about places, artifacts, plants, animals, ways of life, and ways of thinking. These are memories and living knowledge, told by those who inhabit the territory, write about it, and transform it in their daily lives.

Each chapter invites the reader to enter a universe where everything is connected: the black earth and the cleared land, the production of arrows and the gathering of vines, the records of petroglyphs on river stones, the secrets of the okomkîrîsî poison, the songs of the birds, the names of the paths, and the Waiwai ways of thinking, speaking, and writing about the world.