Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounters in Amazonia(The Cultures and Practice of Violence)

In 1956, in the Brazilian state of RondÔnia, a group of Wari’ Indians had their first peaceful contact with whites: Protestant missionaries and officers from the national Indian Protection Service. On returning to their villages, the Wari’ announced, “We touched their bodies!” Meanwhile the whites reported to their own people that “the region’s most warlike tribe has entered the pacification phase!” Initially published in Brazil, Strange Enemies is an ethnographic narrative of the first encounters between these peoples with radically different worldviews.During the 1940s and 1950s, white rubber tappers invading the Wari’ lands raided the native villages, shooting and killing their victims as they slept. These massacres prompted the Wari’ to initiate a period of intense retaliatory warfare. The national government and religious organizations subsequently intervened, seeking to “pacify” the Indians. Aparecida VilaÇa was able to interview both Wari’ and non-Wari’ participants in these encounters, and here she shares their firsthand narratives of the dramatic events. Taking the Wari’ perspective as its starting point, Strange Enemies combines a detailed examination of these cross-cultural encounters with analyses of classic ethnological themes such as kinship, shamanism, cannibalism, warfare, and mythology.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Orthography xvii Introduction 1 Part I. Other Becoming 1. The Foreigner 25 2. The Enemy 70 3. The White Enemy 110 Part II. In Myth 4. The White Enemy 135 5. The Foreigner, the Dead 146 6. The Enemy 164 7. The Brother-in-Law 175 Part III. We Want People for Ourselves: PÁcification 8. The Motives of the Whites 197 9. The Widening River: Contact with the OroNao of the Whites 210 10. "The Enemy Says He's OroNao": Contact with the OroWaram, OroWaramXijien, and OroMon 229 11. The Great Expedition: Contact with the OroNao', OroEo, and OroAt on the Negro and Ocaia Rivers 255 Conclusion 301 Notes 321 Bibliography 341 Index 357

About the Author :
Aparecida VilaÇa is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology in the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology of the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. She is a co-editor of Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity in the Americas.

Review :
"It is based upon an intimate and extensive knowledge of their culture and fundamental notions and proposes an explanation of how and why these contingent events unfolded in the last hundred years the way they did. As is evident from this enumeration, the depth of the ethnography is combined with an analysis firmly based upon the current state of Amazonian ethnology. The book is a well-written, highly readable, profound and original ethnographic and analytic contribution to Amazonian ethnology and 'first encounter' literature, such that any divergence in interpretation will also need an extended argument: it should be read by everyone interested in the subject." Edwin Reesink, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies "Thanks to the excellent anthropological work of Aparecida Vilaca and colleagues studying Amazonia and Melanesia, it becomes increasingly apparent that the incorporation of otherness--in practices ranging from marriage and shamanism to warfare and cannibalism--is an essential condition of human being. It follows that the relationship between societies is an essential condition of their respective cultural orders as well as their historical development. Now Vilaca has produced a landmark ethnography of these processes, with an unparalleled documentation from the inside of the assimilation of the outside, highlighted by a stunning analysis of the cultural reciprocities of the colonial encounter."--Marshall Sahlins, author of The Western Illusion of Human Nature "This intimate portrait of a remarkable people who insist on encountering modernity on their own terms challenges us to think beyond outmoded notions about acculturation and loss of tradition. Deftly weaving the insights of Amazonian perspectivism with history, myth, and personal experience, Aparecida Vilaca shows how Wari' choices to live with whites and adopt many of their ways are part of the logic of being indigenous. Empowerment derives from seeing the world through the eyes of others. Strange Enemies invites us to see the world through Wari' eyes. The view is fascinating."--Beth A. Conklin, author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society