Casas, lagos e pessoas: relações de alteridade, mobilidade e territorialidade Paumari no Rio Tapauá

Abstract

This thesis consists in Paumari’s people ethnography, who are located in the Tapauá River in Amazon southwest, in the Tapauá and Canutama municipalities. Language speakers of Arawa linguistic family, Paumari’s people are distributed along to the lakes, floodplains and dry lands located in the Paumari’s Indigenous Lands of Lake Manissuã, Paricá Lake and Cuniuá River. Among the peoples who inhabit the Purus River Basin, Paumari’s people are known for their intrinsic relationship with the aquatic universe, which is observed in various aspects of their daily lives. Thus, housing systems, lakes occupation, plants management in river beds, diversified fishing techniques (fish, chelonians, manatee and pirarucu), the paintings production and rituals make up the set of the socio-cultural aspects which signal this relationship. The adopted approach highlights the Paumari, Mamori and Jobiri trajectories in the Tapauá River, which are taken as essential analysis in order to understand that region groups’ social dynamics. From this point, I approach some Paumari’s daily life aspects that are intertwined with the lakes occupation dynamics, marked by a floating houses system and stilt houses built on the floodplains and dry lands, besides the cultivation in floating beds systems, canoes and floodplain borders, in addition to the perspective that conceives the native "territory" notion, which throughout the political and administrative process of claiming and demarcation of their areas, requested, frequently, by these people, as well as the demarcation of lakes, beaches and other aquatic paths. Far from being an isolated domain, the aquatic universe relates itself to the other world’s elements, which constitute, as the Paumari’s people say, the main mark of the People of Waters.