Images of movement: land, kinship, and history in the Upper Xingu

Abstract

The aim of this article is to understand how the Kalapalo, a Carib-speaking people of the Upper Xingu (southern Amazon), describe their relationship with their traditional lands in narratives and personal accounts of their occupation of the area and forced displacement in the 1960's. Based on recorded narratives of their life at the old territory and subsequent displacement to what they consider to be a "foreign land", I will discuss how persons (humans as well as non-humans) are entangled in and by means of places. By bringing forward indigenous perspectives on the relations between land and people, and how these were transformed by the intervention of the Brazilian State, I expect this article to contribute to the understanding of Xinguano territoriality, as well as to debates about the indigenous concepts of "land" and "land ownership".