Myth and Religion in the Triple Border of Roraima, Guyana, and Venezuela: Areruya and the In-Between

ABSTRACT

This article, about the Areruya religion of the Ingarikó people in the village of Manalai, located in the state of Roraima, Brazil, compares the discourse of two myths about the origin of the current Areruya. One of the myths was transcribed by Audrey Butt Colson (1960) in the 1950s, and the other by the anthropologist Maria Virgínia do Amaral (2019) between 2014 and 2017. The objective of comparing the two discourses was to present the articulations of each one for a new cosmological and social configuration, following the arrival of the colonizer. To achieve this, we used the idea of the “in-between” from the studies of Homi Bhabha (1994) in The Location of Culture because it allows for the use of text analysis as discourse without fixing any intrinsic meaning to them, creating a sliding space.

KEYWORDS:
Areruya; Ingarikó; Myths; In-between

RESUMO

Este artigo sobre a religião Areruya dos Ingarikó da aldeia Manalai, localizada no estado de Roraima, compara o discurso de dois mitos sobre a origem do atual Areruya. Um dos mitos foi transcrito por Audrey Butt Colson (1960) na década de 1950 e o outro pela antropóloga Maria Virgínia do Amaral (2019) entre 2014 e 2017. O objetivo da comparação entre os dois discursos foi apresentar as articulações de cada um para uma nova configuração cosmológica e social, a partir da chegada do colonizador. Para tanto, fizemos uso da ideia de entre-lugar oriunda dos estudos de Homi Bhabha (2001) - em O local da cultura -, porque ela permite utilizar o método de análise de textos como discurso sem fixar algum sentido intrínseco a eles, criando um espaço deslizante.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Areruya; Ingarikó; Mitos; Entre-lugar

Introduction

The indigenous community of Manalai, where the Ingarikó of this research live, is located in the TIRSS,¹ an area recognized by the President of the Republic in April 2005. It covers an area of approximately 1.7 million hectares and shares borders with Guyana (to the East) and Venezuela (to the North), in the state of Roraima, the northernmost part of Brazil. The village is situated in a remote and hard-to-reach region, with access primarily by river and air, as there are no roads near the community. Manalai is the second largest Ingarikó village in terms of population, with 356 residents, second only to the Serra do Sol village with 378 residents (Coping, 2012).

The Ingarikó belong to the linguistic group known as Kapon, along with the Patamona, both located in Roraima, and the Akawaio, in the Guiana region. The Kapon group (Ingarikó, Patamona, and Akawaio), according to Cruz (2005), shares a common religious and sociocultural organization. Therefore, as we will see later, the myth recorded by Audrey Butt Colson (1960), collected in her studies with the Akawaio, spread to the Ingarikó, who began to share many of its elements.

In this context, this article aims to investigate the in-between spaces produced by the discursive articulation of two myths that explain the origin of the current Areruya religion² practiced by the Ingarikó of the Manalai village. These spaces allow us to formulate questions regarding the resonances that inscribe the presence of the whites and their Christian religion in the creation of these two myths.

One of these mythological narratives about the origin of Areruya that we use was transcribed by the anthropologist Butt Colson (1960) in the article The Birth of a Religion, and the other by anthropologist Maria Virgínia Ramos Amaral (2019) in her doctoral thesis titled Os Ingarikó e a religião Areruya [The Ingarikó and the Areruya Religion].

In the detailed text by Amaral (2019), following a path initiated by Butt Colson (1960), the author describes Areruya and explains its possible historical origins in great detail. She establishes structural relationships between versions of the Amerindian myth that point to the appropriation of elements from Christian religiosity and argues that, “even in its embryonic manifestations, Areruya does not seem to have intended to be anything other than the indigenous translation of aspects of Christian religions”³ (p. 18). The author meticulously describes and analyzes every detail of the history, culture, and behaviors of the Ingarikó group. Based on this study, our proposal will investigate the articulations that transformed what was an “embryonic manifestation” into an original religious expression distinct from its initial source.

In the article The Birth of a Religion, anthropologist Butt Colson (1960), based on her ethnographic work with the Akawaio people in the triple border region of Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela, presents possible paths of the expansion of the “Hallelujah”⁴ In the mentioned article, she gathers a set of versions regarding the origin of the term and interprets it, concluding at a certain point and according to one of the versions that the dreams of the prophet Abel,⁵ related to the composition of the “Hallelujah,”⁶ appear as “a glorious mixture of traditional beliefs and imperfectly understood Christian teachings”⁷ (p. 82). We understand that Christian teachings (dis)organize themselves in the discourse of myths to form the relational perspective (Viveiros de Castro, 2020), in a dynamic movement of differentiation and positioning, as we will see later.

Therefore, to develop our analyses, we will adopt the idea of the “in-between” from Homi Bhabha’s studies (1994) - in The Location of Culture⁸ - because it allows us to use the method of text analysis as discourse without fixing any intrinsic meaning to them. In his work, the Indo-British author argues that cultural differences should be thought of through this sliding space, as the not-here-or-there place enables thinking “beyond the narratives of original and initial subjectivities”⁹ (Bhabha, 1994, p. 2).¹⁰ In this movement of proximity and distance, articulation and disarticulation, displacement, constitutive elements are produced without essentialization, thus deconstructing the notion of fixity. The in-between occurs because the event needs to be renewed, differing at each discursive moment, as it infinitely establishes the place of subjectivity or the non-place, as it will never be defined absolutely.

Building on the in-between space coined by Bhabha (1994),¹¹ we will engage in a critical dialogue with Walter Mignolo’s concept of “border thinking” (2000),¹² as the Argentine author, in a way, promotes the updating and expansion of the notion of the in-between, reflecting on colonizing processes in Latin America. Border thinking leads to the decolonization of subaltern knowledge by deconstructing the hegemonic image of the colonizer and producing new places of speech (Mignolo, 2000).¹³

Thus, we intend to focus on the sliding space of myth discourse’s reinvention, examining the instances that introduce the non-indigenous element and then suggesting a moment of dissociation in this discourse: when the indigenous people manage to come into contact with God, in paradise or heaven, and “take” their own Areruya (Butt Colson, 1960, p. 69). From this perspective, new signs are produced, formulating representation strategies in the face of this “other,” the colonizer. We are interested in questioning how meanings are formed in these in-between spaces, in the “beyond” of the assembly of parts. The beyond signifies spatial distance, marks progress, promises the future” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 5),¹⁴ and perhaps a discursive mode of resistance to assimilation, as “border thinking from de subaltern perspective becomes the espitemic potencial that remaps colonial difference(s)” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 45).¹⁵

In addition to this dynamic, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s (2020) thinking on Amerindian perspectivism and its relational nexus will shed light on the paths of reading this culturally different space, as well as some analytical instruments provided by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1969)¹⁶ - the one who shaped the future of current anthropology - and Roberto DaMatta (1970). The ideas of sociologist Maori Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012)¹⁷ will also be valuable due to her deconstructive view of mythological narratives.

This is what we intend to achieve when reflecting on the fabric of meaning in Amerindian myth, based on ethnographic texts, as our perspective on the corpus operates on the border between the discursive perspective and the anthropological perspective. In the inevitable movement of critical reading, we dare to add a new thread: proponents of the absence of the signifier, considering its deviations and creative detours.

If the perspective here is not purely discursive or purely anthropological but also unfolds in the in-between space of discourse, our theoretical references are likewise (ex)centric, as they follow the point of view of so-called “reverse anthropology.” Such perspectives question the assumptions upon which modern concepts of myth and the “savage” were created. We understand that these concepts belong to Western societies that constructed the idea of man and science - the episteme. According to Michel Foucault (1994),¹⁸ the idea of man is very recent, dating back to the Enlightenment and formulated based on the assumptions of the Human Sciences, such as Philosophy, Psychology, Pedagogy, and Anthropology: sciences that also flourished in the West. According to the author, the practice of doing science - and its foundations - is based on a European perspective. Therefore, it must always question itself, or it risks not understanding what it truly produces and for whom it produces.

In the face of this epistemological scenario, the heterogeneous and diverse presence of mythological narrative, whose deconstructive power we will attempt to describe, will occur elsewhere, beyond itself, through the play and articulations it allows to be formulated. Its mobile uncertainty is capable of mobilizing questions about the oppositional hierarchies that underpin our conceptual certainties, such as those of myth and history, or reason and childish thinking.¹⁹

1 Myth and Knowledge

Thinking about Amerindian mythology is not an easy task, since its discourse can hold a value and meaning within the culture that produces it and another within the culture that analyzes it. And even in light of the premise mentioned here - that this study is located at the border between anthropology and discourse - the place of reflection will always be that of the non-indigenous person thinking about indigenous mythological narrative. Thus, as “mythological analysis has not, and cannot have, as its aim to show how men think” (Lévi-Strauss, 1969, p. 112),²⁰ our goal is to reflect on the mythological textual fabric and how the articulations of the “in-between” (re)present the white man within Amerindian mythology in the vicinity of Mount Roraima.

The idea of the “in-between” enables the re-signification of boundaries between colonizer and colonized, reordering the world so that the invader’s hegemony is emptied of power. Thus, in the new order established by the Areruya myth, the indigenous person is not in a subordinate position but becomes the subject occupying the primary place in the new cosmogony. The power of the “in-between” in the creation of the Areruya origin myths conveys and brings forth cultural elements of the subjugated and marginalized people.

“border gnosis” is the subaltern reason striving to bring to te foreground the force anc creativity of knowledges bubalternized during a long process of colonization of the planet, which was ate the same time the process in which modernity and the modern Reason were constructed (Mignolo, 2000, p. 62).²¹

It constructs knowledge from other structures of thought that negotiate or translate cultural diversity, challenging or converging - or both - with the knowledge of the invader.

If, according to Viveiros de Castro (2020), anthropology is an act of translation, and translation is always understood as betrayal, we will not be far from committing some betrayal in our analyses. However, the choice of theoretical lines that can be called decolonizing²² (Mignolo, 2007)²³ may guide us more toward the path of reflection than the imposition of one thought or reason over another. What matters is the (re)presentation of the indigenous religious cosmology not only as a reaction to the presence of the values and signifiers of the colonizers’ world but as a result of choices and “historical decisions to reject assimilation by whites, choices and decisions that favored certain values (e.g., autonomy) over others (e.g., access to goods)”²⁴ (Viveiros de Castro, 2020, p. 297).

We believe that the study of myths, from a perspective of exchange, of the “in-between,” and guided by Amerindian perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro, 2020), can construct an experience of reflection on a certain indigenous anthropology, or reverse anthropology through the interpretation of the “in-betweens” in the discourse of myths. This speculation aims to illuminate the path toward understanding the presence of the colonizer. A presence that marks the difference: a binary and hierarchical classification by the colonial power, turning differences into values²⁵ (Mignolo, 2000, p. 62).²⁶

Finally, we acknowledge that our method of analysis, guided by the “in-between” device in the path of discourse analysis, focuses more on the textual relationship between myths than on indigenous ritual practice. This is because we recognize the limitation of the method used here.

1.1 Positions

Before we begin our task, let’s present the field to which the term “mythological narrative” refers. We conceive of myth as discourse in which certain elements can function as mechanisms of displacement and elaborate supplementary spaces of meaning to point out the processes of constructing what they speak of, as well as allowing a horizon that enables the emergence of other ideas. Moreover,

The study of myths raises a methodological problem, in that it cannot be carried out according to the Cartesian principle of breaking down the difficulty into as many parts as may be necessary for finding the solution.

There is no real end to mythological analysis, no hidden unity to be grasped once the breaking-down process has been completed. Themes can be split up ad infinitum. Just when you think you have disentangled and separated them, you realize that they are knitting together again in response to the operation of unexpected affinities. Consequently the unity of the myth is never more than tendential and projective and cannot reflect a state or a particular moment of the myth (Lévi-Strauss, 1969, p. 5).²⁷

This lack of conceptualization, opposed to positivist thinking, is what we intend, as we do not believe in a fixed rule or model of analysis.²⁸ At the same time, as discussed, a horizon must be pointed out to allow for any elaboration of thought.

In this provisional horizon, the perception of Amerindian myth revolves around the understanding that it is constituted from discourses influenced by relationships originating in and through history, which rearrange and mobilize it and can change over time. Generally constructed from collective experiences, one of their functions - which we emphasize in our reflections - is the translation of adverse and mysterious dynamics that express the mode of organizing the world. Far from the approaches that view myth as irrational and primitive thought, opposed to scientific thinking, or childish thinking on the path of evolution (Pals, 2006, p. 24),²⁹ we understand that myths tell a story:

Mythical narratives are acts of language that construct a sense and meaning shared by a particular group and can change over time, causing displacements, substitutions, and condensations of figures and values. These acts of language relate to the constellations of myths present in the religious world, especially foundation myths, extracting from them their legitimacy while concealing the metaphorical nature of linguistic interactions³⁰ (Sampaio & Silveira, 2018, p. 13).

With signifying language pointing to a horizon of meanings, the Areruya origin myths mark the presence of the white man and the nature of that relationship. In the version collected by Amaral (2019), we perceive the updating that occurs through the introduction and articulation of elements; however, the final effect is similar to that of all other myths about the origin of religious manifestations: the differentiation and separation between indigenous people and white people.

The narratives, events, and characterizations from the Bible (1982)³¹ are integrated into the traditional cosmogony, forming an original construction that became the reference for the emergence of the chants and the Areruya ceremony. Also, the recurring episode of the missionary’s attempt to deceive the indigenous person - the future “prophet” of Areruya - serves as an indicator of the historical period of the arrival of missionary evangelizers: the moment of the entry of this other religious expression and the consequent contradictions brought by a series of new customs and impositions. This is where the spaces of ‘in-between’ in mythological discourse are produced by articulating the present, past, and future, a movement that “renews the past, reconfiguring it as a contingent in-between space, that innovates and interrupts the actions of the present” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 7).³² In the two narratives analyzed here, the signifiers of rupture between the white man and the indigenous person are announced as a warning from God, who approaches the indigenous people and becomes intimate.

According to the mythological narrative, which does not have a finished meaning, the new divine reality established by the native’s visit to the Biblical Paradise - mentioned in the myths listed in the corpus - proposes intimacy with the God who had always been there but had not yet revealed himself, and who began to be constituted, re-signified, based on the God brought by the colonizer. This predestined order of events, involving the past and the future, produces and is produced by the “ir-revir” (un-turning) and allows us to envision the understanding of the encounter between biblical religious expressions and the shamanic³³ expressions found in indigenous myth discourse.

Roberto Da Matta (1970), in his analysis of the Auké myth from the Timbira people, refers to the concept of “antimyth” as the need for negotiation in the face of the events that erupted with the arrival of white men. Thus, the group needed to “systematize a set of new experiences for which it was not sociologically and historically prepared”³⁴ (p. 80). According to the author, while the myth is created based on a set of values developed from the deeds of the indigenous society and the relationships established in the face of experiences, the “antimyth” would be the inaugural attempt by white men to insert themselves into the world’s order and “forge for themselves an instrument that allows them to control, even on an ideological level, the events of contact and domination by the surrounding society”³⁵ (p. 80). In this sense, without using the dichotomy of myth/antimyth, we can say that the origin myths of the religious expression called Areruya translate the elements of the preaching of white missionaries as a mode of resistance and restructuring, with restructuring understood as a way of organizing indigenous peoples (Smith, 2012).³⁶ Indigenous researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) states that the process of restructuring promises greater autonomy in the ways in which indigenous issues are discussed, as “the need to reframe is about retaining the strengths of a vision and the participation of a whole community” (Smith, 2012, p. 154). ³⁷

Starting from this field of ideas, let’s move on to the summary of the Areruya origin myth collected by Butt Colson (1960) for our further analysis.

1.2 Butt Colson’s Hallelujah

The British anthropologist collected ten versions of the Areruya origin myth in the region of the tri-border area of Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela, among the Akawaio, a group with whom the Ingarikó share cultural and social organizational characteristics (Cruz, 2005). In her article The Birth of a Religion (Butt Colson, 1960), the versions are presented together: there is the main version, where recurring information converges, and others where some differences are added according to the informants. We will work with the main version as it is the most complete and structured with a beginning, middle, and end.

In the main myth, the founder of the Hallelujah was an indigenous man from the Makuxi ethnic group named Bichiwung.³⁸ He and other Makuxis began working for a white pastor from England who lived near Georgetown, Guyana, and they also attended the mission school where the pastor taught.

According to the myth, the pastor took Bichiwung to his home in England. There, he introduced him to his family and talked about him, which Bichiwung understood because he had learned some English. During the conversation between the white man and his family, the Makuxi understood that the white man intended to deceive him, as despite the promise to show him God and the Word, he would not do so immediately. After the dialogue, the pastor and his family left, leaving him alone.

Before leaving, they told him he should stay there and take care of the house and the great wealth there. Left alone, Bichiwung felt sad and lonely. He thought about why they had told him to stay there. It was at that moment that “he saw God and received Hallelujah” (Butt Colson, 1960, p. 69).

After being alone and desiring to see God very much, he managed to find Him and wanted to enter heaven, but the deity did not allow it and asked why he was there. Bichiwung said he wanted to know if the white man was really lying to him, so God let him in and showed him heaven: “God spoke to him and said that the whites were deceiving him and that Hallelujah was good” (p.69). In this way, the indigenous man obtained Hallelujah from God, as well as a bottle of white medicine, words, songs, and a piece of paper that would be the indigenous Bible. Bichiwung liked heaven and wanted to stay, but he was told he couldn’t because he hadn’t died yet. He was ordered to return to his family and teach them Hallelujah,

Bichiwung returned to the pastor’s house with the things God had given him and recalling what God had told him about the deceptive teachings of the white man and the goodness of Hallelujah. “So, he put aside what the white man had told him and stopped reading the book. Instead, he took Hallelujah, which he had obtained by himself, from God” (pp. 69-70).

Thus, the Makuxi returned home with Hallelujah, a weapon, and various containers filled with things. He called his relatives to come to Georgetown to sell their new goods, and they obtained great wealth. Bichiwung returned home to the Kunuku mountains with his other belongings. He returned to his wife and family and recounted how he had obtained Hallelujah. Then, he began to teach it, opened his container received from God, and produced the indigenous Bible given by God.

Initially, he only taught his family. But his wife did not believe him and did not stay home to learn Hallelujah. She went to the fields to work for food. While his wife was away, the indigenous man locked himself in the house alone, slept, and his spirit met with God. On some occasions, his daughter was in the house and prayed with Bichiwung, as he taught her Hallelujah. Because of this, his wife accused him of incest, but the Makuxi told her that they had stayed home to sleep and go to heaven. From then on, his wife believed and began to preach as well.

The Makuxi people learned about Bichiwung and his family preaching Hallelujah and wanted to obtain it. His fame spread.

Bichiwung’s plantations were fertile, with cassava, bananas, and all kinds of crops. Because of this and his knowledge of Hallelujah, people became envious of him. One day, Edodo³⁹ attacked him when he returned from the fields, killing him. His wife, in possession of the medicine given by God, applied it to Bichiwung, who, already in heaven, returned to Earth and came back to life. The second time, Edodo killed him and divided his body into three pieces. The wife then gathered the pieces, repeated the procedure, and the indigenous man returned to life. The third time, they cut his body into many pieces and scattered them, making it impossible for his family to help him.

That’s how Bichiwung died and went to heaven. His helpers could not do the same work, and the people began to forget Hallelujah, which was later rescued by Abel, the founder of the Akawaio Hallelujah.

1.2.1 Analysis of Butt Colson’s Myth

The summary of the two possible mythological origins of Areruya among the Ingarikó, based on DaMatta’s (1970) ideas about the Timbira, can guide us toward considering that these discourses are a mode of reaction/translation of the particular context of colonization. In them, specific events from the Biblical discourse, such as the existence of heaven and hell, as well as a “chosen” people by God, become part of indigenous cosmology through their own creation, from the indigenous perspective.

The actions of white men forced indigenous people to seek God, create their own religion, and return to their group instead of joining the non-indigenous people because doing so would distance them further from the colonizers. They turned to their community, and this return was marked by transformation, as they now possessed new knowledge that would empower the community.

As we have seen, the myth described by Butt Colson (1960) begins with the colonizer promising a certain indigenous person the revelation of the word of God and stating that if the native accompanies him to a place, he will reveal what he desires. In this context, the non-indigenous person is not a friend, or rather, someone who pretends to be a friend because he promises to reveal the secrets of religion but does not do so, attempting to deceive the indigenous person. Without this “betrayal,” Hallelujah would not be in the possession of the natives. The elements of the story are intertwined with elements of mythology (Lévi-Strauss, 1979)⁴⁰ because, from the indigenous perspective, the intentions of the colonizers (missionaries or not) were not positive toward them from the first contacts. However, even in the face of difficulty, by desiring so much to find the deity, the indigenous person reaches God and communicates with Him, reaching another level and achieving the desired communication through personal means.

The discourse of the two myths about Areruya chosen for analysis inscribes the place of indigenous and non-indigenous people in society or in the world. More than a creation myth that explains the emergence of both, after the world has already been created, the Areruya origin myth separates the two peoples and proposes a new order for the already created world. The myth also presents the rejection of the religion of the non-indigenous people, their non-assimilation. The Areruya narrative supplements the story told by the white man because it does not deny its existence but adds to it to establish the difference that separates them. Thus, the world, the third element, will always be modified by this affectation.

The indigenous person, according to the narrative, reveals their doubts about the intentions of the “white man,” which is evidenced by God’s preference for the natives, the warning about the non-indigenous people’s attempts to deceive them, and the conclusion that they are not trustworthy. In this way, the deity announces that He will show the indigenous person “the word” and invites him to ascend to heaven, to Paradise, to “take” Hallelujah. After getting to know Paradise, he desires to stay, but is informed that he can only stay there after his death because he does not yet belong to that realm; he needs to reintegrate into his own group, but now on another level, that of a shaman or prophet.

If the main justification for domination rested on the assertion of a necessary “salvation,” stemming from the construction of the indigenous myth that gave rise to Areruya Ingarikó, such mediation becomes no longer indispensable since the “revelation” has already occurred. Therefore, we infer, along with DaMatta, that,

In this direction, it can be said that the elements of the myth go beyond the level of inconsequential fantasy, if there is any. Quite the contrary, the elements take on a new dimension, representing not only tangible and concrete things but also abstract and fundamental categories that are part of the socio-cosmological universe of a particular tribal group (DaMatta, 1970, p. 102).⁴¹

In the translation of Christian religiosity, the Akawaio version is announced through the myth, and this is and will be transformed by history (Viveiros De Castro, 2000), until it becomes the version of Areruya Ingarikó collected by Maria Virgínia Ramos Amaral (2019).

Thus, the indigenous person returns to the village in possession of the Hallelujah religion and some papers, which are the indigenous “Bible.” It is about reordering the world, rather than simply returning to some originality, and this attempt needs to include/exclude the white man. Thus begins the process of “in-betweenness,” which uses elements from both cultures to open up a symbolic unity of the world in the face of non-white signifiers: “Action, even when in the form of letting happen, is always indigenous because meaning is. In other words, whites only constitute the Indians as non-whites because they were first constituted as non-Indians by them”⁴² (Viveiros De Castro, 2000, p. 37). In this sense, Bichiwung’s communication with the supernatural explains the difference between the two religious expressions and legitimizes the non-white one.

In this way, we understand that there was a need for this overvaluation of their own culture to resist domination:

In order for a culture to be really itself and to produce something, the culture and its members must be convinced of their originality and even, to some extent, of their superiority over the others; it is only under conditions of undercommunication that it can produce anything (Lévi-Strauss, 1979, p. 7).⁴³

Upon arriving in the village, he stays at home for days practicing Hallelujah only with his daughter, as the others initially distrust his behavior: his wife, in particular, as we have seen, accuses him of incest. The plan of the mythological discourse is focused on aspects of social structure from an intimate, particular space. The social role of women in this space is defined and is far from the Western and Christian view of the female gender, as she is not subservient to the man. Thus, there was a concern to preserve autonomy over the constitution of society in the formation of the myth, as

Colonization is recognized as having had a destructive effect on -incligenou gender relations which reached out across all spheres of indigenous society. Family organization, child rearing, political and spiritual life and social activities were all disordered by a colonial system which positioned its own women as the property of men with roles which were primarily domestic (Smith, 2012, p. 151).⁴⁴

The myth, therefore, presenting the indigenous perspective on their own world, where women have the right to choose, proposes its own meaning and a way things happen in it (Hugh-Jones, 1988). In the Akawaio myth described by the British anthropologist, the daughter is guided by her father in learning Hallelujah. She, as a being in formation, is under the tutelage of her parents and is learning about the world, so learning about Hallelujah happens naturally.

The mother, distant from a place of submission to her partner, contrary to what occurs in the white colonial model, has a choice and initially resists believing in the new “religion” brought by her spouse. Concerned with the family’s sustenance, she goes to the fields to tend to the crops and fulfill her social role. Nevertheless, the time that the father spends alone at home with his daughter arouses the mother’s suspicion of incest, another characteristic of Akawaio social structure: the prohibition of incest.⁴⁵ As seen, in this culture, women do not occupy a passive place or are subjugated.

Thus, daughter and mother play a mediating role between the social, the particular, and the propagation of Hallelujah to the community, which happens because it is through the daughter that the father manages to convince the mother, and it is after seeing the family practicing that the community begins to understand the function and importance of Hallelujah: “Soon, the Makusi people who heard Bichiwung and his family preaching wanted to obtain Hallelujah from them” (Butt Colson, 1960, p. 8).

It is also the woman who brings him back to life in two of the three attempts to annihilate her husband by her people, out of envy for his power and his plantations. The enemy, from then on, takes on the figure of Edodo, or Kanaimà, an entity already known to the indigenous people of the region. There is even a considerable amount of research on Kanaimà present in the cosmogony of the peoples of the Monte Roraima region. In summary, Kanaimà is not always a person; it can be a presence capable of taking over the body of a person or an animal and causing them to commit atrocities: something like an invisible enemy when not incarnated. The violence of their attacks, represented by the dismemberment of Bichuwung’s body, is also a known characteristic in the region and was referred to as “aggressive shamanism” by anthropologist Neil Whitehead (2002, p. 47), who conducted specific work on the subject, stating that, “[a]s a result, any attribution of revenge became the work of the kanaimà, and native discourse can certainly point to kanaimà in cases of violent or unexpected death” (p. 42).

Tracing on the family properties of their cosmology and elements brought by the religiosity of the colonizer, the myth strategically articulates both through the space of “in-betweenness,” as it communicates a meaning consistent with the values of the group.

In the myth, Bichiwung’s attempts at annihilation are marked to show the extraordinary nature of his existence, the shamanistic potential to move between the natural and supernatural⁴⁶ worlds, administering the cosmos in the spaces he enters,

Amazonian shamanism can be defined as the ability manifested by certain individuals to deliberately cross bodily boundaries and adopt the perspective of allo-specific subjectivities, so as to manage the relations between these and humans. Seeing non-human beings as they see themselves (as humans), shamans are capable of assuming the role of active interlocutors in cross-specific dialogue; above all, they are able to come back and tell the story, something that laypeople can hardly do⁴⁷ (Viveiros De Castro, 2020, p. 310).⁴⁸

Having already gone to heaven once, when he talked to God and got Hallelujah, the shaman-prophet resisted the first two assassination attempts with the help of the deity’s gift, but in the third attempt, he died and went to live in Heaven.

The process of transition between life and death, achieved through the use of almost magical medicine or poison, belongs to Amerindian mythological narratives and also to those from the vicinity of Monte Roraima. Viveiros de Castro (2020), writing about some cosmological notions of the Yawalapíti, a people of the Upper Xingu of Arawakan origin, brings statements regarding substances that cause change in the body, which align with what happens in the myth we are analyzing. “Rubbing medicine” and “smearing with medicine” are actions that can reconnect a person to the world; “it consists predominantly but not exclusively of a set of interventions on the substances that connect the body to the world (...): vital fluids, food, emetics, tobacco, oils, and vegetable dyes”⁴⁹ (Viveiros De Castro, 2020, p. 63).

As we have seen, after Bichiwung’s death, the people began to forget about Areruya, “Then, Abel, the founder of the Akawaio Hallelujah, came and found the right words and gave the people a good Hallelujah” (Butt Colson, 1960, p. 9).

From the moment they “master” Hallelujah, the Akawaio organize themselves according to the beliefs revealed by it. The notions of eternal life and Paradise become a determining factor in cosmogony, and without losing their qualities, the daily lives of individuals revolve around the rituals that are part of the practice of Hallelujah.

We understand that these discursive spaces of “in-betweenness,” of attempts at interpretation and translation from the strangeness brought by the other, articulating the social, the psychic, and the sacred, have produced images that try to “fit in,” not without creating displacements. Upon contact with the conquerors, temporalities break down, and events related to mythical ancestors become more important than what happened before them. This occurs to the extent that there is a latent need for balance between forces, a reorganization of beliefs and myths. Thus, the groundwork for the creation of myths explaining Areruya is constituted by aggregating values from everyday life in interpersonal and collective articulations in the face of the prevailing reality.

1.3 Amaral’s Version

Amaral’s version of the narrative (2019) was collected between 2014 and 2017. According to the author, it consists of a synthesis of six versions she encountered in various circumstances. Let’s summarize these six versions and then analyze them further.

According to the version compiled among the Ingarikó, the Areruya religion came about through the indigenous figure Pirakoman, a shaman who practiced Areruya only with the participation of his mother-in-law and his wife’s younger sister. He lived alongside Noah, the creator of the Bible for the whites. Noah had money and was followed by many followers, unlike Pirakoman, who “was ugly, with skin full of sores, his wife paid no attention to him, and she flirted with Noah. But he didn’t care; he just wanted to practice Areruya and work on his farm”⁵⁰ (Amaral, 2019, p. 142). Noah didn’t work on the farm; he and Pirakoman’s wife stole from Pirakoman’s abundant crops. One day, the adulterous couple fled.

Pirakoman, when he went to the farm, would remove his ugly and sore-covered skin and become a handsome man, but when he left the place, he put it back on, and no one knew of the transformation. The farm was so prosperous that some said it grew by itself, with the help of angels.

One day, Pirakoman ascended to Heaven with his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, guided by Areruya. “The sores were his past sins. He changed his skin and ascended without dying; he became immortal”⁵¹ (Amaral, 2019, p. 143). After meeting God in Heaven, he caused the flood.

Noah was instructed to build a boat to house animals, including Pirakoman’s ex-wife. After the waters receded, the animals scattered, and the boat ended up stranded somewhere. They did not ascend to Heaven.

1.3.1 Analysis of Amaral’s Version

As mentioned in our perspective of the myth, its openness to frequent alterations has allowed it to adapt to the context in which it is embedded. Elements of the context are included and bring about transformations in the narratives. Therefore, we can say that the myth recorded by Maria Virgínia do Amaral (2019) among the Ingarikó, approximately sixty years after its first description by an anthropologist, deals with the origin of Areruya but now establishes different relationships between whites and indigenous people.

In Butt Colson’s version, we can say that “the reference to the White People is limited to a mythological cycle” (Hugh-Jones, 1988, p. 138) since, due to the relationships established between them and the indigenous people (imposition, exploitation, violence, and the transmission of diseases), along with the prevalent belief that indigenous culture was barbaric and inferior,⁵² the whites are excluded from the realm of matrimonial and commercial exchange. Thus, their presence is only in the first part, before Bichiwung’s ascent to Heaven.

And, if in myths, beings and actions are models and reasons for what needs to happen in the present (Viveiros De Castro, 2020, p. 57), we can say that in the Brazilian anthropologist’s transcription, the constant presence of the colonizer with his religiosity, suggests a period of continuous contact: the most recent myth configures the scenario, I dare say, contemporary with this presence of the other.⁵³ In this contact, white continues as a non-related figure.

In the narrative collected among the Ingarikó, the white man is represented by Noah, who had money, many followers, a mistress, stole from Pirakoman’s farm, didn’t work, was disoriented, insecure, did not ascend to Heaven, and “drew lines, saying that these were words written by God. That’s how writing came about. And also the difference between religions, the Bible’s and Areruya’s”⁵⁴ (Amaral, 2019, p. 144). In contrast, Pirakoman, the indigenous man - given that he was guided by God - always did the right thing: he welcomed his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, held no grudge against Noah, practiced Areruya, had his farm, “owned many foods that the Kapon know today: cassava, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, etc. They all emerged with Pîraikoman. That’s why in the Areruya song, he is the master of cultivated foods”⁵⁵ (p. 142). He, as we have already mentioned, ascended to Heaven, met God, and became immortal.

Analyzing this narrative, we can say that complexities are synthesized, real events are eclipsed, and individuals are replaced by unitary groups - whites with typified characteristics contrasting with those of the indigenous people, who are equally stereotyped (Hugh-Jones, 1988, p. 140). Noah, representing the whites, has money but is not trustworthy because he betrays and deceives. Pirakoman, a shamanic role model, is identified as Christ, the Son of God in the other’s religion. The cosmologies are in negotiation, and the articulations proposed by the in-between place allow the indigenous person to (re)appropriate their world. In this chain of identification with the group, they reclaim integrity in motion through changes of place. Thus, in the in-between place, identity, whether individual or collective,

always involves the production of an image of identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that image. The demand for identification - that is, to be for the other - entails the representation of the subject in the differentiating order of otherness. Identification, (...) is always the return of an image of identity that bears the mark of the splitting in the Other place from which it comes (Bhabha, 1994, p. 64).⁵⁶

In the mythological narrative, the collective identities of Pirakoman and Noah are connected by the context but ideologically disconnected, as each refers to their origin myth: the Bible and Areruya, respectively, with the former, in indigenous mythology, being a set of false scribbles. Another important aspect of the myth is the valorization of cultivated plants and shamanic powers over money and the number of followers.

In this way, the articulations in the in-between place, resulting from a successive cultural clash that compels assimilation and analogy (Wagner, 2010, p. 67), produce this reverse anthropology. According to the author, the relational perspective precedes the related elements; therefore, it is important to analyze how natives (re)creatively present the presence of the white man among them, as without this perspective, the researcher’s thinking will be ethnocentric.

An anthropology that refuses to accept the universality of mediation, that reduces meaning to belief, dogma, and certainty, will be led into the trap of having to believe either in native meanings or in our own. The first alternative, we are told, is superstitious and non-objective; the second, according to some, is ‘science.’ Yet, this kind of science can easily degenerate into a form of indirect discourse, into a way of making provocative statements by translating languages into facts and overexoticizing research objects for the sake of symbolic effect. This is possible because anthropology is always necessarily mediatory, whether or not it is conscious of the implications; culture, like the mediating term, is a way of describing others as we would describe ourselves, and vice versa⁵⁷ (Wagner, 1981, p. 30).

Mediation, engendered by the shifts of the in-between place, negotiates meanings that do not circumscribe the myth but are within it, and can only be observed in their social dimensions. A critical and fruitful interaction of creation that points to the reinterpretation of non-indigenous people about themselves. Thus, we understand that the Ingarikós also become authorities in the production of meaning when constructing myths about the origin of Areruya.⁵⁸

From the perspective of the myth narrated by the Ingarikó, indigenous values hierarchically supersede those of outsiders. Indigenous values, related more to division than accumulation, more to establishing alliances than exploitation, more to the fairness of agreements than personal gain, indicated their superiority over those who did not even understand the relationship between man and nature.

Hugh-Jones (1988), regarding the presence of white people in Barasana myths, brings other considerations that we can use for the myth analyzed here. According to the author, indigenous people, due to the imposition of learning the colonizer’s religion,⁵⁹ end up finding resonances in their own conceptions and, from there, select, interpret, and organize these elements with a pre-existing mold, according to “their own specific values” (1988, p. 149). In terms of the contribution of the heritage received from other peoples, as exposed in the myth’s elaboration, culture, the religious expression of the indigenous people, is where white people emerge to be articulated. Along this path, they become part of an organization of differences that makes society possible while stereotyping white people and forming a negative view of them.

The importance of the discourse of myths that rearticulate events in cultural contact or clash with the colonizer lies in the fact that indigenous peoples engage in reverse anthropology. Our hypothesis suggests that through what we call in this study the work of articulation in the in-between place, the indigenous peoples around Mount Roraima constructed an argument about their place in the world by recapturing, through mythological narrative, a pre-colonization time when the world was entirely engendered by them. Instead of being labeled by others, they created a way to self-determine themselves so that their cosmological discourses would not be entirely denied and, at the same time, negotiate the elements brought by the colonizer from the relational perspective originating from the worldview in which everything is interconnected.

In this “extra dimension of reality” (Hugh-Jones, 1988), the origin myths of Areruya listed here tell their own story about the world. In this cosmogonic discourse, indigenous ideas and their interpretations challenge the colonizing mission and, by claiming a voice, can reaffirm their identity, reconnect, and reorganize their ways of knowing the world.

Final Considerations: Areruya as a Decolonization Strategy

The Areruya religion practiced today by the Ingarikó caught our attention, and soon after, the thesis of the anthropologist Maria Virgínia do Amaral - whom I met personally since we were in the Manalai village simultaneously. Both inspired me to think from a discursive perspective about these songs and myths. A perspective that would investigate such constructions as a way of self-determination in the face of the hegemonic representation of culture and the world. Since working with songs and myths proved to be extremely complex for an article, I decided to focus here on the two main myths about the origin of Areruya among the Ingarikó.

Along this path, ideas developed by anthropology shed new light on the material to be subjected to reflection. Amerindian perspectivism described by Viveiros de Castro (2020), which mainly highlights the idea of mobile perspectives, in which the situation of the viewer defines themselves and the other, indicates the existence of different ways of seeing a particular phenomenon, object, or subject: the world is perceived and understood according to the point of view apprehending it.

It is a perception that deconstructs the Western dichotomous thinking of fixed concepts and identities and puts on stage a reason in which exchange and difference, not identity, are the indispensable principles (Viveiros De Castro, 2020, p. 178). What matters more is the connection between elements at the moment and in the situation of contact, rather than the fixed place each one occupies, as “it is the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence.” (Ingold, 2011, p. 68).⁶⁰

By pointing out historical experiences, clashes, negotiations, and possible creative solutions, the myths about the origin of Areruya suggest another worldview beyond that of the colonizer. They propose reverse anthropology and place the non-indigenous as an untrustworthy and dissimilar subject, but this does not imply any prerogative of domination over this other, only spatial and social separation between the groups. This occurs because, in both myths analyzed here, the white person emerges as dishonest and unjust: characteristics that make them incapable of living with the indigenous group.

Thus, the discourse of myth construction promotes a perspective in which nature, culture, and the supernatural are intertwined, ordering a world of human nature in which beings must coexist so that this interconnection is not broken. To do so, the ideas expressed by the Akawaio and Ingarikó origin myths suggest differentiated relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous people, pointing towards a resizing in our own, non-indigenous, worldview.

• 1
  Data on indigenous lands and populations in Roraima obtained through the official Funai website, available at: http://www.funai.gov.br. Accessed on: 02/21/2022.
• 2
  We use the term religion because, firstly, the Ingarikó use it, and secondly, because Areruya was made official, in Guyana, as a member of the Guyana Council of Churches in 1977 (Goodrich, 2003).
• 3
  In Portuguese: “já em suas manifestações embrionárias, Areruya não parece ter pretendido ser outra coisa que a tradução indígena de aspectos das religiões cristãs.”
• 4
  The author uses this term in reference to Areruya. Therefore, when I refer to the article “The Bird of a Religion” (Butt Colson, 1960), I will use the same form as her.
• 5
  According to Butt Colson (1960), Abel was the prophet responsible for the founding of Hallelujah among the Akawaio (p. 78).
• 6
  All translations of foreign language quotes are mine.
• 7
  In Portuguese: “Uma mistura gloriosa de crenças tradicionais e itens de ensinamentos cristãos imperfeitamente compreendidos.”
• 8
  Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1994.
• 9
  In Portuguese: “além das narrativas de subjetividades originárias e iniciais.”
• 10
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 11
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 12
  MIGNOLO, Walter D. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000.
• 13
  For reference, see footnote 12.
• 14
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 15
  For reference, see footnote 13.
• 16
  LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude.The Raw and the Cooked. Trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, New York: Harper and Row, 1969.
• 17
  SMITH, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books, 2012.
• 18
  FOUCAULT, Michel. The Order of Things. An Archaeology of Human Sciencies. New York: Vintage Books, 1994)
• 19
  The expression “childish thinking” originates from the period after the arrival of the colonizers, when the priests understood and defended the necessary guidance for the indigenous people, because they did not have the maturity for “adult” thinking: Nearly a century after Vitoria delivered The Indis, the Franciscan Juan de Silva explained in the same Aristotelian terms as Vitoria had employed that the Indians were still imcapable of untherstanding either the natural world or the moral order (...). For Vitoria and those like Silva who followed in his intellectual train, the relationship between the Indian and his master could only be construed as paternalistic. The Indian’s mind was as complete as that of his master; but because it had remained so long in the darkness of infidelity an under the sway of a brutal and diabolic religion, its rational faculties were still immature (Pagden, 1982, p. 104).
• 20
  For reference, see footnote 16.
• 21
  For reference, see footnote 12.
• 22
  A decolonizing thought understands cultures without the bias of superiority and inferiority, in addition to embracing the thoughts of others, their reason, inserting it into the “real” world (Mignolo, 2007).
• 23
  MIGNOLO, Walter D. ‘The Decolonial Option and the Meaning of Identity in Politics’, Anales Nueva Epoca (Instituto Iberoamericano Universidad de Goteborg), 2007, 9/10: 43-72.
• 24
  In Portuguese: “decisões históricas de recusa à assimilação pelos brancos, escolhas e decisões que privilegiaram certos valores (p. ex., a autonomia) em detrimento de outros (p. ex., o acesso às mercadorias).”
• 25
  According to the author: “‘By colonial differences’ I mean (…) the classification of the planet in the modern/colonial imaginary, by enacting coliniality of power, na nerengi and a machinery to transform differences into values” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 26)
• 26
  For reference, see footnote 12.
• 27
  For reference, see footnote 16.
• 28
  For new interpretations and discussions about the myth in Lèvi-Strauss, see Aparecida Vilaça (2008), Marcel Mano (2012), Artionka Capiberibe (2017) and Odair Giraldin and Cassiano Apinagé (2019).
• 29
  PALS, Daniel L. Nine Theories of Religion. University of Miami: Third Edition, 2006.
• 30
  In Portuguese: “As narrativas míticas são atos de linguagem que constroem um sentido e um significado, compartilhados por um determinado grupo, e podem mudar ao longo do tempo, provocando deslocamentos, substituições e condensações de figuras e valores. Esses atos de linguagem relacionam-se com as constelações de mitos presentes no mundo religioso, em especial, os mitos de fundação, retirando deles sua legitimidade, ao mesmo tempo em que ocultam o caráter metafórico das interações linguísticas.”
• 31
  HOLY BIBLE. The New King James Version, Containing the Old and the New Testaments. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1982, Print.
• 32
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 33
  As we will see in the analysis of the chosen myths, our conception of shamanism understands, along with Viveiros de Castro (2020), that this would be the disposition present in certain beings to cross bodily limitations and acquire the perspective of other subjectivities.
• 34
  In Portuguese: “sistematizar um conjunto de novas experiências para as quais não estava preparado sociológica e historicamente.”
• 35
  In Portuguese: “forjar para si um instrumento que permita controlar, ainda que num plano ideológico os eventos do contato e da dominação da sociedade envolvente.”
• 36
  For reference, see footnote 17.
• 37
  For reference, see footnote 17.
• 38
  “Bichiwung” is just one of several possible names for the founder of Hallelujah, as the name varies depending on the version.
• 39
  Edodo, as we will see, is an entity that does evil and can take on the body of man or animal.
• 40
  LÉVI STRAUSS, Claude. Myth and Meaning. New York: Schocken Books, 1979.
• 41
  In Portuguese: “Nesta diretriz, pode-se dizer que os elementos do mito ultrapassam o nível da fantasia inconsequente, se existe realmente alguma. Muito ao contrário, os elementos ganham uma nova dimensão, representando além de coisas palpáveis e concretas, categorias abstratas e fundamentais, que fazem parte do universo sócio-cosmológico de um determinado grupo tribal.”
• 42
  In Portuguese: “A ação, ainda quando na forma do deixar acontecer, é sempre indígena, porque a significação o é. Em outras palavras, os brancos só constituem os índios como não-brancos porque foram, antes, constituídos como não-índios por eles.”
• 43
  For reference, see footnote 40.
• 44
  For reference, see footnote 17.
• 45
  We will not approach here the issue of the opposition between nature and culture, so dear to anthropology and discussed for so long, in relation to incest and its prohibition as a mark of the state of “culture.” This is because, together with Lévi-Strauss (2011), we understand that the nature and culture dichotomy already enters Western man's notion of what nature is and what culture is, that is, it is a cultural creation from which nature It is already understood, it is part of the vision of that person.
• 46
  Marco Antônio Valentim (2018), in an analysis of Viveiros de Castro's text on the Watunna mythical corpus, states: “Shamanic 'potential' crosses the cosmos from end to end, intertwining with the subjects' own transformational character” (p. 172).
• 47
  In Portuguese: “O xamanismo amazônico pode ser definido como a habilidade manifesta por certos indivíduos de cruzar deliberadamente as barreiras corporais e adotar a perspectiva de subjetividades aloespecíficas, de modo a administrar as relações entre estas e os humanos. Vendo os seres não humanos como estes se veem (como humanos), os xamãs são capazes de assumir o papel de interlocutores ativos no diálogo transespecífico; sobretudo eles são capazes de voltar pra contar a história, algo que os leigos dificilmente podem fazer.”
• 48
  For other analyses and reflections on perspectivism in Viveiros de Castro, see Lúcia Sá (2020), Renato Sztutman (2020), Oscar Calavia Saez (2012) and Tânia Stolze Lima (2011).
• 49
  In Portuguese: “consiste dominante mas não exclusivamente em um conjunto de intervenções sobre as substâncias que conectam o corpo ao mundo (...): fluidos vitais, alimentos, eméticos, tabaco, óleos e tinturas vegetais.”
• 50
  In Portuguese: “era feio, com a pele cheia de feridas, sua mulher não lhe dava atenção e vivia namorando com Noé. Mas ele não se importava, só queria praticar Areruya e ir para a roça.”
• 51
  In Portuguese: “As feridas eram seus antigos pecados. Ele havia trocado de pele e subiu sem morrer, tornou-se imortal.”
• 52
  The image of the indigenous person as fickle, difficult and intractable was present throughout all of Brazil's religious literature, people who were “the most brutal, the most ungrateful, the most fickle, the most averse, the most difficult to teach of any there are in the world” (Vieira, 2001, p. 422).
• 53
  Bethania Assy and Rafael Rolo (2019), when analyzing the pattern of indigenous thought, based on Viveiros de Castro, argue that it has a decolonizing tone, since it “seeks to project something of itself from the point of view of another” (p. 2379). In this way, the introduction of the non-indigenous in the Ingarikó myth in the form of unwanted subjectivity becomes possible because in the structure of thought of the indigenous group, occupying the colonizer's point of view makes possible “the assimilation of the mythical narratives responsible for the constitution of the Amerindian socius, always in counterpoint to an exteriority” (p. 2388), reformulating them.
• 54
  In Portuguese: “fez riscos dizendo que aquelas eram palavras escritas por Deus. Foi assim que surgiu a escrita. E também a diferença das religiões, a da Bíblia e a do Areruya.”
• 55
  In Portuguese: “era dono de muitos alimentos que os Kapon conheciam hoje: mandioca, batata-doce, abóbora etc. Todos eles surgiram com Pîraikoman. Por isso, no canto de Areruya é mestre dos alimentos cultivados.”
• 56
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 57
  In Portuguese: “[u]ma antropologia que se recusa a aceitar a universalidade da mediação, que reduz o significado a crença, dogma e certeza, será levada à armadilha de ter de acreditar ou nos significados nativos ou nos nossos próprios. A primeira alternativa, dizem-nos, é supersticiosa e não objetiva; a segunda, de acordo com alguns, é ‘ciência’. E, todavia, esse tipo de ciência pode facilmente degenerar em uma forma de discurso indireto, em um modo de fazer afirmações provocativas traduzindo idiomas em fatos e superexoticizando os objetos de pesquisa em prol do efeito simbólico. Isso é possível porque a antropologia sempre é necessariamente mediadora, esteja ou não consciente das implicações disso; a cultura, como o termo mediador, é uma maneira de descrever outros como descreveríamos a nós mesmos, e vice-versa.”
• 58
  Fernanda Ribeiro Amaro (2020), in an article on reverse anthropology, argues that the work A Queda do Céu, by Davi Kopenawa (2015), opens “a conceptual field for thinking about the Amerindian journey and its consequences in the formulation of knowledge about we, Caribbean people, through which we can self-reference ourselves and review our positions in relation to our peers and our relationship with the environment” (p. 104), theorizing and producing meanings about our own culture and that of the colonizer. About reverse anthropology, see also Maria Virgínia do Amaral (2022).
• 59
  “Through persistent rumours, missionized neighbours, itinerant priests and resident missionaries, the Barasana have been exposed to Bible stories and Christian teaching for a considerable period of time.” Tal realidade parece representar a história de muitos povos indígenas da Amazônia, pois, “[p]or meio de rumores persistentes, vizinhos missionários, padres itinerantes e missionários residentes, os Barasana foram expostos às histórias da Bíblia e ao ensino cristão por um período considerável de tempo” (p. 149).
• 60
  INGOLD, Tim. Being alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge, 2011.

• Reviews

  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

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Translated by Obed João da Silva Botello - [e-mail]

Review I

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review I

The opinion is favorable for publication. The text is well-founded, well-written, and addresses the topic in an interesting manner. However, I would like to point out some restrictions that need to be corrected for the article to be published: 1. In general, the term “religion” is not used for indigenous peoples. The use of the term “religion” for Areruya should be justified, along with the capitalization of the term for the ritual. 2. It’s important to distinguish between religion and ritual; this needs to be clearly defined. 3. I suggest creating a comparative table between the two accounts: Audrey Butt Colson’s (1960) account from the 1950s and Maria Virgínia do Amaral’s (2019) account. 4. The author should address the limitations of the method and discourse analysis in examining indigenous cultic practice. Anthropologists have criticized the structuralist method and others that focus solely on discourse while neglecting performance and the contexts in which discourse takes place, who can speak, when they can speak, etc. APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  31 May 2023

Review II

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

In providing an opinion on the article “Myth and Religion in the Triple Border of Roraima, Guyana, and Venezuela: Areruya and the In-Between,” I would like to highlight the following aspects:

The submission appropriately aligns its title with its content, given the centrality of the concept of myth in understanding the dimensions of Hallelujah in the Ingarikó community, in comparison to other possible versions collected among the indigenous nations inhabiting the triple border region among Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela. The pursuit of defining the concept of myth finds support in both primary and secondary sources listed in the article’s bibliography.

Regarding the articulation of the study’s objective, which is well-executed in both the abstract and the introduction of the submitted text, it is important to note that the coherence of its development in the text leans more towards an elucidation of myth based on structuralist foundations (notably in the citations and comments on Lévi-Strauss and DaMatta, for example) than an exploration of more contemporary references on the subject. In other words, while contemporary references on the Ingarikó are mentioned, and despite the effort to interpret the collected accounts from the perspective of the in-between space (as advocated by Bhabha in “The Location of Culture”), the analysis at times asserts rather than effectively argues in favor of the semantic shifts inherent to the in-between space in the collected narratives. This demonstrates a need for more persuasive arguments and further refinement of analytical categories to genuinely discuss the observable semantic shifts within the dimensions of Hallelujah in the Ingarikó community, compared to its other possible versions.

Concerning the references used in the composition of the submitted text, it is worth emphasizing the earlier point: there is a stronger emphasis on explaining the myth from structuralist perspectives (especially in the citations and comments on Lévi-Strauss and DaMatta, for example) than on exploring more contemporary references on the topic. Additionally, it would be beneficial to integrate contemporary references that could discuss and enrich the citations from primary and secondary sources included in the text. For instance, contemporary interpretations of myth by Lévi-Strauss, contemporary interpretations of the in-between space by Bhabha, and comments and appropriations of Viveiros de Castro’s theses cited in the text could enhance the argumentation in its current state. One of the significant strengths of the text lies in its demonstration of up-to-date knowledge regarding relevant literature, both on the Ingarikó and neighboring nations, as well as the hypothesis of a common linguistic root. In support of the originality of the reflection and contribution to the field of knowledge potentially presented in the submitted text, and in alignment with the previous observations, a more extensive commentary and incorporation of Wagner’s quotes on pages 20-1 might provide some of the missing elements for a better presentation of partial research results in progress, as the authors aim to approach reverse anthropology. If the lengthy quote from Wagner, currently provided in footnote 57 without commentary or incorporation into the main text, were integrated into the text along with a) commentary and incorporation into the article’s point, and if possible, b) a footnote referencing contemporary sources on Wagner, the originality of the reflection and contribution to the field of knowledge, as presented in the submitted text, would greatly benefit.Lastly, the text exhibits clarity, correctness, and appropriate language for a scientific work in progress, to which the above-mentioned observations and suggestions apply. APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept

• Editorial Review

  We request that the authors carefully read the comments and observations of both reviewers, reflect upon them, and incorporate them into the text (or provide arguments for theirdisagreement in an appropriate space). Please rewrite the article and submit it again forevaluation by August 15, 2023.

History

• Peer review received
  23 July 2023

Review III

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review III

Given that this is a second submission of the same article, I would like to limit myself to a demonstration of acquiescence and satisfaction with the second version, now resent by the writers, in that it seeks to respond to my observations, notes and requests to the first version of this text.

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  24 Aug 2023

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  01 May 2023
• Accepted
  18 Oct 2023