Abstract
In order to comprehend the meanings that the Canela Apanjekra confer on their relation with Christianity and missionaries, I contextualize their contact with Catholic and Protestant Evangelizers and analyse a service held by a Pentecostal entourage in 2013 in Porquinhos village (Porquinhos Indigenous Land - MA, Brazil). Mistranslations and equivocations during the service indicate that misunderstandings are not limited to mere linguistic issues. Rather, they are due to ontological and ethical differences between the Apanjekra and the Christians, specially the “believers” (Protestants). If these differences move the Apanjekra away from the Evangelical telos, which is based on a notion of ‘personhood’ that is alien to the Apanjekra, they do not preempt a pragmatical use of its moral code with the aim of bodily stabilization and the provisional maintenance of humanity and kinship.
Key words:
Jê Ethnology; Canela Apanjekra; Christianity; Kinship; Morality; Translation