Of Double Bodies: Mestiçagem, Mixture and Relation among the Karaja of Buridina (Aruanã - Goiás)

Abstract

Buridina is a small Karajá village wi-
thin the center of the tourist city of Aruanã (Goiás,
Central Brazil), by the Araguaia river side. In the
1970s, its population started a series of marria-
ges with the local non-indigenous people. Today,
most of them are mestiços. This fact, added to this
population’s wide knowledge of and involvement
with the non-indigenous world, often caused Buri-
dina to be stigmatized as acculturated. By conside-
ring interethnic marriages, the children generated
by them and the way the Karajá classify these chil-
dren as a start point to explore the indigenous form
of the relation between indigenous and non-indi-
genous perspectives, this article argues that, for the
inhabitants of Buridina, learning and experiencing
the world of the (non-indigenous) tori does not im-
ply a sort of “cultural loss”. Rather than a process of
acculturation, it is matter of a double bodily expe-
rience in which both perspectives are related to each
other in a divided unit.