Danilo Guimarães: Amerindian Paths Through Recurrent Sociocultural Crises

Based on the academic culture and extension program named Amerindian Support Network, at the Institute of Psychology, this keynote discusses how indigenous peoples in Brazil produce knowledge about the sociocultural crises emerged after the invasion of the Europeans to their lands. The notions of self and dialogical multiplication, in the framework of semiotic-constructivist cultural psychology, mediate the comprehension of how “conflicts from the past” are updated in the contemporary bodies and minds of concrete people. These conflicts are persistent and continue to harm the indigenous communities nowadays. The indigenous active reflection resists them through the creative production of ritualistic and mythical variations, able to preserve their traditional values concerning the reciprocity in the coexistence of different beings, all of them considered as subjects, despite regarded as humans or belonging to another mode of existence. Indigenous peoples invite us to cultivate our engagement in the path for diversity’s coexistence: the earth is one for all beings; therefore, an ethical attitude based on reciprocal relationships is prioritized, instead of the logic accumulation or the epistemic conversion of the other to objects to be controlled or manipulated. Nevertheless, reaching higher levels of reciprocity in self-other-world relationships is not an easy task. It depends on a heavy dedication for knowledge construction addressing the Teko Porã, which is an impermanent, dynamic, and continuous ethical reflection and healthy oriented way to live with all the beings.

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