The world of beads among Upper Xingu Matipu

Abstract

“Young girls just want to make necklaces and bracelets,” Kui told me, referring to her daughters' lack of interest in other techniques and materials used for the production of traditional artifacts in Alto Xingu (MT), such as braiding with buriti, employed to make mats and nets. Centered among the Matipu people, speakers of a variant of the Karib language, this paper aims to reflect on the protagonism of kolar-making activity1, especially shared among women in the village of Ngahünga. Whether mediating relationships in their own daily lives (between women or between women and men), or in foreign networks (with whites and other non-Xingu Indians), producing beads with beads is an activity in which women mostly spend much of their time, creativity, work, interest and aspirations. Through production, sale, and their own gift-giving system, women lock their relationships in and out of the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX). Currently, many attend events and fairs of indigenous culture, participate in the Xinguana and indigenous national militancy, go to the city to settle various subjects or simply "walk", as they say. At such times, as with body paintings, they construct and transform their own visual repertoires, conformed to their creations: they extend references to motifs and combinations, include the use of new colors and textures - and thus produce their own forms of sociality. Interest is thus focused on the materials, techniques and repertoire of graphic motifs, analyzed through field research conducted between 2015 and 2017 at TIX. Finally, by looking also at creations among Xinguan men, we seek to discuss more broadly the potentialities of productions with the accounts to inform us about the individual trajectories and the latest political developments in the dynamics. of differentiation between people and peoples in Alto Xingu.