Is an anthropology of dreams possible in the indigenous Northeast?

Abstract

This article is the result of a bibliographical review of the ethnological literature produced in the Northeast of Brazil, which objective is to verify the presence of the oneiric experience and its importance for the group of original peoples that inhabit the referred area. The ethnographic data on the subject collected so far cover different relational contexts and different thematic areas, such as shamanism and the transmission of knowledge, among others. The argument developed is that the indigenous people of the Northeast of Brazil are in a permanently unstable position vis-à-vis the various extra-human beings with whom they share the cosmos and space-time of dreams, notably the enchanted ones, an instability tentatively circumvented with contradons and behavioral reorientations.