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Combining archival research, oral history and long-term ethnography, this book studies relations between Amerindians and outsiders, such as American missionaries, through a series of contact expeditions that led to the 'pacification' of three native Amazonian groups in Suriname and French Guiana. The author examines and contrasts Amerindian and non-Amerindian views on this process of social transformation through the lens of the body, notions of peacefulness and kinship, as well as native warfare and shamanism. The book addresses questions of change and continuity, and the little explored links between first contacts, capture and native conversion to Christianity in contemporary indigenous Amazonia.
“Supported by 18 illustrations, copious endnotes, and a seven-page index, this volume will be useful to all sociocultural anthropologists focusing on lowland South America…Recommended.” • Choice
“Offers a unique perspective on the complexity of indigenous Amazonia today. By studying interactions between Christianized horticulturalists (Trio and Wayana) and 'wild' people (Akuriyo) with whom peaceful contact has more recently been established, Grotti avoids the usual pitfall of presenting a specific case study as typical of Amazonia in general.” • Olivier Allard, Collège de France
Vanessa Grotti is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna. She is coeditor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra (Berghahn, 2012) and Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean: Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Aå Note on the Orthography of Trio and Wayana
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1. The Making of Christian Bodies: Kinship and Pacification in Daily Village Life
Chapter 2. Drinking with the Enemy: Social and Bodily Transformations at Communal Feasts
Chapter 3. Nurture as Predation: Contact Expeditions to the ‘Wild People’
Chapter 4. The Wealth of the Body: Materiality, Corporeality and Nurture in Central Guiana
Conclusion
References
Index