Canto, imagem e cura em contextos indígenas

Abstract

This research in Social Anthropology investigates the triad of song, image, and healing in contemporary Indigenous contexts, focusing on experiences with the Yawanawa people (Acre) and the Kuikuro/Yawalapiti peoples (Upper Xingu). It examines movements to reclaim ancestral knowledge, rituals, and territories, exploring how sonic and visual practices are reinscribed within new political and artistic contexts. The study proposes the concept of the “sonic image,” arguing for the inseparability of what is heard and what is seen in ritual healing processes and audiovisual productions. The theoretical framework brings together aesthetic relationality and the anthropology of the senses, proposing that Indigenous aesthetics do not constitute an isolated domain but rather a network that connects body, territory, and spirituality. The ethnographic research was based on encounters and immersive fieldwork, including an analysis of women’s protagonism in Indigenous cinema, as seen in the films As Hiper Mulheres (The Hyperwomen) and Rami Rami Kirani, as well as observations of ritual and therapeutic healing practices and the circulation of these traditions among different places and peoples, thereby rendering them intercultural. The research also addresses the growing leadership of women in processes of cultural revitalization, highlighting their role in reclaiming knowledge, songs, healing practices, and forms of spiritual leadership. It further examines the reconfiguration of spaces traditionally closed to women, such as shamanic healing practices (pajelança) and certain forms of shamanism, revealing ongoing transformations in gender relations and in Indigenous modes of knowledge transmission.