MYMBA KA’AGUY HA TEY’I REMBIKWA’A: THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE KAIOWÁ PEOPLE AND ANIMALS

Abstract

Cosmological, territorial and socio-ecological relationships of the original peoples are diverse, deeply rich and characterized by intense symbiosis and mutuality with the biodiversity and other elements of the biological and material world. Registering the cosmological and cosmopolitical aspects is a way to strengthen and value the multiplicity of the naturally sustainable worlds, bodies and territories, since the central axis of these relationships is based on subverting the human/non-human dichotomy and on the opposition of the Western-colonialist worldview based on ontological fissure and domination. Kaiowa? people have a deep relationship with the mymba (animals, creatures) who also live in tekohas (ancestral territories/“place where one is”), and from this coexistence their histories, trajectories, rites, policies and ecologies are derived. The present study is the result of a collective construction between a native Kaiowa? researcher and non-indigenous researchers, and aims to describe the relationships between biocultural memories, cosmological dimensions and social-territorial practices based on the life trajectory of a traditional Kaiowa? sage, a person of great reference regarding the memories and knowledge of animals in the Panambizinho Indigenous Land, municipality of Dourados. It is a participatory, qualitative, descriptive and critical study based on observant participation and guided by Ethnobiology and Political Ecology, whose development took place in 2019 and 2020. We analyzed narratives and facets of this traditional indigenous sage in relation to the mymba’s biodiversity, with the singularities of the bio/cosmological classification, their role in the community’s nourishment and the shifts in this relationship between the Kaiowa? people and the animals resulting from the ecological devastation caused by the karai? (non-indigenous) and by the advance of neo-extractivism. The Kaiowa? people are guided by a cosmoperception of the world where biological beings and spiritual beings coexist and communicate at different levels, a relationship established from confluent, respectful, multispecific movements based on mutual support.