Reflexos da ação humana sobre o ambiente físico em mitos de origem de povos ameríndios

Abstract

A myth tells how a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality -an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution (ELIADE, 1963). The indigenous myths are described by Lévi-Strauss (1973, 1978) as knowledge sources among societies that do not have a writing system and for him the mythological thinking plays the role of the conceptual thinking. Nowadays myths are used by indigenous people with different proposes, they can be used to teach their children their mother language and to substantiate their territory and political claims. Myth is an integrated part of the language (LÉVIS-STRAUSS, 1978). The present paper attempts in discussing the relation between geographic space and indigenous mythology in a perspective that dialogues with the Ecolinguistic theory. The aim is to explore how the perception of the physical space is represented in a subjective way in the origin myths of the Xokleng and Kaingang people (Brazilian indigenous people) and the Navajo and Mandan people (North American indigenous people). By analyzing the origin myths and archaeological data from the selected people it is possible to stablish a relation between the subterraneous origin of these people that are described in the myths and the existence of subterraneous dwellings in archeological sites designated to their ancestors. The paper also presents some considerations about some myths of the Krahô, Kayapó and Xikrin people – indigenous people that are classified in the same linguistic family as Xokleng and Kaingang – in which the subterraneous theme appears. However, in these myths what they call “subterraneous man” are not part of their own people and a distinction between their people and the “subterraneous people” is described.