The Maxakali are an ethnic group of indigenous people in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
.
Geography and Ethnology
The Maxakali live in the districts of
Santa Helena de Minas
Santa Helena de Minas is a municipality in the northeast of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. the population was 6,386 in a total area of . The elevation is . It became a municipality in 1997.
Santa Helena de Minas is part of the statistica ...
,
Bertópolis,
Ladainha
In capoeira, music sets the rhythm, the style of play, and the energy of a game.
In its most traditional setting, there are three main styles of song that weave together the structure of the capoeira roda. The roda represents the most strict and t ...
and
Teófilo Otoni
Teófilo Otoni is a municipality in northeast Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The population of the municipality was 140,937 in 2020 and the area is 3,242.818 km2.
Origin of the name
The city is named after (Vila do Príncipe, 27 January 1807 - ...
in the federal state
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...
. The 400 members of the group live in isolation and poverty. They speak the
Maxakalí language, which is one of the
Maxakalían languages
The Maxakalían languages (also Mashakalían) were first classified into the Jê languages. It was only in 1931 that Čestmír Loukotka separated them from the Jê family. Alfred Métraux and Curt Nimuendajú considered the Maxakalían family i ...
. This language is notable for having neither nasal nor fricative consonants contrastively. There are mixed marriages these days.
Mythology
In the Maxakali
creation story
A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
the creator Topa gave them a tame
otter
Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine, with diets based on fish and invertebrates. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which also includes wea ...
for
otter fishing. This would help them to get always something to eat, as long as they do not forget, to give him the three largest fishes that he caught. When the husband of the grand daughter of the otter keeper neglected this rule, the community was punished by a heavy flooding.
[Jonathan W. Warren]
''Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil''
Durham .C. Duke University Press, 2001, .
References
Minas Gerais
Indigenous peoples of Eastern Brazil
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