Marcelo Moura

MARCELO MOURA SILVA, then a graduate student at the Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was awarded funding in October 2021 to aid research on “Translating Politics: The Agency and Efficacy of Words among the Yanomami,” supervised by Dr. Aparecida Maria Neiva Vilaça. Indigenous societies have advanced across the political terrain of Brazilian states in an increasingly decisive way, impressing their practices in the quest for self-determination and the struggle to secure their rights. This research examines the political relationship between the Yanomami and the Brazilian State. The aim was to observe the transition between these two patterns of political activity — that of States and that of Stateless societies — setting out from an analysis of the indigenous political environment and tracing its transformations in the direction of politics with the State. Focusing mainly on Yanomami discursive practices and their reflections on the leader’s position, it was possible to notice that, from the Yanomami translations of practices and concepts of non-indigenous political world into their own native concepts and practices, there emerge interesting questions around political representation, legitimacy, and the place occupied by the indigenous organizations, their representatives, and written documents in the political interface with whites.