Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

122 Mutua Mehinaku & Bruna Franchetto
river, 600 Amerindians known as Kuikuro speak a dialect of the Upper Xingu
Carib Language (LKAX), one of the two Southern branches of the Carib family
(Meira & Franchetto 2005; Meira 2006). Kalapalo, Nahukwá and Matipu –
Kuikuro’s neighbours – speak other dialects of the same language. 3 As a result,
Upper Xingu people are essentially tetsualü, ‘mixed.’
Our aim is to explain the multicultural and plurilingual formations of the
Upper Xingu peoples. The fact that these peoples are seen to be linguistically
homogenous within each village and culturally homogenous within the borders
of the Upper Xingu regional system limits our understanding of their complexity.
The encounters of persons, cultures and languages are our initial topic of
discussion; Mutua tells his own exemplary (hi)story. The marriage between Ipi
and Kumatsi – Mutua’s mother and father, respectively – shows one of the
origins of the mixture typical of extended families. Marriage to a tikinhü (other
people) has helped stimulate the circulation of linguistic and cultural elements
that enrich knowledge and forms of expression. Hence, for example, it was
Mutua’s grandmother Sesuaka, from her Mehinaku side, who taught Kuikuro
women how to make porridge from sweet manioc (maisahalu) and fine manioc
flour. This history of amalgamations through marriages teaches us that Upper
Xingu people are not culturally equal. Each people read a common background
in a different way. The Mehinaku and Kalapalo cannot eat certain fish species
eaten by the Kuikuro when their children are small. On the other hand, the
Kuikuro consider ketimatoho, ‘that which cannot be eaten,’ foods that do not
mean the same thing to the Mehinaku and Kalapalo. These divergences were
problems in the day-to-day lives of Mutua’s parents together. Each group has
its view of the ‘others’: politics are specific but at the same time they are all
kin, whether true or distant.
In the second part, dedicated to the different languages manifested in the
songs, we can see the rich mixtures that took place and that remain captured
in the songs of the intra and inter-village rituals. Akinha, ‘narratives,’ ailene,
‘dance’, and eginhene, ‘song’, are the core of joy and happiness. Without gekuilene,
‘animation,’ the village becomes profoundly sad.
While the first and second parts will focus on ‘mixture’ as an end result,
in the third part we will turn to the narratives that recount the emergence of
differentiation, focusing on the case of the Upper Xingu Carib peoples. Heckenberger
(2001) writes of the prehistorical existence of large, densely populated
3 LKAX is an agglutinative, head final and ergative language. The main results of more than
thirty years of research among the Kuikuro can be seen in Franchetto (1986, 1990, 1995, 2000,
2003, 2006, 2008, 2010), Franchetto & Santos (2009, 2010), Franchetto et al. (2007, 2013).