The culture of the Dasĩpê festival

A traditional festival of the Akwê-Xerente people

Abstract

This article emerged from debates held in the course Culture, Territory, and Interdisciplinarity. The objective of this work is to discuss indigenous knowledge based on the theoretical framework presented in the course Culture, Territory, and Interdisciplinarity of the Graduate Program in Culture and Territory Studies. The theme of this article is part of the first author’s master’s research, in which, by occupying her place of enunciation, the first author seeks to give visibility to the Akwẽ-Xerente culture, particularly the Dasĩpê festival and other cultural practices within the territories of the Akwẽ-Xerente people. The methodology consists of documentary research and bibliographic research. The Akwẽ-Xerente people are bilingual and live in a land delimited by FUNAI, in the region of the Tocantínia municipality, in the Brazilian state of Tocantins. In this work, we draw on several Akwẽ-Xerente authors, such as Afonso Tikwa Xerente (2014) and Noemi da Mata de Brito Xerente (2012), among others, with the aim of presenting the culture of this people not from a Eurocentric perspective, but from the decolonial viewpoint of indigenous intellectuals. We also refer to theoretical perspectives of non-indigenous authors, including Homi Bhabha (2007), Stuart Hall (2016), and Rogério Haesbaert (2007), to contribute to discussions on culture and territory, and the dialogue among different forms of knowledge is guided by the interdisciplinary perspective proposed by Olga Pombo (2008).