The Kalapalo Indians

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Term Paper Title	The Kalapalo Indians
# of Words	1600
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.4

The Kalapalo Indians

The Kalapalo Indians

The Kalapalo Indians of Central Brazil are one of a few surviving indigenous
cultures that is uniquely protected by a national reserve in lowland South
America. Through no effort of there own, they have been isolated artificially
from Brazilian social and economic influences that reach almost every other
Indian tribe in Brazil. This unusual situation has made it possible for the
Kalapalo’s culture to be undisturbed by the outside world and the surrounding
tribes. Much of Kalapalo life is run through a central concept or an ideal of
behavior, called ifutisu. This is an infinite ideological concept that is
represented in many ways in social life and ideal organization among the
Kalapalo.

The area in which the Kalapalo live is in the northeastern Mato Grosso state
called Upper Xingu Basin. There are four unintelligible languages by groups in
this region. This makes the Upper Xingu Basin linguistically diverse, but with
many of the groups still sharing the same social and ideological features. It is
very difficult to trace back the origins of Kalapalo life because of the
integration of the many different and culturally diverse groups in the Upper
Xingu Basin. So, many of systems of kinship classification, marriage practices,
ceremonial organizations, status allocation, and religious beliefs are
consistent with cultural rules and social practices and not with the original
system. Many of the modern local groups can only reconstruct their own history
which is in limited detail, these systems can’t be isolated completely from the
existing society.

The two most important social units in Upper Xingu society are the village and
the household groups. Both the village and household can be considered corporate
in that both control rights to territorial resources, acts as a unit when
performing certain economic and ceremonial activities. Members of a household
group are obligated to pass out food which they collect amongst themselves. Even
when one cannot supply food a Kalapalo is assured of a share because everyone is
treated with the same kind of respect. Despite this corporate organization,
membership in villages and households is constantly changing, and there is much
movement of people between group to group.

The Kalapalo society is a system wherein social units, such as the village
groups and households exist only because of the individual who decides to live
in these systems and choose to cooperate with one another....

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