Stop Loss: Developing Interethnic Relations

in Brazil’s Xingu Indigenous Park

By
Christopher Ball
MacEwan University

Resumo
Este artigo aborda a facilitação de percepções da perda por diferenças entre ideologias
de cambio na polı́tica cultural na Amazônia indı́gena. Etnografia de relações entre o
povo Wauja do Parque Indı́gena do Xingu e não-ı́ndios mostra que pessoas indı́genas
tentam enfocar-se nos aspectos abertos de relações de troca, enquanto agentes de desen-
volvimento não-ı́ndios tentam enfocar-se em resultados finais. Pessoas de ambos lados
percebem problemas em interação como ı́ndices de perda. Para os Wauja, cerramento
em relações de cambio é um sinal da perda da possibilidade de relações sociais futuros.
Para não-ı́ndios resistência em negociações é um sinal de perda cultural. Isso contribua
á reprodução dos discursos de perda que estão na base do instituição do parque e do
desenvolvimento na Amazônia em geral. Desenvolvimento representa até elementos
de continuidade indı́gena em termos de perda. Os Wauja respondem em parte com a
indigenização das ideologias de cambio externais. [Brasil, desenvolvimento, linguagem,
povos indı́genas]

Abstract
This article explores how competing ideologies of exchange contribute to perceptions
of loss in the cultural politics of indigenous Amazonia. Ethnographic study of relation-
ships between Wauja people in Brazil’s Xingu Indigenous Park and non-Indian agents
of change shows that while indigenous actors tend to focus on open-ended exchange
processes, development agents often focus on final results. People on both sides may in-
terpret interactional “failures” as indexes of loss. For Wauja people, closure in exchange
signals loss of future relational potential, while for non-Indian agents of change, resis-
tance in negotiation may signal loss of traditional culture. This works to reproduce the
discourses of loss that are at the root of the park as an institution, as well as Amazonian
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 413–434. ISSN 1935-4932, online
ISSN 1935-4940. 
C 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1935-

4940.2012.01256.x

Stop Loss 413

 development more broadly. Development as an emergent cultural project misconstrues
even elements of indigenous continuity in transformation in terms of loss. Wauja re-
sponses include indigenous domestication of exogenous exchange ideologies. [Brazil,
development, indigenous people, language]

Since its foundation in the mid–20th century the Xingu Indigenous Park (PIX)
in Central Brazil has been actively constructed as a middle ground (Conklin and
Graham 1995; White 1991). For its sponsors and founders the park provided a
window onto a primeval past, and for generations of subsequent researchers, jour-
nalists, health care workers, and environmentalists, among others, it has been a
meeting place of nature and culture. Professionals such as these, together with
an emerging class of indigenous intermediaries, have worked on a project of
interethnic translation of meanings and values for the publics they represent.1
The terms of this translation, however, have been laid down amidst a power
imbalance that privileges a non-native narrative of Amazonian loss. According
to this narrative, the reason Indians need to be protected by a park, or edu-
cated about medicine, or the environment—indeed, the very reason we need to
have a relationship with them—is so they do not disappear. However, indige-
nous residents of the PIX have different perspectives on their relationships with
outsiders.
This article examines the ways in which Wauja people of the Upper Xingu
extend their cultural logics of exchange to relations with non-Indians in the com-
plex interethnic context of Amazonian development. It also discusses the ways
they creatively respond to principles of exchange that are institutionalized in
development projects, national health initiatives, and the PIX. Native cultural
understandings of social relatedness are central to theorizing how exchange medi-
ates interethnic relations between indigenous people and non-Indians in Lowland
South American (Carneiro da Cunha 2009; Hugh-Jones 1992; Virtanen 2009).
Amazonian exchange relations are typically not limited to economic relations
alone, but figure in the establishment of bonds based in kinship (Overing Kaplan
1975), alliance (Lévi-Strauss 1969), friendship (Carneiro da Cunha 1978), slavery
(Santos-Granero 2009a), familiarization (Fausto 2000), companionship (Walker
2009), and guardianship (Ball 2011a), among others.
Henley’s (1996) review of the scholarship on history, exchange, and alterity
in the anthropology of Lowland South America points to an increasing focus
on exchange, not in terms of the circulation of material goods for the sake of
acquiring wealth, but rather on exchange in terms of such aspects as persons,
names, and ritual knowledge for the sake of social relationships. Attention to the
ways in which Indians symbolically and materially approach others demonstrates

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that the incorporation of outside elements into the interior of society is a basic
means of Amazonian social reproduction (Viveiros de Castro 1992). It also re-
quires ethnographic research into the variety of indigenous Amazonian exchange
economies that takes account of diversity in cultural understandings of desired
goals of exchange and appropriate ways of building relationships with powerful
others, human and nonhuman. Henley emphasizes that what varies in Amazonia is
the extent to which different groups harness outside energies through relatively in-
tense cycles of exchange, including ritual trade, shamanism, hunting, and warfare.
Vilaça’s Strange Enemies (2010) explores an apparent extreme of incorporation of
the other such that Wari people claim to have become whites. Her approach shows
the cultural contextual, as well as historical and social, conditions that make such
exchanges possible.
The literature on Gê societies has also contributed to the body of research
on anthropology of exchange in Amazonia, especially work by Turner on both
ritual exchange internal to Kayapo communities and relations with whites (1991,
1995). Recent studies of Xikrin Kayapo communities, including Fisher’s (2003)
work on name rituals and relations with extractive economies (Fisher 2000), in
addition to Gordon’s (2006) analysis of the incorporation of cash into Xikrin
Kayapo society, explicitly take up interethnic exchange in the context of the re-
production of social relations. Work by Santos-Granero is part of this line of
research on exchange, recently evidenced, for example, by a volume he edited
(2009b) on the subjectification of objects in Amazonia. This book makes a num-
ber of important contributions, especially to the field of ritual exchange between
humans and nonhuman, even “inanimate,” objects—although in animistic Ama-
zonia this is complicated (see Descola 2006). The volume’s collective focus on
circulation and appropriation of the animating forces of possessions is a good ex-
ample of the potential insights of sociocultural anthropological study of exchange
in Amazonia, but, like other work in this tradition, it fails to incorporate rele-
vant anthropological perspectives on language and discourse in Lowland South
America. Perhaps because of the saliency of language in the region, work on lin-
guistic exogamy in the exchange network of the Colombian Vaupés (Jackson 1983),
and “mytho-historical” narrative about exchange and interethnic indigenous and
white relations in the Brazilian Upper Rio Negro (Chernela and Leed 2003), does
a better job of relating discourse and exchange.2 The aim of the present work is to
contribute to understanding the ways that language and reflexive ideologies about
exchange as communication contribute to native Amazonian ideologies of social
relations.
The ethnographic study of relationships between Wauja people and non-Indian
agents of change shows that while indigenous actors in this case tend to focus on
open-ended exchange processes, development agents often focus on final results.
These differing orientations can lead to breakdowns in communication. People on

Stop Loss 415

 both sides may interpret interactional difficulties, or even “failures” motivated by
ideological difference, as indexes of loss. For Wauja, closure in exchange signals
loss of future relational potential, while for non-Indian agents of change resis-
tance in negotiation may signal a loss of traditional culture. It is ironic that when
Wauja people employ exchange strategies consistent with their cultural tradition
of perpetuation, and refuse to admit the completion of a development project by
demanding more resources, NGO and other agents often interpret this as corrup-
tion by greed. Government and nongovernment actors attribute this situation to
the historical conditions of the PIX, which they claim has coddled Upper Xin-
guan people. This works to reproduce the discourses of loss that are at the root
of the park as a protective institution, as well as Amazonian development more
broadly. Development as an emergent cultural project reinforces a tendency to
misconstrue even elements of indigenous continuity in transformation in terms
of loss.
The research on which this article is based was conducted with Wauja peo-
ple in and around the PIX over a period of 12 months during 2005 and 2006,
during which time I studied local manifestations of language and culture within
the Wauja community, as well the politics of Wauja communication with out-
siders. I conducted an ethnography of situations where Wauja people interacted
with indigenous neighbors and non-Indian individuals and groups, including
representatives of NGOs, Brazilian health workers, missionary Bible translators,
and museum representatives within the park, in Brazilian towns and cities, and
internationally (Fiorini and Ball 2006). I was not affiliated with any NGOs dur-
ing my fieldwork, although I was interested in how Wauja people made con-
nections with development agents.3 This article focuses on interactions between
Wauja people and FUNASA, the Brazilian national public health agency, and
the Amazon Forest League (AFL), an international conservation NGO active
in the Upper Xingu and other areas throughout South America at the time of
my fieldwork.4 Although there are many differences between these two institu-
tions, just as there are differences among native Xinguans, I suggest that at the
general level of cultural orientations to goals and means of constructing social
relations through exchange we may identify common themes underlying their
projects.
Upper Xinguans and development agents differ in the exchange ideologies they
employ. By exchange ideology I simply mean cultural norms influencing means
and goals of exchange relations. These norms may be otherwise recognized as
involving, for example, economic, religious, psychological, interpersonal, political,
and linguistic aspects. For instance, consider Sahlins’s (2000) analysis of mid–19th
century Fiji, where white missionaries and traders referred to the Fijian custom
of generalized reciprocity known as kerekere as immoral “begging”; they refused
to participate. Fijians saw white commercialism as selfishness, and insightfully

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associated white methods of exchange with deeper cultural differences. Sahlins
quotes one chief who told the missionary Richard Lyth, “we hate buying and
we hate the lotu (Christianity)” (2000:477). The missionaries did not read the
aggressive rejection of buying and selling (and God) as an impassioned invitation
to social relations in the Fijian way, and Lyth explains the end of his exchange
with the Fijian chief as follows: “he concluded by begging a knife for one of his
friends, which after such a conversation I thought it best to refuse, which I did
as respectfully as possible” (Sahlins 2000:477). The ideology of kerekere vakaviti,
[to ask for something in the Fijian manner],5 informs interactional enactments
of exchange through ways of asking that were misinterpreted as ways of begging.
Furthermore, colonial and later observers painted a false picture of Fijian culture
loss by retrospectively casting the ideology of kerekere vakaviti as a recent Fijian
political invention designed to give the impression of generosity in the face of
commercialism. As Sahlins points out for Fiji, and as I point out for the Xingu
(park), indigenous cultures exhibit continuity in transformation, and we cannot
reduce explanation either to the terms of imperialist images of primitive innocence
or to the other’s naive adoption of our terms at the expense of lost tradition. I
question discourses that frame the Upper Xinguan indigenous ideology of open-
ended exchange and its ways of deferring and demanding as indexes of cultural
loss.
This argument is not concerned with whether Wauja or other indigenous
people adopt discourses of loss and reproduce them in order to further political
goals. Rather, this work attempts to show that Wauja, and by extension other Up-
per Xinguans, engage discourses of loss at a higher order, when they respond to
the conditions of new exchange relationships with outsiders using various tactics.
Ironically, it is often when Wauja actors follow the most locally “traditional” ap-
proaches to building exchange relationships that they are seen by non-Indians to
have lost the most, to have become whining complainers corrupted and spoiled by
contact with Western values—principally greed. Putatively authentic Wauja prac-
tice is misrecognized and ends up reinforcing the discourse of loss that motivates
the very terms of Wauja engagement with others. Wauja people are aware of this
by degrees and the process through which they take account of this politics will be
discussed below. Adjustments and changes are themselves risky, as perceptions of
Indian interestedness can be an enemy to recognition. Such processes are common
wherever indigenous “authenticity” is in the air, and pointing out the sociohis-
torical contours of their reoccurrence in particular conjunctures is an important
task for anthropology. This is true not only for Amazonia (Conklin and Graham
1995; Jackson 1995; Turner 1991), but also for other areas including North Amer-
ica (Clifford 1988), Australia (Povinelli 2002), Indonesia (Li 2000), and Polynesia
(Sahlins 2000).

Stop Loss 417

 Wauja in the PIX

Wauja people number roughly 350 and most live in a single settlement named
Piyulaga inside the Xingu Park. In addition, one extended family has moved
to establish a lone settlement called Arawak near the western edge of the park,
and another family is stationed at a vigilance post called Batovi on the park’s
southern border. Several Wauja people reside outside of the park in Brazilian
towns, either permanently or for extended periods of the year. The main Wauja
settlement, like other Upper Xinguan villages, consists of a circle of large thatch-
covered longhouses arranged around a central patio. Multiple families occupy
each house and, typically, there is an internal hierarchy placing a household chief
or owner over, for example, resident sons-in-law who owe him respect. Factional
divisions crisscross the village, making entire houses off limits to any given villager,
in a prohibition that people often attribute to the sense of shame they would
feel on entering. Respect and shame, in combination with anger, jealousy, and
complaint, are key affective and attitudinal signs of social relationships in the Upper
Xingu.
Ethnohistorical data suggest that Wauja have inhabited areas adjacent or near
to their current location for at least the past century. This is confirmed by reports
of Wauja presence on the Batovi river in the 1880s by German explorer Von den
Steinen (1940). Some researchers suggest an Arawak origin for Upper Xinguan
culture in general (Heckenberger 2000). This means that the original inhabitants
to settle the Upper Xingu, to fish its rivers and plant manioc gardens and pe-
qui fruit orchards, would have been speakers of an ancestral language of Wauja.
Whether or not the Wauja and other contemporary Arawak-speaking neighbors
(such as the Mehinaku and the Yawalapiti) are privileged descendants of the first
Upper Xinguans, the Wauja are often recognized by other Indians and by outsiders
as an especially conservative group. Upper Xinguans have long been regarded as
the “purest” Indians in the Xingu Park, in contrast to residents of the Middle
and Lower Xingu such as the Kayabi (Oakdale 2004). Upper Xinguans, includ-
ing the Wauja, are positioned as a collective image of what Brazilians imagine
Indians should be; Ramos terms this an image of the “hyperreal Indian” (Ramos
1998). This is in turn connected to Western perceptions of nature as represented
by Amazonia, and certain Amazonians as primordial, and incapable of positive
change.
Wauja people are speakers of an Arawak language. Many, though not all,
indigenous people who live in the Xingu Park speak languages from other lin-
guistic stocks. The Upper Xingu is a multilingual social system composed of
semiautonomous local groups speaking different languages. Linguistic and an-
thropological research has consistently reinforced two important points about

418 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

the Upper Xingu social system. First, it comprises a particular kind of multi-
lingual area, wherein many genetically unrelated languages are found side by
side, but where most people are monolingual in practice: this situation rein-
forces an ideology of ethnolinguistic group distinctiveness (Basso 1973; Franchetto
2001). Second, anthropologists have shown that despite such grammatical linguis-
tic boundaries the social system is actively maintained through intergroup ritual
exchange (Franchetto 2001). Furthermore, ideas about how one should, for ex-
ample, properly challenge, complain, demand, or remain silent in speech are
conventionally linked to how one should properly reciprocate, refuse, or accept—
tying language behavior to social relationships as exchange relations in this cultural
system.
The PIX as an institution in many ways owes its existence to discourses of
loss. The park’s foundation has rested since its inception on the image of the
untouched Amazon and the specter of its disappearance. The park’s originators,
the Villas-Bôas brothers, sought to enclose an already timeless but threatened hu-
man ecosystem in a bubble, and to preserve both the traditions of indigenous
inhabitants and the tradition of a part European, part African, and part Indian
Brazilian national identity. Indigenous inhabitants of the first national park de-
signed to preserve people and their culture have been caught between the goals
of pacification, state control, and preservation as if in amber (Garfield 2004).
Pacification arrived with the imposition of a reimagined picture of (Upper) Xin-
guan social relations maintained through cooperative ritual instead of intergroup
warfare, which is part of a process that Menezes de Bastos (1989) calls “pax
Xinguensis.”
Residents of the southern portion of PIX territory in the Upper Xingu—
with its idealized images of nudity, body paint, feathers, and peaceful elaborate
ceremony—were especially subject to the park’s de facto demand of timelessness.
An important consequence is that many Brazilian observers still see Upper Xin-
guans as lucky to have been saved and thus evaluate uncooperative indigenous
practice as ungrateful; this is held up as evidence that these people are, in contrast
to alternately colonized Indians, spoiled children. One representative of AFL con-
fided in me that Upper Xinguans such as the Wauja have become “rock stars” since
their image as emblems of Brazil’s Indian past had been positively rewarded with
protection by the park. He compared them to other Amazonian indigenous groups
the NGO has worked with, and described them as easier to work with, perhaps due
to differing historical conditions of contact. On another occasion, I encountered a
Brazilian anthropology graduate student carrying out fieldwork in a presumably
rougher area of Amazonia; when I told him that I worked in the Xingu, he scoffed
that the park was the “Disneyland of Indians.”6 The figure of Disneyland here
references the perceived artificiality of the park environment as well as an image of
a superficial culture of entertainment. Both these comments, by putative friends

Stop Loss 419

 of Indians, present negative appraisals of a false, entitled, spoiled, and even uppity
ethnic class of indigenous residents of the Xingu Park—a situation perceived to be
exemplified by Upper Xinguans.
Indigenous groups within the park may themselves engage in apparent com-
petition over “purity of Indian-ness.” This happens within the Upper Xingu, for
example, when the Wauja accuse their Yawalapiti neighbors of being too attached
to possessions manufactured by whites, rather than trading in traditional goods
in ritual exchanges (Ball 2011b). Language can serve as an index of purity, so
groups that have increasingly shifted to Portuguese, such as the Trumai, may be
characterized as having lost something of their Upper Xinguan identity. Within
the park as a whole, groups such as the Ikpeng from the Middle Xingu, who were
historically relocated to the park, have adopted some Upper Xinguan stereotypes
of dress, residential pattern, and ritual forms, suggesting an Upper Xinguan stan-
dard of purity. Wauja tend to look askance at the Ikpeng7 as well as the Awetı́
people, who are said to be relatively recent arrivals to Upper Xinguan society. In
intergroup funerary rituals, as well as at soccer tournaments, I observed young
Wauja men ridicule the entrance and performance of Awetı́ dancers and players.
They said that Awetı́ men are small and weak, like bats, straying from the Up-
per Xinguan masculine ideal of the strong wrestler. This sort of rivalry between
Xinguan groups is complex, and in some ways it reflects a longstanding aspect of
social relations in the region. However, it is clear that many of the standards of what
it means to be Indian in this setting derive from the park’s history of ideological
reinforcement of Upper Xinguan values of civility. This has turned such values into
ascribed as well as affiliative markers of identity for many Upper Xinguans, and has
tended to influence perceptions of what it means to be a “real Indian” in Brazilian
Amazonia.8
Portuguese has become increasingly important as a lingua franca since the
founding of the PIX, although its penetration has been channeled in specific
sociological directions (Basso 1972). One domain in which Portuguese use
by Park inhabitants has consistently increased is interaction in the context of
planning and executing development projects with outsiders. This situation af-
fords new responsibilities and political influence for bilingual Wauja–Portuguese
speakers, who are mostly young men. While development is often focused, es-
pecially for non-Indians, on forestalling loss of indigenous culture, lives, liveli-
hoods, ecology, and even language, the requirement of an even partial indigenous
shift to the dominant language of the state is one of many ironies inherent in
the discursive negotiation of indigenous practice through the institution of the
exogenously funded project (Graham 2002). Contact-induced changes in lan-
guage practice and allied principles of exchange entail moments of intercultural
miscommunication. Such moments are reference points for difference between

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commonsense assumptions about shared orientations that guide participants in
interaction.

Interethnic Encounters in Development

Misunderstandings in interactions between non-Indian agents of change and Up-

per Xinguans may be compounded when indigenous representatives speak Por-
tuguese and, thus, the parties in conversation assume they are “speaking the same
language.” But it is difference in cultural assumptions about the forms that social
relations can and should take, as well as what sorts of behaviors are appropriate to
constructing relationships through talk that lies at the root of much of the difficulty
experienced by Indians and non-Indians in this context.
A common assumption in Amazonian development is that Indians do not
know how to engage responsibly and efficiently in projects, and must be taught.
Non-Indian agents of change expend considerable energy in this regard, and many
spoke to me about the difficulty of the task.9 Representatives of AFL prepared
a pamphlet in Portuguese targeted at capacitating representatives of indigenous
associations in the preparation of project proposals. Under the heading “objec-
tives” in section two of the guide, indigenous project planners are encouraged
to “indicate the objectives of the proposal, that is, expected realizations including
project results” (my emphasis). They are reminded in bullet points to remem-
ber to clearly express “intended results, final products,” as well as the “period
and location” of the project. Subsequent instructions in the document lay out
the structuration of the project in terms of its “stages” and the “logical order
of their realization,” suggesting flowcharts and timetables as visual and concep-
tual aids.10 There is an overwhelming emphasis on the temporal closure of the
proposed project. This orientation to the temporality of development projects
figures exchange in terms of accomplishments and achievements versus states and
activities.11
If development projects are temporally bounded, with an emphasis on goals
and outcomes, and accountability measured in terms of success and failure, then
this clashes with an Upper Xinguan logic of continuous and open-ended exchange
relations between endogamous linguistic descent groups. NGO- and government-
sponsored development projects are organized ideologically (although not neces-
sarily in practice, of course) on a platform of symmetrical cooperation. They tend
to emphasize collaboration and the satisfaction of being able to claim in the end
that the work has been successfully completed. This compartmentalized and of-
ten accelerated (from a local perspective) temporal frame of work accomplished in
quantifiable units of progress often leads to problems on the ground in Amazonian
development (Chernela 2005).

Stop Loss 421

 Consider a meeting held inside the park to evaluate the progress of a health
care project involving FUNASA, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and IPEAX, a
pan-Xinguan indigenous association. Two young Wauja men in their thirties gave
public speeches addressed to Brazilian representatives. The first speech was by
Kapi, the son of a prominent Wauja visionary shaman responsible for oversight of
western health care in the Wauja village. Kapi is directly subordinate to Brazilian
administrators from the Ministry of Health, who supply his post in the village and
pay his salary as a health worker.
Kapi spoke in Portuguese, and oriented his speech around the Portuguese term
melhorar (improve). He said that in meetings people from the ministry always said
“improve, improve” but “in my village nothing has improved.” Kapi raises the point
that instead of “improving,” the discussion should be about “supplying.” He indicts
the ministry and the association for failing to supply enough medical equipment
to indigenous workers in the park. He ends with the following statement.

Será que FUNASA está vendo prioridade Is it the case that FUNASA is seeing the
das aldeias? villages’ priorities?
Não está vendo. It is not.
Será que IPEAX está vendo prioridade das Is it the case that IPEAX is seeing the
aldeias? priorities of the villages?
Não está vendo. It is not.
Está escutando só. It is only listening.
Está ouvindo onde está precisando It is (merely) hearing where equipment is
equipamento. needed.
Isso eu acho muito errado de vocês. I think this is very wrong of you.

His speech overall denies progress and demands more expenditure. Making
these kinds of demands is a common feature of Upper Xinguan discourse, where
demand functions as an appeal to sponsors to display their generosity, especially in
ritual. Demands as speech acts, taken in the Upper Xinguan cultural context, tend
to be directed from a subordinate in the role of receiver to a superior in the role of
giver, and they work to perpetuate exchange. While making demands may appear
to be disrespectful, in the Upper Xinguan cycle of ritual sponsorship and exchange
it can actually mark the superiority of the addressee, indirectly signaling respect.
While it may be the case that Kapi had serious criticisms of his employers and
of the distribution of resources from FUNASA and IPEAX, his comments should
be understood in light of an exchange relation in which Wauja people appeal to
powerful donors to continue exchange and thus continue social relatedness.12
The second speech at the FUNASA meeting was given by Tuwa. In contrast
to Kapi, Tuwa did not complain that nothing had been accomplished. Instead he
emphasized the Portuguese term união (unity).

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Então, única forma que a gente pode fazer
unir, união.
União é muito importante.
Diss- fala a verdade que a união mais
importante para o homen branco é isso.
Sem união, a gente não vão conseguir nada.
So the only thing we can do is unite, unity.
Unity is very important.
It is true to say that the most important thing
for the whiteman is this.
Without unity, we will not achieve anything.

Tuwa’s discourse displays a command of development and pan-indigenous

political speech genres, which he gained during his extensive experience as a
mediator with Brazilians. Tuwa was the first president of the Wauja indigenous
association. Indigenous associations in Amazonia objectify forms of community
that can engage in development projects qua exchange relations as juridical subjects
capable of opening bank accounts and receiving benefits. The association has
emerged as an alternative political structure throughout the Amazon, challenging
or displacing prior regimes of community leadership in many places (Carneiro
da Cunha 2009). Note, Tuwa says that unity is the most important principle
of exchange for whites: he recognizes the principle as exogenous and effectively
incorporates it, adding it to the Wauja repertoire.
A Brazilian health worker who was sitting at the main table where these speeches
were directed made the following public commentary. Her reaction was that Tuwa’s
discourse on unity is earnest and positive in comparison with Kapi’s demand for
more prestation, which is seen as divisive and negative.

Eu gostaria de falar, I would like to say,

Agradecer ele.
Eu fico feliz de ouvir o que o nosso amigo
falou.
Porque a gente fica triste quando a gente
ouve que não melhorou nada, né?
Com certeza tem muita coisa para mudar
ainda.
Muita, muita, infinita
To thank him.
I am happy to hear what our friend said.
Because we become sad when we hear that
nothing has improved, you know?
Certainly there are still many things that
need to be changed.
Many, many, infinite (things)

The speaker responds to the two speeches as an emotionally involved addressee,

at first personally offended and subsequently reassured by the interaction. She
spoke immediately following Tuwa’s speech and refers to him first, invoking Kapi’s
speech second. The speaker presents the two pragmatic Wauja approaches in
different ways. She thanks Tuwa, mentioning him explicitly as a friend, for his
positive contribution: it made her happy. Next she comments on the negative
appraisal made by Kapi. She expresses her sadness at hearing that nothing has
improved.

Stop Loss 423

 A gente sabe que a saúde publica é muito
difı́cil.
E a gente vê resultado ao longo prazo, a
muitos anos.
Por isso que a gente acaba desanimando.
“Não nos da resultado, não da resultado.”
A gente só vai ver resultado daqui a alguns
anos.
Agora falar que não melhorou nada,
Eu fico triste.
Como que não melhorou nada?
We know that public health is very difficult.
And that we see results in the long run, after
many years.
So we end up losing motivation.
“This isn’t working, we don’t see results.”
We are only going to see results after some
years.
Now to say that nothing has improved,
I get sad.
How can you say that nothing has improved?

The speaker mimics Kapi’s accusation, voicing the complaining, whining In-
dian. She speaks for an exasperated collective body of Brazilian and other white
agents who try to help the Indians, and receive complaints of inadequacy in return.
The FUNASA representative’s positive reaction to Tuwa’s contribution to the meet-
ing and her negative response to Kapi’s exemplifies a common theme in interethnic
relations between Upper Xinguans and development agents. Upper Xinguans may
attempt to treat non-Indian agents as they would treat ritual sponsors, and this
can generate ill will. This happens in part because indigenous appeals not to end
exchange relationships are often interpreted as a refusal to finish the job at hand,
and continual demands for more resources are often interpreted as greedily taking
advantage.
In several meetings with AFL I heard congratulations from NGO representa-
tives for a job well done that were met with an Upper Xinguan response that work
was not completed, there was more to be done, and that the NGO had not yet
provided enough. When Upper Xinguans assume a complementary subordinate
position to the NGO as distributor of wealth they have the right, according to
Upper Xinguan ideologies of exchange, to expect generosity in the distribution
of resources, and they are prone to complain that there is never enough. On one
AFL project to survey the PIX border, Wauja participants continually increased the
list of supplies needed for the project’s continuation, including food, clothing, and
gasoline. Some of these demands were made by radio from the field, and I observed
visible frustration among NGO representatives who suspected their project was
being held hostage. This can upset the planned execution of multistage projects,
such that increasing demands for more resources are almost always interpreted as
purposeful noncooperation.
At a meeting to discuss the same project, one Wauja man openly claimed that
no progress was being made. A senior AFL representative replied that if the Wauja
said that the NGO was doing nothing when everybody knew that they were doing
something, then they might as well do nothing, since that is what people would
claim in any case. The NGO representative was animated, and commented to me

424 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

afterwards that he usually let such comments pass him by, but this time he felt a
strong response was in order.
Frequently, non-Indian agents of change, such as the FUNASA representative,
or the AFL representative who claimed that Upper Xinguans are spoiled “rock
stars,” seem to lament that the politics of development are made difficult by
indigenous demands. They expressed to me their view that there has been an
increase in these sorts of demands as Indians have become more used to and
dependent upon outside resources, implying that indigenous forms of exchange
have been lost as Indians have been corrupted. Yet, this reaction has been observed
in other places in Amazonia at different times (Hugh-Jones 1992), suggesting that
something about indigenous cultural ideologies of exchange relations may have
been missed in such assessments.

Demands in Context

Hugh-Jones (1992) proposes that native cultural approaches to relation making

through exchange in the Colombian Vaupés help to explain the common percep-
tion of incessant native Amazonian “demands” upon outsiders. He cites Basso,
working among the Upper Xinguan Kalapalo, as stating, “during the first year of
my stay among the Kalapalo, I was inundated with requests for articles of cloth-
ing, cooking vessels, food, magazines, and other of my possessions, as well as for
presents that I was exhorted to buy in Rio de Janeiro” (1973:7).13 Hugh-Jones
suggests that such demands, insofar as requests for gifts fit into a native system
of exchange (without reifying a static opposition between gift and commodity
economies), may be more about the establishment of social relationships than the
acquisition of the things requested.
I was impressed by the role of demands in sustaining relations with outsiders
in the Upper Xingu. Not only were there the requests I received to bring things
to people “when I come back,” thereby locking in a future union, but also on
one particular occasion at the PIX central post I was approached by an elderly
Kalapalo man, who, presuming I was American, asked if I knew Ellen (Basso, the
anthropologist cited by Hugh-Jones, above). After I replied that I knew of her,
which in this context was tantamount to saying I knew her very well, he insisted
that I relay a set of requests/demands for her to “give back” unspecified things in
repayment for all of the hospitality he and his kin had extended so many years
ago.14 I came to understand such moments of demand as petitions for the con-
tinuation of desired relationships, that these petitions characterize asymmetrical
exchange relations in the Upper Xinguan setting, and that, importantly, they em-
anate from a position of receiver directed toward a powerful and hopefully generous
benefactor.

Stop Loss 425

 Demands are a central part of Upper Xinguan exchange, and demanding
more in the appropriate contexts furthers continued reproduction of relation-
ships. Specifics of Upper Xinguan exchange ideologies emerge clearly in ritual
contexts. All ritual meetings have a sponsor who is responsible for coordination
of the event, including payments to performers and food and accommodation for
visiting guests. A generous display of wealth puts the sponsor in a position of chief.
Along with this prerogative comes an expectation of noble demeanor, which in the
Upper Xingu centers on the conceptual cluster of shame, respect, and humility.
Basso (1973) describes how the Upper Xinguan Kalapalo use the notion of ifutisu,
which describes demeanor characterized by both shame and respect, as a distin-
guishing factor separating Upper Xinguans from “fierce” Indians. Kalapalo ifutisu
implies generosity and outwardly peaceful behavior, and it is not only distinctive
of Upper Xinguans versus foreigners, it is also distinctive of chiefs or nobles versus
common folk. Upper Xinguan chiefs and sponsors of ritual are expected to display
ifutisu.
An important point that has been overlooked by many ethnographers of the
Upper Xingu is that displays of shame and respect are dialogically related to replies
that appear to show the opposite, disrespect. It is impossible to understand the
role of ifutisu behavior in the Upper Xingu without placing it in relation to its
counterpart, incivility. In Wauja, the following terms composed of a verb nomi-
nalized with the suffix -ki describe shame and respect versus complaint; aipitsi-ki
“shame”; amonapata-ki “respect”; and peyete-ki “anger/complaint,” which refers
to both anger and the speech acts of complaint and accusation. Ritual performers
and visitors are licensed to complain and demand more prestation from sponsors.
Wauja tend to say of stereotypical chiefly behavior, amunau aitsa peyetepei, [Chiefs
don’t get angry or complain]; rather, só peão que acusa, peão não tem vergonha,
[only peons/commoners complain, peons/commoners don’t have any shame.]
Commoners as recipients complain and lack shame, but chiefs do not complain
because amunau aipitsipai inyau outsa [chiefs are ashamed (to reply) in front of
people], and amunau amonapatapai inyau, [chiefs respect people.]
Once, when I accompanied two elder Wauja men, including the recognized
senior Wauja chief Sepı́, to a Brazilian town outside the park, our group was ejected
from our hotel without adequate explanation, but with the clearly implied reason
that Indians were not welcome. Local indigenous advocates suggested that the
Wauja men file a formal complaint of racial discrimination, and this went as far
as a visit to the police station. In the waiting room, both men decided against
making a statement, telling me that they were chiefs and they had (self-) respect
and humility enough to not complain or make claims against others. The hotel
owner’s unsightly show of bravado as he angrily threw us out, even threatening
violence was, for these Wauja men, a display of uncivil peyete-ki not worthy of
reply in kind by people of their status.

426 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

 The ideological pairing of humility versus complaint is not limited to the po-
litical sphere; the same attitude characterizes relations between in-laws. Taboos on
speaking the names of affines and other avoidance strategies that count as discursive
indexes of respect mark affinity (see Basso 2007 on the Kalapalo affinal civility reg-
ister). Gregor states in his ethnography of the Wauja’s Arawak-speaking neighbors
the Mehinaku, “Affinal kinship is regarded as burdensome, and it is not surprising
that the institution is marked by covert antagonism which finds expression as
invidious gossip and surreptitious insults. One son-in-law accuses his wife’s father
of witchcraft and theft. Behind the old man’s back, he contemptuously violates the
naming taboo and derogatorily refers to him as ‘grandfather’” (1977:285). Respect
together with complaint and demand characterize various social relations that are
culturally loaded with connotations of alterity, including affinal relations between
fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, and political and professional relations between
sponsors and performers. One important function of these complementary roles
and modes of expression is to construct an asymmetrical space of ritual exchange.
Debt is paramount, and necessary to the continuity of the connection between
individuals and groups. Upper Xinguan exchange is premised on a continuation of
exchange relations, and an avoidance of conditions that would appear to foreclose
them. This dynamic is transposed onto relations between Upper Xinguan groups,
so that groups cycle through hosting and receiving roles in yearly intergroup ritual
meetings. In turn, Upper Xinguans are prone to approach outside interlocutors
within this interactional frame. They may be dismayed when the people they treat
as generous sponsors, as noble chiefs, do not respond as such.

Conclusions: Transformation and Perceptions of Loss

It should not be assumed that such issues of cultural difference are static and
absolute. Killick’s (2008) study of competing values associated with exogenous
compadrazgo and indigenous ayompari “trading partner” relations in interethnic
exchange between mestizo and Ashéninka individuals in Peruvian Amazonia shows
how opposing ideologies of exchange can be dynamically related. Killick analyzes
these as contrastive but overlapping “idioms” for exchange, showing that day-
to-day interactions are sites where individuals work out the cultural character of
ayompari relations as equal versus compadrazgo relations as hierarchical. Despite
this key difference the two idioms are similar enough to allow mutual benefit to
partners in interethnic exchange centering on timber: through practices informed
by these exchange ideologies actors negotiate and accommodate views of the
other.15
If Amazonian and Upper Xinguan exchange ideologies are complex they are
also flexible. Incorporation of outside elements is allowed for and even encouraged.

Stop Loss 427

 Virtanen (2009) shows that this tendency is evident in new interethnic relations
between Brazilian Manchineri people and powerful others. Wauja people, like
other Amazonians, are by no means completely unaware of the processes through
which they transform the ways they engage others. In many ways orientation to
outside logics of exchange is a strategic learning process. What must be learned in
order to engage in new kinds of exchange is in large part new ways of speaking. As
Virtanen puts it, “For native peoples, leaning how to talk with foreigners, and the
ability to use their terms and concepts, means adopting a new discourse” (Virtanen
2009:341).
Of course, because many of the rhetorical strategies involved are opaque or
relatively below the level of awareness (Silverstein 2001), people may not be in
a position to explicitly articulate how they change. This does not mean they do
not try. One focus of daily talk in the Wauja village center, where men typically
meet to discuss affairs of importance to the community, is precisely interpretation
of white concepts, desires, and expectations in relation to how Wauja can benefit
from accommodating them. This is often highly collaborative talk and may involve
younger men with more experience outside the community explaining to elders
ideas about development and exchange involving money. I recall a vivid image used
by a bilingual Wauja man to translate the Portuguese language terms for checking
versus savings bank accounts. The Wauja association had opened new accounts
with the Bank of Brasil in order to receive funds and participate in development
projects. When a monolingual Wauja elder inquired about the distinction, his
junior played on the meaning of the Wauja term “leaf,” ata-pana, composed of
the word for “wood” plus a classifier denoting foliform shape. This term has
been semantically extended from leaf to mean also “paper,” and more recently
“money.” The young man explained of the savings account, “these leaves/bills stay
on the forest floor,” and of the checking account, “these leaves/bills fly away,”
substituting air (wind) as the metaphorical medium of circulation for water as in
“liquidity.”16
On another occasion, a group of Wauja people had returned from São Paulo
and some of the men discussed their success in selling arts and crafts to Brazilians.
The conversation was centered on how to appeal to tastes of outsiders, both
in terms of functional utility and the aesthetics of Wauja ceramics. Brazilians
appreciate traditional (looking) Wauja designs, but desire the functionality of
food-safe plates and cups. Such reflexive evaluations of how to accommodate and
understand foreign orientations to exchange relations with Wauja people, from
transactions of commodities to exchange relations as total social facts, are a part
of how Wauja learn to adopt new discourses.
I have suggested that Wauja exchange ideologies tend to be open ended and
focused on process while the exchange ideology of the development project is rela-
tively more focused on ends and results. Wauja achieve open-ended exchange with

428 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

other Upper Xinguans through a cycle of complaint and respect that structures
asymmetry and perpetuity. This strategy may be taken into new contexts of ex-
change with non-Indian agents of change, even though the multivalent meanings
of indigenous complaint and demands made in meetings with development agents
are so often misread. Further, Amazonian exchange ideologies in general push the
incorporation of exogenous objects such that Wauja people are predisposed to
adopt interactional tactics that they learn through development projects. This last
point is perhaps less visible within the Upper Xinguan system itself unless one is
sensitive to the historical processes of linguistic and cultural interpenetration that
have built shared ritual, mythological, kinship, taxonomic, economic, and material
culture out of various indigenous traditions. The effects are most visible contem-
porarily as Upper Xinguans interact with outsiders, making outside elements their
own.
In Upper Xinguan and Amazonian development more generally, while NGO
and other development agencies see their motivation as forestalling ecological and
indigenous cultural loss, this tends to focus on notions of indigenous cultural and
linguistic patrimony, such as taxonomic knowledge of environmental resources
and other typically or easily objectified domains. Cultural principles guiding so-
cial action and, specifically, exchange ideologies remain opaque to these outside
evaluations of potential loss. When indigenous Amazonians engage in projects
according to their own cultural expectations, this is precisely when they are most
likely to be seen as overly demanding and greedy, and these are precisely the in-
dexes of cultural corruption for well-intentioned western sympathizers. This is
compounded when Indians do not speak to outsiders in an indigenous language
(Graham 2002), and complaint or demand in Portuguese may be read as a dou-
ble index of loss. The continuity of the Upper Xinguan exchange ideology can
end up affirming non-Indian actors’ suspicions that Indians are losing their lan-
guage, their presumed culture of economic ignorance, and, worse, that they do not
care about the environmental and cultural loss that their projects are designed to
alleviate.
Looking back, Kapi and Tuwa’s contributions at the meeting of Upper Xin-
guans with FUNASA display the ironies of such processes of transformation and
interpretation. The Upper Xinguan calendar of ritual, which is founded upon an
emphasis on delayed return, and signals hierarchy through comportment, runs
up against the logic of development agents from outside. Sepı́, the chief who re-
fused to accuse the Brazilian hotel owner, was present at the same meeting. He is
monolingual, however, and made no contribution to the discussions about how
to improve the conditions of health care in the Wauja community. Similar to
the monolingual Waiãpi chief in the ethnographic film “The Journey of Chief
Wai-Wai” (O’Connor 1992), who was effectively silenced in negotiations with the
Brazilian government Foundation for Indian Affairs (FUNAI) by lack of available

Stop Loss 429

 translation into Portuguese, Sepı́ never even spoke. Such meetings often exclude
non-Portuguese speakers, but this should not be equated with exclusion of in-
digenous discursive forms. Kapi successfully articulates in Portuguese the Upper
Xinguan principle that receivers are expected to complain of insufficiency and
demand more, however unsuccessful this was as an interactional appeal to FU-
NASA’s generosity. Tuwa’s statements in Portuguese, on the other hand, show
how he incorporates a foreign grammar and ideology based in putative unity into
an evolving Wauja repertoire for social relation making through discourse and
exchange.
The insistence by scholars of the Xingu, such as Oakdale (2004), that an-
thropology should avoid authenticity as an analytic category is motivated by the
observation that in Amazonia reflexive reformulation of exogenous concepts, ma-
terials, and practices that originate from outside tend to render these distinctly
indigenous. Wauja people are now in the process of reflexively incorporating some
of the exchange principles on which development is premised. This process should
not be seen as inauthentic, as Oakdale and others caution, and the slipperiness
of authenticity is especially apparent when we realize that conscious efforts by
Wauja people to avoid indigenous demands of hierarchy and argument, and to
engage Westerners on what they perceive to be “white” terms, results in just those
images of cooperation, symmetricality, and pacificity that ring true as the most
authentic traits of Upper Xinguans from the perspective of many non-Indian
agents.
Wauja, for their part, have become conscious of exchange techniques that
outsiders bring to them; they have recognized them as cultural objects and have
worked to incorporate some of those techniques into their own repertoire. The
process of borrowing from new exchange ideologies combines pragmatic strategies
of talk with a reevaluation of the mechanisms and goals of exchange. In fact both
components of Wauja outreach are complexly ordered, such that the process of
transformation should not be characterized in terms of substitution, loss, or the
end of Amazonian language and culture. Rather, Wauja enact a project of outreach
that expands their repertoire of interactional strategies and the means and ends of
their exchange relationships.

Acknowledgments

The research on which this article is based was funded by a Fulbright-Hays DDRA
grant. I thank all of the Wauja and other people involved in the development
projects described here for their cooperation in helping me to understand some of
the complexities of intercultural exchange. Any errors in presentation or interpre-
tation are my own.

430 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Notes

1 The anthropological research represented here is a part of this ongoing dialogue.

2 Recent work by linguistic anthropologists has suggested that the ways in which language has
contributed to theorization of Amazonia cosmology remain unrecognized. Course (2010) argues that
Euro-American linguistic ideological bias may contribute to structuralist oppositions found in per-
spectivism; Deleage (2011) remarks that perhaps differences between Descola’s animism and Viveiros
de Castro’s perspectivism can be traced back in part to textual differences between the oral traditions
of Achuar anent and Araweté shamanic and war songs.
3 I presumed that my role as anthropologist was very different from that of other outside actors. I

came to see many similarities, however, in the ways Wauja people pursued potential in their relationship
with me and other outsiders. Their perspective has weakened my illusions of distinctiveness somewhat,
though still I write this with the conviction that anthropologists can tell development agents something
important about culture—their own and Indians’—that they would benefit from hearing.
4 AFL and all Wauja proper names in this article are pseudonyms. AFL had discussions about

whether to continue working in the Xingu towards the end of my fieldwork; by 2008 they had closed
their Xingu office and left the area.
5 Sahlins cites an American trader’s delicious transliteration of the Fijian term kerekere vakaviti as

“Cery Cery fuckabede” (2000:477).

6 One could interpret this comment as a comparison of “toughness” and authenticity between

Brazilian and American anthropologists as much as it is a comparison of Upper Xinguans with other
Amazonians.
7 The Ikpeng are traditional enemies of the Wauja and are seen by them as outside aggressors trying

to act civilized.
8 Upper Xinguans by no means have a monopoly of images of Indian purity in Brazil. The tastes of

the Brazilian public for indigenous authenticity are fickle. When people care at all about Indians, tastes
shift between the brave warrior, the ecologically noble savage, and the spiritually rich, for example, as
images of indigenous purity of value to the national imagination (Conklin 2002; Conklin and Graham
1995).
9 Of course, the perspective that local culture is an impediment to development has a history in

many colonial and post-colonial contexts.

10 As if this was not linguistically and culturally foreign enough an orientation from an Upper

Xinguan perspective, the following example of an ideal expression of a clear project objective is given
for clarification: “Address the Surrealist Movement and its artistic manifestations.”
11 The distinction between temporal closure and open endedness is characterized in linguistic

semantics as telicity. Predicates marked [+telic] with an inherent terminal end point depict Aksionstart
type achievements such as “explode” and “shatter,” and accomplishments such as “melt” and “learn.”
Predicates marked [- telic] with no inherent terminal end point depict Aksionstart type states such as
“know” and “be dead,” and activities such as “walk” and “think” (Van Valin 1997:92). I loosely borrow
this conceptual distinction not to suggest a semantic linguistic distinction in this case, but an overall
temporal orientation to end points in exchange ideologies.
12 The same actor may fill sociological positions that license respect or demand on separate

occasions. So, while Kapi occupied the role of subordinate complainer-cum-receiver in this context,
on other occasions he was in the opposite position. In a moment reminiscent of Lee’s classic “Eating
Christmas in the Kalahari” (1969), during one Christmas in the Wauja village, Kapi had used his
earnings from his employment as a health director to buy and have flown in large amounts of Brazilian
food including beef, rice, beans, spaghetti, cookies, and sweet drinks. He had sponsored this decidedly
nontraditional (both in terms of occasion and diet) feast in an attempt to bolster his standing in the

Stop Loss 431

 community, and he was worried about the event’s success. He remarked to me as preparations were
beginning that he was sure that no matter how much he gave, the Wauja recipients of his generosity
would complain that there wasn’t enough. Of course, this expected complaint would signal success at
a second order, as an acknowledgement of his new role as sponsor. In keeping with this role, Kapi also
told me that no matter how much people complained, it could not be helped, and that he would take
it in his stride without replying.
13 Hugh-Jones notes the ubiquity of such ethnographic experience; my experience in the Upper

Xingu was no different.

14 Hugh-Jones was asked to ferry similar requests to an anthropologist who had left the field—a

list of demands of items desired in return for hospitality and information (1994:49).
15 While Killick focuses on the structural difference between native and non-native idioms, as

involving equality versus hierarchy respectively, this distinction is hard to maintain for Upper Xinguan
ideologies of (especially ritual) exchange that themselves pivot on notions of hierarchy. Instead, I
identify relative difference in native versus non-native idioms of exchange in the domain of time, and
in particular the open-ended versus the closed character of exchange.
16 See Gordon (2006) for a sophisticated treatment of the indigenization of money among the

Xikrı́n-Mebêngôkre.

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