Revenge and forgiveness among the Palikur people: thinking about the limits of reciprocity

• In Event: Obliged by Powerful Others: Reciprocity and Obligation in Indigenous South-America

Abstract

The introduction of the Pentecostal evangelical religion in the 1970s among the Palikur people – indigenous people who speak a Maipure-Arawak language and live in the border region between Brazil and French Guyana – introduced a system of appeasement in interpersonal relationships which, occasionally, were destabilized by exchanges of accusations of witchcraft and revenge directed by shamans in diagnoses of illnesses and deaths. This appeasement was operated through a system of reciprocal exchanges of pardons dispensed by the Assembly of God Evangelical Church, which was intended to eliminate the causality of the spell and simultaneously introduce chance as an explanation for the misfortunes. There are several implications of this development in the broader system of exchanges that prevails among the Palikur. In this paper I explore some of these implications by looking at the limits of this system of appeasement, where the system restricts the field of possibilities of reciprocity, given that the exchange of pardons proposes to establish a non-aggression pact, while in order to benefit from the system it is necessary to be a member of the Church.

Author

• Artionka Capiberibe, Unicamp