Culture Report
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, cerem
Although the Kalapalo do not have or define position of leadership, there are certain individuals whose actions have designated them into leadership roles. Kalapalo leaders are people who constantly expand and reinforce social ties. By doing this it demonstrates their ability to influence a large group of individuals and thus gains a certain amount of respect and prestige. The Kalapalo have a number of special statuses, each with certain duties and obligations to perform services, with this comes payment or rewards for duties or services done. Some of these special statuses are anetaw village mediators between households and village groups. Oto sponsors of ceremonies, ifi are ceremonial specialist, who preform the ceremonies and then teaches others about the ceremony. Fuati are curers and diviners, persons with unusual skills in healing others. The Kalapalo do not speak of these status roles in terms of leadership but believe that a leader is a person who has achieved many great statuses and who thus stand apart from the rest of the community. Kalapalo marriage takes one of two forms. The first is an arranged marriage, which involves a girl being engaged before puberty and to a older man. This type of marriage is marked by the giving of bridewealth, which is the payment to the girl's parents and their siblings by the parents of the husband to be. The second form of marriage involves people who are lovers and takes place after the death or divorce of a spouse. The Kalapalo seek to establish the first of the two marriages, which is the arranged marriage on the basis of past relationships of kinship or affinity. The reason why arranged marriages are important is because the create alliances between persons who have prior kinship connections. Also many of the men and women take on different types of marriage such as polyandry and polygymy. The two most imp
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Approximate Word count = 1260
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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