Comments on: Pierre Clastres http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/ A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:33:35 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Steve Beyer http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/comment-page-1/#comment-241 Steve Beyer Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:17:00 +0000 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/#comment-241 Chuntaro --<br/><br/>Thank you, as always, for this helpful and insightful comment. It is always a pleasure when you relate my posts to the real-life down-to-earth issues confronting indigenous communities today. I owe you a pastrami omelet. :-) Chuntaro –

Thank you, as always, for this helpful and insightful comment. It is always a pleasure when you relate my posts to the real-life down-to-earth issues confronting indigenous communities today. I owe you a pastrami omelet. :-)

]]> By: Chuntaro http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/comment-page-1/#comment-237 Chuntaro Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:23:00 +0000 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/#comment-237 This post is very interesting, and makes me go into all directions at once, I’ll tryo to focus. Chances are that I am going to lose it trough mid comment.<br/>Clastres bring very important issues for indigenous people to marinate on. It forces us to put on our historian hats, but also to look at ourselves and acknowledge out own internalized colonization and appropriation of things that acre convenient for us.<br/>I am part of a larger community that has claimed unity and superhuman spirituality but then when power struggles arise always ends with the formation of new circles. I guess this can occur in healthier ways. Out of evolution rather than conflict. I have seen the same thing occur in various part of the continent. <br/><br/>Even when part of an indigenous group, people have internalized non traditional concepts of leadership, what is to be a chief, or owner in the worst kind of ways.<br/>I know of indigenous chiefs that see themselves as royalty and expect to be treated like that. In contrast, some of the elders and ceremonial leaders that I have been fortunate to know, are the embodiment of the traditional concepts. They are usually the elders that people idealize or are afraid of, no one wants to work with them because they have a tendency to do very, very hard work, be very honest and not care about money, do not give away feathers, initiate people, or give away some sort of secret medicine. These usually very old men and women and have no fancy titles, time to go to gatherings or be part of special councils to save the earth. They usually are busy working trying to make a living and being good family members. They may be able to perform what people can call miracles during ceremony, but once this part is over they go about their business and start fixing the house or feeding the people visiting. <br/><br/>Now a difference must be done here, given the nature of the blog and the common misunderstanding among people. Ceremonial leaders and elders are not often the tribal leaders. This is very clear if one ever gets to visit US and Canada reservations. My Anashinabe Cousins joke about being able to recognize the tribal council members of chiefs in any reserve they go, - It is easy they say, they are the ones with the biggest belly, the fancy hat and the new truck!- Of course, this doesn’t discount that some traditional leaders could also have the authority to lead a ceremony or be politically active with their local councils.<br/><br/>People try to idealize indigenous methods for everything, harvest, commerce, healing, justice, baby making, etc. most of the time this is done from a non indigenous perspective, since to really go native requires to put aside some of the concepts that our contemporary world have as guidelines for behavior and what is logic. To go truly native means at this point to do it at a personal level, not to really get it or to access some great secret but to understand the basic concepts of our respective nations culture. Two things are for sure in this process, we realize how spoiled we have been by using the concepts developed to explain our cultures, and that it is very hard work! Maybe it would be good for some of those council members and caciques after all.<br/><br/>I don’t want to sound righteous right now. I will contribute a little to the conversation y sharing about two leadership positions that I know of, the Tlatoani and the Naca<br/><br/>Tlatoani <br/>This literally means the carrier of the word. At any given moment when the person would lose their integrity or act in a selfish way, they would lose this title.<br/><br/>Naca, This would translate into thinker of thinkers, they were the go to people in the community, but they did not have special privileges This post is very interesting, and makes me go into all directions at once, I’ll tryo to focus. Chances are that I am going to lose it trough mid comment.
Clastres bring very important issues for indigenous people to marinate on. It forces us to put on our historian hats, but also to look at ourselves and acknowledge out own internalized colonization and appropriation of things that acre convenient for us.
I am part of a larger community that has claimed unity and superhuman spirituality but then when power struggles arise always ends with the formation of new circles. I guess this can occur in healthier ways. Out of evolution rather than conflict. I have seen the same thing occur in various part of the continent.

Even when part of an indigenous group, people have internalized non traditional concepts of leadership, what is to be a chief, or owner in the worst kind of ways.
I know of indigenous chiefs that see themselves as royalty and expect to be treated like that. In contrast, some of the elders and ceremonial leaders that I have been fortunate to know, are the embodiment of the traditional concepts. They are usually the elders that people idealize or are afraid of, no one wants to work with them because they have a tendency to do very, very hard work, be very honest and not care about money, do not give away feathers, initiate people, or give away some sort of secret medicine. These usually very old men and women and have no fancy titles, time to go to gatherings or be part of special councils to save the earth. They usually are busy working trying to make a living and being good family members. They may be able to perform what people can call miracles during ceremony, but once this part is over they go about their business and start fixing the house or feeding the people visiting.

Now a difference must be done here, given the nature of the blog and the common misunderstanding among people. Ceremonial leaders and elders are not often the tribal leaders. This is very clear if one ever gets to visit US and Canada reservations. My Anashinabe Cousins joke about being able to recognize the tribal council members of chiefs in any reserve they go, – It is easy they say, they are the ones with the biggest belly, the fancy hat and the new truck!- Of course, this doesn’t discount that some traditional leaders could also have the authority to lead a ceremony or be politically active with their local councils.

People try to idealize indigenous methods for everything, harvest, commerce, healing, justice, baby making, etc. most of the time this is done from a non indigenous perspective, since to really go native requires to put aside some of the concepts that our contemporary world have as guidelines for behavior and what is logic. To go truly native means at this point to do it at a personal level, not to really get it or to access some great secret but to understand the basic concepts of our respective nations culture. Two things are for sure in this process, we realize how spoiled we have been by using the concepts developed to explain our cultures, and that it is very hard work! Maybe it would be good for some of those council members and caciques after all.

I don’t want to sound righteous right now. I will contribute a little to the conversation y sharing about two leadership positions that I know of, the Tlatoani and the Naca

Tlatoani
This literally means the carrier of the word. At any given moment when the person would lose their integrity or act in a selfish way, they would lose this title.

Naca, This would translate into thinker of thinkers, they were the go to people in the community, but they did not have special privileges

]]> By: Steve Beyer http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/comment-page-1/#comment-235 Steve Beyer Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:22:00 +0000 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/#comment-235 Thank you for these comments. I might add here that France has produced a number of outstanding South Americanist anthropologists — Claude Lévi-Strauss, of course, and also Alfred Métraux, Pierre Clastres, Philippe Descola, and Jacques Chaumeil. I am not sure why this is so. Any theories?<br/><br/>I am still waiting for Tomas to finish his paper and give us his longer comment. :-) Thank you for these comments. I might add here that France has produced a number of outstanding South Americanist anthropologists — Claude Lévi-Strauss, of course, and also Alfred Métraux, Pierre Clastres, Philippe Descola, and Jacques Chaumeil. I am not sure why this is so. Any theories?

I am still waiting for Tomas to finish his paper and give us his longer comment. :-)

]]> By: Fred Smith http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/comment-page-1/#comment-234 Fred Smith Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:11:00 +0000 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/#comment-234 Thanks for this interesting post. I had not heard of Clastres. You write: "in the Upper Amazon, accusations of sorcery function very much in the way Clastres describes warfare, always involving the potential for social fragmentation and dispersion." I was thinking about cognate situations in India. Of course the indigenous groups in India - Adivasis - are not acculturated in the way that they are in South America, and in fact are barely visible to most of the population. But accusations of sorcery are rampant at places such as Balaji (in Rajasthan), about which I have written a few times. I blithely assumed that widespread accusations of black magic were uniformly urban (and rural) legend, part of the imaginaire of fear. But my friend William Sax, who also does fieldwork in the Himalayas (see his new book, God of Justice [Oxford Univ. Press, 2009]), actually videotaped a black magic rite in the dead of night in a village in Chamoli district. I saw this video and it was genuine. Whether it worked I don't know. It will be interesting to think about whether the "social fragmentation and dispersion" in magical rites operate along the same lines as in warfare or other rivalries. Thanks for this interesting post. I had not heard of Clastres. You write: “in the Upper Amazon, accusations of sorcery function very much in the way Clastres describes warfare, always involving the potential for social fragmentation and dispersion.” I was thinking about cognate situations in India. Of course the indigenous groups in India – Adivasis – are not acculturated in the way that they are in South America, and in fact are barely visible to most of the population. But accusations of sorcery are rampant at places such as Balaji (in Rajasthan), about which I have written a few times. I blithely assumed that widespread accusations of black magic were uniformly urban (and rural) legend, part of the imaginaire of fear. But my friend William Sax, who also does fieldwork in the Himalayas (see his new book, God of Justice [Oxford Univ. Press, 2009]), actually videotaped a black magic rite in the dead of night in a village in Chamoli district. I saw this video and it was genuine. Whether it worked I don’t know. It will be interesting to think about whether the “social fragmentation and dispersion” in magical rites operate along the same lines as in warfare or other rivalries.

]]> By: Chuntaro http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/comment-page-1/#comment-227 Chuntaro Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:23:00 +0000 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/01/pierre-clastres/#comment-227 Steve, I loved this post! I’ll write a more extensive comment later (finishing a paper right now). This entry makes me face a great deal of questions that I have often asked myself. For example, to what extent as native people we have internalized the non-traditional concepts of leadership and community, and try to pass these as the authentic Indian ways? Could we handle the old time protocol?<br/>Oh man! This opened my personal Pandora’s box, cool! Steve, I loved this post! I’ll write a more extensive comment later (finishing a paper right now). This entry makes me face a great deal of questions that I have often asked myself. For example, to what extent as native people we have internalized the non-traditional concepts of leadership and community, and try to pass these as the authentic Indian ways? Could we handle the old time protocol?
Oh man! This opened my personal Pandora’s box, cool!

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