A REPRESENTAÇÃO DA IMAGEM SIMBÓLICA DOS MITOS INDÍGENAS NAS LENDAS BRASILEIRAS

The project focuses on investigating the consolidation of symbolic images of indigenous mythology in Brazilian legends, especially those that were massively published in books aimed at children. In particular, the characters Curupira and Iara, widely publicized as derived from indigenous culture and known to the public, were the characters chosen for this attack. The objective was to verify whether these characters actually belong to indigenous mythology and, later, whether the visual record corresponds to the image present in the myth. Once the analysis was done, the next stage consisted of creating drawings and paintings that do justice to the indigenous perspective, accompanied by literary texts. The myths recorded in four volumes of the collection Folk Literature of South American Indians, published by the UCLA Latin American Center (University of California) and some copies of books by indigenous authors were read. In the myths analyzed, there was no characterization of a character that corresponds to Curupira. However, in relation to aquatic beings, it appears that this is a recurring theme among different peoples, such as the Shavante, Cayapo, Yanomami, Munduruku and Tupinambá. For this reason, the research results focus on the female figure of the water being Yawarioma, from Yanomami mythology. The image was chosen due to its comparison with Iara, the mermaid of the Amazon rivers. The research ends with the production of educational material about the beings of the Yanomami waters, in literary and artistic creation.