Da energia vibrante da ancestralidade nas presas de um javali. Caça, artefatos de origem animal e povos indígenas no Brasil

This article explores the multiple sociocultural and natural connections materialized in an indigenous necklace for sale on the internet, which bears a wild boar's tooth (Sus scrofa), an invasive exotic species that is foreign to the native Brazilian fauna. Through the notion of multispecies artifact, the paper discusses notions of authenticity, ancestry and indigeneity, among others, against the background of the opposition between native/autochthonous and exotic/invasive that continues to be applied, in parallel, both to indigenous peoples in Brazil and to animals and other non-human beings. So, what happens when an indigenous people in the Northeastern Brazil, the Kariri-Xokó in Alagoas state, in their struggle for an authentic and native identity and for better living conditions, starts to produce pieces of art/craft with parts of a non-native animal surrounded by numerous ecological and political controversies? Here, I argue that artifacts such as these can be very useful for reflection on different layers of sociocultural and biocultural meaning, especially those linked to the relationships between human collectives and other-than-human beings, since such objects often seem to materialize diverse relationships – hunting, domestication, familiarization, gathering, conviviality, domination, exploration, among others – which inform us about cosmological positions, technical interactions, ethical considerations and aesthetic perceptions of animals and plants, which unfold in specific contexts of interaction that constitute complex bio-sociocultural landscapes.