Le rite comme contexte de la mémoire des origines

Abstract

Until recently the ritual life of the Kaingang of Brazil, an Amerindian society of the Gê linguistic family, was characterized by an elaborated second funeral ceremony: the Kikikoia-literally "eating the honey beer". Following strong external pressures, the Kaingang abandoned its performance during almost 25 years. Its renewal in 1976 by the people of Xapecó Indian Reservation in Santa Catarina is directly related to an intensification of their land claims. The Kaingang were always explicit about this by systematically relating the annual performance of Kikikoia with a duty of memory associated to the recuperation and preservation of their ancestral territory. If ritual is all about remembering, recollecting and reenacting an initial event of creation, nonetheless ritual performance cannot simply repeat this opening act because creation happens only once. Consequently, the duty of memory expressed through ritual is not repetitive of the past, but creation, in the present time, of the past and the future.