International symposium organized by the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale of the Collège de France, the University of São Paulo, the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, the French National Commission for UNESCO and the French Embassy in Brazil.
" Our languages are a territory. With words, we draw worlds "
These words spoken by Daiara Tukano, curator of the Nhe'ẽ Porã exhibition at Unesco, accompany the launch of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Languages, declared by the UN for the years 2022 to 2032. Following the inauguration of the Nhe'ẽ Porã exhibition, this international symposium " Indigenous languages of South America : Memory and Transformation ", organized by the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale of the Collège de France, the University of São Paulo, the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, the French National Commission for Unesco and the French Embassy in Brazil, engages in an anthropological and linguistic reflection on Amerindian languages, relations to territory and forms of poetic and artistic expression of the indigenous peoples of South America.
In homage to the deep friendship between Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Amerindian peoples of Brazil, sixty years after the publication of the first volume of Mythologiques, a dialogue will open at the Collège de France between a delegation of Amerindian researchers and artists from Brazil's Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, and a group of anthropologists and linguists specializing in the languages and peoples of the South American Lowlands. The history of relations with European colonizers bears witness to a multifaceted violence, deployed over the centuries through the imposition of a worldview, a language and a concept of territory. The reduction of Amerindian peoples during the conquest and evangelization precipitated the disappearance of many native languages. Today, these languages are threatened by the imposition of national languages and attacks on indigenous rights and fundamental freedoms.
The aim of this international symposium is to give a voice to Amerindian peoples, and to take a critical look at the worldviews and founding concepts of anthropology. What do indigenous peoples have to say about their relationship to language, territory and history ? How do we define the transmission of languages and knowledge ? What is at stake ? While Amerindian languages reveal a cosmopolitan relationship with the living, poetics, diplomacy and the arts express the vitality of these traditions, deployed in new spaces on the national and international scenes.