The Ethnomathematics of Bakairi Body Painting

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The Ethnomathematics of Bakairi Body Painting

• Milton Rosa
• Encina High School
• San Juan Unified School District
• Sacramento
• Mrosa_at_sanjuan.edu
• milrosa_at_hotmail.com

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Indigenous People in Brazil

• There are 220 tribes in Brazil and 40 of them are
  still isolated.
• The population is approximately 400,000 out of
  185 million
• They speak more than 180 different languages.
• The majority of the indigenous population is
  distributed among thousands of villages located
  within 595 territories called Terras Indígenas.
• There are differences in geography. Indigenous
  peoples live in savannah, rain forest, on rivers,
  far from roads and towns or in or near urban
  centers.

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Interaction

• Each tribe has been contacted by colonizers in a
  variety of ways
• Early explorers called bandeirantes
• government workers
• anthropologists, and other concerned scientists
• mining prospectors, loggers, road buildings,
  frontier settlers, or
• Missionaries

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Interaction

• Being intelligent human beings with distinct
  tribal customs, each group reacted differently to
  the traumas of contact and coexistence with
  initial European and modern Brazilian society.
• Every tribe represents a unique case study in
  human geography and anthropology.

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Bakairi

• Other Name Kurâ
• Population 1000 (2004)
• Language Karib family
• Location Mato Grosso, Brazil

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Location of the Bakairi Tribes
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Body Painting

• Brazilian Indigenous people have a strong
  tradition of body painting in their ritual and
  ceremonial processes.
• Styles of body painting relate to factors as the
  persons status, age, gender, initiation stage,
  totemic affiliation and tribal group.
• Body painting could be enhanced by adding
  materials such as dust or crushed plant fiber,
  feather downs, wild cotton, flowers or leaves
  stuck on with resin, mud or blood.

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Body Painting

• Perhaps simply because of the hot and humid
  climate, traditional clothing never became an
  essential or functional item for indigenous
  people in Brazil.
• The indigenous peoples body became a canvas
  for symbolic and artistic expression.

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The Indigenous Brazilian Body Painting

• The indigenous Brazilian body painting was one
  of the first things that called attention of the
  first Portuguese colonizers.

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The Brazilian Indigenous Body Painting

• One of those young women was all in ink, from
  head to toe. The body painting, to tell the
  truth, was so well done
• From a letter by Pero Vaz de Caminha to King Dom
  Manoel I from Portugal (Porto Seguro, Ilha de
  Vera Cruz, May 1st, 1500)

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The Bakairi Body Painting

• Historically, we our ancestors had already
  painted their bodies with these paintings. Since
  the beginning of our existence, we already came
  like this, from there, from where was our place,
  from where we were born, from where we paint our
  bodies The men paint their bodies with the
  painting of the man and the women paint their
  bodies with their own paintings This is ours,
  this is our own culture, and until today, we, who
  are the grandsons of our ancestors, preserve our
  own paintings. We use jenipapo, urucum, black
  charcoal, and tabatinga (kãwin) for our
  paintings. We have never forgotten how to paint
  and decorate our bodies.

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The Bakairi Body Painting

• Now that we know the culture of the white
  people, we use clothes, we use combs to take care
  of ourselves, however, we continue using our
  traditional body painting, our dances, and our
  songs.
• These are things that I know. I am from a
  generation that is from here. I was born here, I
  was born in this place, but I heard a lot from
  the old people telling everything that happened
  like this. That is all.
• Words of Laurinda Komaeda, transcribed to Karib
  by Robert Taukai, translated to Portuguese by
  Darlene Taukan, and translated to English by
  Milton Rosa.

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The Bakairi Body Painting

• The Bakairi people still practice their own
  traditional culture. They are well known for
  their body painting.
• The Bakairi people do not use body painting in
  their daily life because they are associated with
  sacred rituals.
• The body paintings do not constitute a particular
  property of any family or local group.
• In general, the eldest people who are gifted and
  possess knowledge make the paintings.
• They use four basic colors for their body
  painting.

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Four Basic Colors for Body Painting

• Black-bluish color of jenipapo This color is
  used specifically to produce graphical motifs in
  the bodies that are always associated with
  animals.

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Four Basic Colors for Body Painting

• 2) The red of urucum This color is mixed with
  oil of pequi and this strong mixture is fixed
  in the forehead and the feet. The other parts of
  the body receive a diluted solution that creates
  a red coloration that has the purpose to stand
  out from the black drawing of the jenipapo.

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Four Basic Colors for Body Painting

• 3) The black of the charcoal The coal removed
  from the burnt wood or from the bottom of the
  adobe utensils is used for the delicate facial
  make-up.

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Four Basic Colors for Body Painting

• 4) The white of the clay called tabatinga.
  Exclusively men use the white color tabatinga,
  kind of clay, obtained from the rivers.

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The Preparation of the Ink of Jenipapo

• The fruit must be harvested green because the ink
  will be much better.
• The pulp of jenipapo must be grated.
• Water must be mixed with the jenipapo mass.
• The jenipapo mass must be placed in a piece of
  cloth.
• The piece of cloth must be twisted on a canister
  to collect the broth.
• The broth is taken to the fire.
• The ink is ready when the broth starts to foam.
• The ink is made one day to be used in the other
  day because, in general, the ink gets blacker.

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The Bakairi Technique of Body Painting

• When the ink of jenipapo is dried, they start
  painting the body with urucum.
• The urucum ink is already prepared as a mass
  which is saved and wrapped in a maize straw for a
  year.
• The mass of urucum must be mixed with pequi oil
  to be used as a paint for the body.

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The Bakairi Technique of Body Painting

• A wad of cotton is rolled in one of the extremity
  of buriti splint.
• The cotton is drenched in the jenipapo ink.
• The ink is used to scratch out the drawing in the
  body.
• Some parts of the drawing is filled out with
  jenipapo ink to get the final painting.
• The preparation of the ink of jenipapo and urucum
  are typically womens tasks.

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The Bakairi Body Painting

• The male body painting is different from the
  female body painting in terms of style and form.
• Usually, the drawing starts delimiting the part
  of the body that will receive the painting.

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The Female Body Painting

• In general, the women body painting is always
  made in the laterals of the body from the ribs
  until the ankle.
• The women facial paintings are more elaborated
  than the men facial painting.
• The women body paintings are associated to the
  aquatic domain, with exception of the semino
  (bat).

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The Male Body Painting

• In general, the men body painting is always made
  in the torso, from the back and the chest until
  the waist.
• The painting of the face and the inferior members
  is less elaborated than the torso painting.
• The male body painting is made by specialists,
  generally, by the eldest men.

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Abstract Geometrical Drawings

• Despite the existing fauna and flora that
  surround them, the Bakairi people still use
  painted abstract geometrical drawings on their
  bodies that do not reflect their dramatic natural
  environmental context.
• The abstract geometrical drawings are a kind of
  symbolic metaphor that has developed into
  significant and rich meanings.
• For example, in the ceremonies of initiation of
  the young warriors it was custom to paint their
  bodies with black ink because this color
  integrates the idea of force attainment with the
  objective of the ceremony.

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Body Painting Designs

• The body painting is a visual instrument to
  represent the Bakairi peoples beliefs, customs
  and traditions.
• The designs show types of body painting used in
  scenes of their daily life and special ceremonies.

,
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Body Painting Designs
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The Bakairi School

• The school has existed in the village since 1920.
• Until 1985, the teachers were not indigenous
  people
• Today, 165 students attend school, from
  elementary to middle school.
• There is a group of students in adult education.
• There are 14 teachers, 12 of them attending
  course at university level for indigenous people
  (Projeto Tucum Barra do Bugres Mato Grosso).
• There is a sign at the school door in the Bakairi
  village where it is writtenTARA SAWINKOEMBYEN
  NIDA. ALA ISE in the karib language. This means
  Keep this place clean. Thank you!

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The Bakairi School

• The Bakairi children are taught how to read and
  write first in Karib.
• After one year , they learn how to speak, read ,
  and write in Portuguese.
• In the most advanced grade levels, the
  explanations of the content in mathematics and
  other subjects are given in Portuguese and in
  Karib.

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School Roles

• One of the roles of the Bakairi school is to
  help Bakairi children to be conscious of their
  own cultural background.
• The other role is to help Bakairi children to
  value their own culture by fighting prejudice and
  stereotypes to protect their own indigenous
  traditions.

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School Curriculum

• The school curriculum should encourage Bakairi
  children to talk to elders about the dances, body
  painting, masks, and legends of their people.
• The school curriculum should assist Bakairi
  children to document, register, and study the
  drawing of masks, patterns of the body painting,
  and musical instruments that they use in their
  rituals.

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School Curriculum

• The school curriculum should make connections
  between the Bakairi culture and academic
  curriculum by using an ethnomathematical
  perspective.
• In many places in Brazil, anthropologists,
  ethnomathematicians, pedagogues, schools leaders,
  and tribal leaders are devising and discussing
  school curricula in native languages and relevant
  to their way of life.

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Mathematics and Curriculum

• The use of the Bakairi body painting in Bakairi
  school seems to potentially facilitate the
  apprehension of the spatial relations such as
  forms, texture, and symmetry, that are excellent
  for the construction and the systematization of
  geometrical knowledge because it allows the
  visualization of mathematical language.

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Mathematics Curriculum

• The contextualization of mathematical knowledge
  is developed through the relationship between the
  acquisition of this knowledge and the
  mathematical practices and activities developed
  by the Bakairi.
• The understanding of this relationship is the
  first step to value the Bakairi mathematical
  knowledge and practices.

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Mathematics and Curriculum

• Mathematics can be used as an instrument for
  recognizing the cultural basis of mathematical
  knowledge in a school without cultural
  alienation.
• Mathematics Education can offer possibilities for
  the development of a mathematical curriculum
  based on an ethnomathematical perspective.

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Problems that Indigenous People in Brazil Still
Have to Overcome

• How to preserve the distinct, almost
  pre-stone-age indigenous cultures within a
  booming modern nation?
• How to devise school curricula in indigenous
  native languages?
• How to devise relevant school curricula to the
  indigenous way of life?
• How to preserve vast indigenous territories from
  invasion or dismemberment by hordes of loggers,
  mining prospectors, squatters, large-scale
  agriculture, ranchers, and a range of
  speculators, businessmen and politicians?
• How to give indigenous people adequate health
  care still if they remain vulnerable to alien
  diseases, particularly, the forty tribes that are
  still isolated from any kind of contact?

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Final Considerations

• Despite of the clash between cultural values of
  the Bakairi and the cultural and technological
  values of the scientific society, the formal
  education of the Bakairi should have as an
  objective, the transmission of their customs,
  traditions, language and everything common and
  shared by the Bakairi. However, there is a need
  to be careful because through this same
  educational process, it is also possible to
  encourage the abandonment, depreciation and the
  further loss of language, traditions, rituals,
  religion, and their own identity.

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Final Considerations

• It is vital, in mathematics education, the
  recognition of the mathematical knowledge of
  different cultural groups such as the Bakairi
  people because this recognition allows the
  elaboration and construction of academic
  mathematical knowledge from their own
  mathematical practices.
• Having seen how they battled through the daunting
  challenges 500 years of colonization and
  submission, I am reasonably confident that they
  will succeed in this one. Perhaps a few decades
  from now, other societies will feel that it is
  they who could learn from these remarkable and
  resilient people.

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This presentation is dedicated to the indigenous
people of Brazil

• MUITO OBRIGADO!
• THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
• MUCHAS GRACIAS!