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This article analyzes the violent deaths of two Jesuit missionaries in the regions of Marajó (Pará) and the Itapecuru River (Maranhão). Their tragic end serves as a starting point through which one can explore the social relations that took place between Europeans and native peoples on the Amazonian frontier during the mid-seventeenth century. Although colonial records suggest the presence of inevitable conflicts and cultural division within these regions, this article instead emphasizes the long-standing communication between Europeans and natives at the frontier. Their multifaceted interactions included violence and negotiations for peace, a social dynamic that is also explored in this article in order to offer new insights on the deaths of the Jesuit missionaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal conflict management implicitly claims to value cultural difference and to be able to mediate relations between cultural minorities and states. This article considers this claim in challenging circumstances borne of settler-colonialism by examining the cultural politics of the establishment of a conflict resolution programme in an Australian Aboriginal community. In addition to settler-colonial maligning of Aboriginal capacities to manage conflict, the Gununa community has in recent decades faced the severe attenuation of customary processes and escalating uncontrolled violence. Nonetheless, the Mornington Island Restorative Justice Project involved a spontaneous appropriation of mediation as a customary initiative and an accompanying implicit negotiation between the customary sociolegal order of Mornington Islanders and that of the liberal settler-state. Analysis of these circumstances and relations leads us to argue that informalism can support cultural difference and mediate relations with the state, although it cannot be relied upon to transform the accompanying asymmetric relationship. Nonetheless, informalism may sustain and contribute to the possibilities for transformative change by improving delivery of justice services and through recognition of Indigenous capacities and approaches to sociopolitical order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relation between different kinds of indigenous speech and music and various iconographic forms such as petroglyphs, house painting, basketry designs and also features of landscape that are understood in graphic terms. It examines how Northwest Amazonian myth-history is structured and memorized, how it can appear in both verbal and non-verbal forms, and how contemporary books, maps and diagrams produced by indigenous organizations as part of programmes of research and education show continuity with these traditional forms. Rather than making firm distinctions between peoples with and without writing, I argue that it is more profitable to focus on how various mnemonic systems—“writing”—work in tandem with different narrative forms—“myth”. When “writing” and “myth” are understood in indigenous terms, contemporary written documents appear in a new light. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the interethnic relationships between indigenous groups along the border region of Chile and Río de la Plata in South America during the 18th century. The authors comment on the impact of Spanish colonial government on these ethnic relations and describe the difficulties in communication between the Spanish authorities and the native groups. The understanding of the Mapuche indigenous language, referred to as mapu dungum, in the years since Spanish colonization is also examined.

In general terms, the idea of translating offers a conventional sense of bridging the linguistic gaps between different languages. However, the implications of undertaking such a task among ethnic groups are rarely examined, at least in a practical sense that transcends the plane of a mere understanding of the words. This thoughtful article seeks to document the experience of translating a book from English into Spanish (the latter being a generalized language amongst the Nasa people in southwestern Colombia) and its symbolic and ritual appropriation. The article argues that this type of experience shows a way of understanding and appropriating writing as a symbolic instance of power and transformation, and thus it contributes to transcending the conventional concept of translation and entering new intercultural domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will describe and interpret some data from Southern Quechua and Southern Aymara spoken texts recorded during traditional divinatory sessions. This analysis is aimed to show that divination can be considered as an example of how ritual speech, often described as a phenomenon based on fixed sequences, is characterized by variable elements too, being the relationship between a particular "context of situation" and the divinatory speech event very strong. In particular, the analysis focuses on a specific kind of speech acts, which seem to be built with the help of morphological devices that are normally used to indicate the source of information in the Quechua and Aymara language families. The same devices are used with a specific performative function in the context of divination: To "officialise" the message of the oracle and to oppose this to the speech acts of the diviner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the incorporation of indigenous loanwords into Spanish texts has been studied from various perspectives. The present paper introduces a method to unify different conclusions related to transmission processes, changes in the meaning and the quantification of vocabulary. Based on these elements, we develop a gradation index to measure loanword occurrence in Spanish documents for a given author, period or word group. The method's application to two administrative texts from the last third of the sixteenth century in Colombia and Ecuador demonstrates its feasibility, particularly regarding the possible differentiation between indigenous loanwords used to describe prehispanic culture with only incidental value and indigenous terminology that is actually incorporated into the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the study of three quechuisms in mapuche williche speech, we show the existence of intercultural relations in the Andean horizon. Our analysis focuses on Quechua voices which refer to central identitarian, religious, and social mapuche institutions. In each of the cases, the loaned words reveal preexisting cultural parallels. The comparative study of concepts designated by these voices and cultural practices associated with them exposes the correlation of symbolic representational systems which appear as variants of a common worldview matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study is presented on the history of Dutch creole dialects in the Netherlands' colonies of Berbice, Guiana and Essequibo, Guiana from 1580 through 1680. An overview of the relations between the Dutch and Indians of Guiana, including in regard to the Dutch and Arawak Indian languages, is provided. An overview of the colonies' reliance upon slave labor for plantation work is also provided.

The article presents an account of the launch of the book "Ta iñ fijke xipa rakizuameluwün. Historia, colonialismo y resistencia desde el país mapuche," edited by Maribel Mora Curriao, which was held on August 7, 2012 in Santiago de Chile, Chile. The book focuses on the history of resistance to colonialism of the Mapuches, written by Mapuche authors. Topics mentioned include the Mapuche language, social conditions of Mapuche Indians, and cultural identity.

This article deals with the order of clausal elements in two native languages spoken in the Norpatagonia area: mapuzungun and gïnïn a iajïch. Since many centuries ago, both languages have had contact and have been spoken in the same territory, where in addition, according to the sources, individual and social multilingualism was common. On the basis of previous analysis that we have made on the syntactic order in mapuzungun and the analysis of linguistic documentation available on the gïnïn a iajïch - language extinct now-, we systematize some syntactic patterns, considering in particular the structure of the simple sentence. We analyse the translation to the gïnïn a iajïch of five texts, first elicited in mapuzungun, in order to explain to what extent the mediation through this language, in an interaction of two participants who also used the Spanish language, allows the emergency of convergence patterns as well as maintenance of language patterns. In this way, we aim to contribute to the discussion of Patagonia status as a linguistic area, based on a particular case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the applicative constructions in four Patagonian languages: Mapudungun, Tehuelche or Aonek'o ajen, Selknam and Günün a iajïch. Once the applicative constructions are described, we will try to postulate the possible influence between those languages with the purpose of contributing to the establishment of a linguistic area in Patagonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soon after conquest, authorities targeted several pre-Hispanic Andean recording and communications systems in an attempt to control indigenous voices. This paper highlights some aspects of co-optation and repression policies implemented during the government of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the Viceroyalty of Peru (1569–1581). We hypothesize that these policies conformed to the project of colonial domination when they were applied to systems such as theatrics and over visual systems such as keros (or ceremonial vessels) or over rock art. We identify some of the changes that occurred in the visual texts carved and painted on the surfaces of keros as a result of the implementation of these Toledan policies. They allow us to postulate that the decoration called 'formal style' can be dated as pre-Toledan, while vessels with 'free style' would have developed in part as a result of the control policies applied by the Viceroy Toledo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses indigenous Latin American words and concepts relating to living well, particularly the Andean word "kawsay." It addresses vocabulary and its connection to indigenous identity and cultural borderlands. Other topics explored include marginalized languages, the relationship between language and nation building, and cultural sustainability.

This article describes the adjective class in Quechua, countering many previous accounts of the language as a linguistic type with no adjective/noun distinction. It applies a set of common crosslinguistic criteria for distinguishing adjectives to data from several dialects of Ecuadorian Highland Quechua (EHQ), analyzing examples from a natural speech audio/video corpus, speaker intuitions of grammaticality, and controlled elicitation exercises. It is concluded that by virtually any standard Quechua shows clear evidence for a distinct class of attributive noun modifiers, and that in the future Quechua should not be considered a 'flexible' noun/adjective language for the purposes of crosslinguistic comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, the available data on the Arikapú and Djeoromitxí languages of the Brazilian Amazon, which together form the Jabuti language family, have been too sparse to enable one to evaluate existing proposals for a genealogical classification. Recent descriptive fieldwork, however, has yielded information that strongly corroborates an early hypothesis of Nimuendajú (2000 [1935]) that the languages are related to those of the Jê family. In this article, we compare the reconstructed ancestors of both families, Proto-Jabutí (van der Voort 2007) and Proto-Jê (Ribeiro [forthcoming]), ultimately demonstrating that Nimuendajú was right. We also discuss some of the consequences of this discovery for current ideas about prehistoric population movements in lowland South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the anonymous seventeenth-century author of the Quito Manuscript, ancient Andeans once possessed a writing system (qillqa) that they replaced with knotted strings (khipu) as part of the religious and sexual reform of their nation. The manuscript's redactor, Fernando de Montesinos, added to the text his own speculations about Andean writing, which he linked to the Tree of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. For both of these authors, ideas about indigenous "writing" were not neutral, but were intertwined with arguments about the moral and cultural merits of Andean civilization. This essay explores how each author's claims about writing and knotted strings—qillqa and khipu—were intrinsic to their political and theological aims, fitting into a larger discourse about the justification of colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What was the meaning, for Inca record keepers, of the knotted cord constructions they produced as administrative records for the Inca state? In particular, how did these administrators think about the knot constructions that (as we now understand) were used to sign numerical values? And what were the consequences for record keeping in the colonial Andes of the encounter between native cord keepers and the Spanish record keepers, with their numeral signs inscribed on parchment or paper? These are the questions that I explore in this paper. While we do not have explicit, first-hand testimony concerning the first two questions, there is a wealth of evidence relating to the interaction between native and European record keepers from the early years of the colony. The paper examines various contexts in which the cord keepers, who continued producing knotted-cord records long after the conquest, would have encountered written numerals and the implications of these encounters for questions of authority and legitimacy in the production of administrative records in the colonial Andes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research, carried out within the framework of the research project "Sociolinguistic reality of Aymara language spoken in northern Chile", aimed at finding out the actual use of Aymara language among Aymaras, and their descendants, living in Arica and Parinacota, so as to determine its vitality and the demography of their speakers. To this end, a questionnaire was administered in situ to a representative sample of Aymaras of the above mentioned cities. The gathered data show an impending loss of this South American indigineous language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cites a study evaluating the agreement of the available genetic data with the alternatives proposed by the eminent linguists for the relationships among the four most important lowland South American native language families, namely, Maipure, Carib, Tupi, and Ge. Comparison of different sets of markers to unravel the past of human populations is an established procedure in both anthropology and genetics. Therefore, it is only natural that evolutionary geneticists have turned to linguistics to evaluate the population relationships that they have been obtaining with genetic markers. Quantitative genetic-linguistic population comparisons have been conducted for some three decades. There is no consensus among linguists about the relationships among South American Indian languages. The classification of the languages presents several difficulties. In comparing the people of these four language families, it is important to verify that they do not significantly differ in relation to interethnic admixture. Despite these differences, there are factors common to linguistic and genetic evolution that are responsible for the congruence observed in many cases.

In this paper we deal with the nominal deverbative mechanisms in toba (Guaycuruan family, Argentina). The data comes from a ten hours narrative corpus and the lexical items published in Alberto Buckwalter's Vocabulario Toba (1980). We present the affixes that enable the derivation of words connected with actions or states and the agentive, instrumental, locative, objective and resultative nouns. We also study the grammatical gender selected by each affix, showing that the choice is morphologically controlled. Finally, from a dynamic-synchronic perspective, we hypothesize that the resultative affix could be considered as an evidence of the creation of a passive diathesis in this Amerindian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all existing classifications of the Cariban language family, the southernmost languages— Kuikuro, Arara-Ikpeng, and Bakairi—have always been assumed to form a single sub-branch, usually called the "southern branch." In this paper, we examine this assumption using the comparative method. From eight Cariban languages (the three southern languages plus five others, maximally distant in the family), we compiled 146 cognate sets which were used to find sound correspondences and to propose reconstructions of Proto-Cariban phonemes on the basis of which shared innovations could be found. The final result is that Bakairi and Arara-Ikpeng do seem to belong together, but not Kuikuro, which is apparently an independent sub-branch by itself. When a Swadesh list was used to examine vocabulary retention, we again found that Kuikuro does not seem to be closer to Bakairi and Arara-Ikpeng than to any other Cariban sub-branch. In our conclusion, we discuss some consequences for current theories concerning the original homeland of Cariban-speaking peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the status of a lesser-known Argentinian dialect of Quechua: Santiago del Estero,and highlights the sociocultural context of the language. Specifically, the authors discuss the potential maintenance, revitalization, and loss of the language in light of Fishman's "dislocations" (1991)and Crawford's hypotheses of language loss (2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a specifically Bolivian perspective on several themes from the Hornberger and Coronel-Molina review. On the shifting boundaries of Quechua language use, the commentary takes an ecological view, locating Quechua in relation to Aymara and Spanish and drawing special attention to politico-military, economic, and religious factors in the shifting boundaries, both historical and recent. The author goes on to caution against the comparison of cross-national statistical data, pinpointing the weaknesses of census data on languages and highlighting the ways in which Bolivia's projected 2001 census improves on the census questions relating to language. After commenting briefly on Quechua speakers 'glottocentric attitudes and ideologies of ethnic loyalty, the article concludes with a call for more uses of Quechua in written and mass-media domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present investigation concerns language ideology and language practices in relation to a language shift - from Quichua-Spanish bilingualism to Spanish monolingualism - that seems to be under way. The analyses are based on fieldwork in an Ecuadorian sierra community characterized by ethnic revitalization. Among adult comuneros, the vernacular is seen as an essential part of their Indian cultural heritage. In the children's daily lives, the adults, particularly women and the elderly, speak Quichua among them- selves, yet children are not addressed in the vernacular by either parents or elder siblings, and those under 10 years of age are generally more or less monolingual in Spanish. The paradoxical mismatch between ideology and daily practices - the ethnic revitalization paradox - is analyzed in light of Quichua speaking practices in intergenerational encounters, and in children's play dialogues. Ultimately, being Quichua means something different to members of each generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the European philosophical background which inspired Spanish missionaries and men of letters to spread Western literacy in the colonies. The philosophy of languages behind the Spaniards' intellectual decision to write grammars of Amerindian languages; The philosophy of writing after the spread of Western literacy; The act of writing the history of people who had been declared to be without history; Specific examples; More.

The author discusses anthropomorphism as the idea that human beings are distinct from all other things and species of animals. The author describes the translation of the phrase "human beings" into indigenous Andean languages such as Quechua and suggests that the Inka acknowledged similarities between rocks and humans. Other topics include author George Orwell, animal categories in a book by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, and philosopher Michel Foucault's work on categorizing things in his book "Les mots et les choses."

Se provee una lista de los nombres de la planta Cacao en diversos idiomas indígenas de América, incluyendo Maya, Mixe y Náhuatl.