MEMÓRIA E IDENTIDADE - ESTUDO PSICOSSOCIAL DE UMA COMUNIDADE INDIGENA EM EXTINÇÃO: OS AVÁ-CANOEIROS

Abstract

This study investigates the importante of preservation of culture and memory while constituting elements of social identity of na Indian community in danger of becooming extinct: The Avá-Canoeiros of Goiás and Tocantins States. Starging as of a bibliographic research carried out July 2003 to February 2005, directed my analytical attention to actual implications of the loss of cultural memory of this indian Nation (both remnants and mestizos - half-breed). The research focused on the search of cultural references and the psycho-social-cultural strutcture of the Avá-Canoeiros, with the helf of Social Psychology and its connections with anthropology, history, and sociology. Furthermore, the loss of social memory of this community is due to the influence carried out by the civilized white society that marginalizes and despises the Indian societies since the very beginning of the historical process - privately the Avá-Canoeiros - of a new culture, causing them dramatic implications in their social identity. The cultural massacre of the Avá brought them a double invisibility: invisible not only for the others, but for themselves. Because of this, we are trying to establish e relation between memory and social identity based on the acquisition of the psycho-social processes so constituted.