Paper short abstract:

This is about a field experience on Central Brazil's Xavante performance to Japanese visitors involving the participation of this researcher in it. Tradition and "tradition" (between quotes) were put together by the Xavante to act as others would expect, and to capture them, making other "others".

Paper long abstract:

This communication is about a field experience involving Central Brazil's Xavante performances of "tradition" to Japanese visitors and the participation of this researcher in them.

It comments about the visit of a group of Japanese medicine students to watch rituals and do health examinations on the Xavante people from the Abelhinha village; the preparations for the rituals; the painting of this researcher as a "Xavante"; the games, dances and singing showed as difference markers - and also other performances not noted as such (like pranks) - by the Xavante and the Japanese students. It also talks about the gift giving at the encounter.

Tradition and "tradition" (between quotes, as Manuela Carneiro da Cunha could say) were pulled together at once by the Xavante.

Xavante tradition might be exactly about relating to others. While they act as the others would expect, they also capture the "other", only to recreate more difference towards other "others".

By painting this researcher, calling me to take part on one collective shamanic dance, offering me one of the very gifts that the Japanese students brought to the Xavante themselves, washing me in the river and so on, the Xavante played a small part of the long (and maybe never ending) process of transforming "the other" into "the same".

The "Western" (or "Oriental"?) medicine enters this relation as something to be captured too, which does not eliminate the Xavante medicine. The coexistence between "the other" and "the same" would be a constant part of the Xavante tradition.

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