Paper short abstract:

The Matis live in the Terra Indígena Vale do Javari, Amazon. They don't like to be called "jaguar people". Here, I tell a myth about the fire, a story of a shaman boy that survived a jaguar attack and about the mimesis of the jaguar patterns to show how to be a jaguar and avoid being a prey.

Paper long abstract:

The Jaguar takes the central place of power and the owner of the fire among many Amazonian hunter indigenous people. The Matis live in the Terra Indígena Vale do Javari, Amazonas, in Brazil. They don't like to be called the "jaguar people", as some filmmakers insist on referring to them because of their face tattoos, shell earrings, nose spikes and pendant that resembles the jaguar look. Nevertheless, the Matis have a lot in common with the jaguar, they praise themselves as being excellent blow pipe and (in the last years) rifle hunters, specially of arboreal animals such as monkeys and birds. In this article, I will reflect on the jaguar cosmology in the Matis communities. I will tell a Matis myth of the jaguar who lost the fire to the Bacurau bird and then learn from (wrongly observing) the Matis how to eat raw meat and the story of the boy that became a shaman after surviving the attack of a jaguar. I want them to shift from cosmology to the practice of weaving jaguar patterns and their mesmerising designs. We will observe together the powerful beauty of the Matis' bracelets and anklets, a subtle mimesis of the jaguar patterns ("rosetas", as the biologist call them), and their face tattoos and piercings. In the end, bringing also other anthropologist's reflections about the Panoan speaking indigenous people, I will observe the importance given to the mimesis of the hunter (the jaguar) in order to avoid being treated as their prey (the peccary, a kind of wild pig).