Paper Short Abstract:

Xikrin children, from an Indigenous People of North Brazil, divide their days between helping with subsistence activities, linking families acting to make reciprocity valid when adults may not be able to due to mutual respect, and playing. They play in groups that unites close relatives but also children of similar age or interests, those collectives being made out of affection and kinship. Playing in the village, river, and "capoeiras", the place which is not yet forest but no longer taken care of, they fish, hunt small animals, and are in constant contact to diverse beings. They also built to themselves - or to younger siblings - toys, which are testimonies of their relations to other beings, non-indigenous peoples included. I propose to look to these children playing in order to discuss their knowledge (of kinship, peoples, otherness, and the environment and their inhabitants) and therefore contribute to the debate of chidren's epistemology.

Paper Abstract:

Diverse ethnographers have pointed out how Xikrin children are autonomous and mobile through families, carrying meat or messages. My own ethnography with different generations of children, lasting 30 years and ongoing, have further showed and analysed it, demonstrating not only how it happens, but also seeking the fundamentals to it.

I have been discussing an openness to the knowledge of Others that is valued do the Xikrin but also valid to their children, in schools, traveling to the cities, mastering a riverine mode of life when they wore forced by the State to move from the forest to live by the rivers - a task mainly done by them, as their elders were less able to do it, and done by relating to non-indigenous peoples.

I have also studied collections of children's toys - which were always thought to be made from adults for them - and debated how my observations showed the way they themselves made them for playing in diverse environments.

This paper proposes to draw from those ethnographic observations and analytical debates to show how toys and playing can be an access to Xikrin children knowledges, learning, and their epistemology