Where I come from—the village of Ulupuwene in the Xingu Indigenous Reservation—food, medicine, and much of our resources are found in nature. The basis of our diet is fish and beiju, which is made of cassava starch. My daily routine in the village involves waking up very early to fish in the Batovi River, harvest cassava in the fields, or collect fruit and firewood.
Another activity that takes up part of my day, besides studying, is collecting thatch, which we will use to cover the house we are building for my family. In December last year, a fire caused by lightning destroyed six houses, including ours. In addition to belongings such as hammocks, I lost all of my PhD research material.
My research career only began recently. I have been teaching Wauja children and young people since 2006. That was the year I completed the intercultural teaching course at the Mato Grosso State Education Department and secured a teaching position at the Piyulaga State Indigenous School, located in Xingu, close to where I lived at the time. It was this experience that encouraged me to apply for university, to improve my work in the classroom.
In 2018, I graduated in language sciences from the Federal University of Goiás [UFG]. I chose to study language due to my life story. I learned to read and write late, at 16 years old. Writing in Portuguese, especially in an academic format, is still a challenge for me.
I then completed a master’s degree in social anthropology at the same institution. In my research, which I completed in 2021, I studied pubertal seclusion, a traditional rite of passage among the Wauja and several other peoples of the Upper Xingu. In this phase, which can last one to two years, adolescents are prepared for adult life through physical education, as well as teachings about the culture of their people. For Wauja girls, who enter seclusion after their first menstruation, it is when they begin to learn the art of ceramics.
This ceramic culture inspired my PhD research, which I have been doing through the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology at the University of Campinas [PPGAS-UNICAMP] since 2022, with a scholarship from CAPES [Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education]. I earned my place on the course thanks to a specific call for Indigenous candidates that the program has offered since 2015. The steps to enroll on the postgraduate course are the same as the conventional process—the difference is that the Indigenous candidates only compete against one another for two available spots.
I currently divide my time between Ulupuwene and Campinas, where I live alone in a small apartment near UNICAMP. I like the classes, having conversations with teachers and colleagues, but I don’t feel comfortable in the city. I miss my family, the village way of life, and the food.
Leandro VarisonWaurá with Wauja ceramic pots in the Musée du Quai Branly, ParisLeandro Varison
The production of traditional ceramics is an ancestral knowledge of the Wauja. Everyone in the community participates in the process, first by collecting the clay and cauxi—a type of freshwater sponge that is mixed with clay to make it stronger and easier to shape. The women begin shaping and painting pots when they are teenagers, but men only participate when they are older, from the age of 30. Ceramics are part of our identity, and knowledge of their production has been passed down through generations.
However, since contact with non-Indigenous people has intensified since the 2000s, the production of ceramic and its day-to-day uses have been changing. Many Wauja families, for example, have begun using plastic and aluminum utensils. I have also noticed that some traditional pot shapes have been modified to meet the demands of the craft market. The challenge in my doctorate is to try to understand the cultural transformations of the Wauja in the context of our ceramics.
In addition to field research in the Wauja villages of the Upper Xingu, I have visited museums with collections of Wauja ceramics. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, studies by anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as non-Indigenous people interested in learning about and collecting Indigenous art, helped share Wauja ceramics with museums in Brazil and abroad.
One example is the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, which specializes in art collections from peoples of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America. It has around 175 Wauja pieces from two collections. One is from the late 1960s and early 1970s, assembled by anthropologist Vilma Chiara [1927–2020] and archaeologist Niède Guidon. The other is from 2005, put together by Brazilian museologist and anthropologist Aristóteles Barcelos, a professor at the University of East Anglia [United Kingdom].
I spent time in France in 2023 and 2024 thanks to the Guatá Grant, offered by the French embassy in Brazil to make international travel possible for Indigenous PhD students. In my first international experience, I took part in various conferences and other activities, supervised by anthropologist Emmanuel Mathieu de Vienne of Paris Nanterre University. I had the chance to talk about my research and the culture of my people in a country whose academic tradition strongly influenced Brazilian anthropology.
Between September 2023 and February 2024, I conducted a detailed survey of the Wauja ceramic pieces held in the Musée du Quai Branly collection. In partnership with Leandro Varison, a Brazilian anthropologist and researcher who works at the museum, I started a collaborative museography project with the aim of updating—and in many cases, correcting—the names and descriptions of these items. This is a task that combines traditional and academic knowledge in the field of anthropology, and it’s something I hope to continue after I finish my PhD.
I am currently working with the Ulupuwene Municipal Indigenous School in Xingu. However, I have been on leave from the classroom since 2022 to work on my PhD, which I expect to complete in the next two years. When people ask me what I plan to do after I complete my research, I tell them that I want to return to my village and show children and teenagers the importance of preserving our stories and customs, such as the production and daily use of ceramic pots.
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