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[...] and finally, laws to ensure fundamental levels of cooperation for the survival of the entire human species. Beyond this question being absolutely necessary in the sense already mentioned, even if thought only in terms of "compensatory adjustments for historical errors committed," it is deepened by the environmental factor, which amplifies its urgency, as climate changes and intensification of social inequalities emerge as direct consequences of the primary forms of relationship between these two worlds: the ancestral and the modern. However, it is important to observe, before judging errors committed, that the question is alive, since history has not found its end, except in some theory that ignores the possibility of human existence persevering and advancing for a few more millennia. Thus, we have that the investigation is above all about the relationship that "man maintains with nature," whether with his own or with the environment where he lives.
In this way, in our journey, we will maintain the scientific spirit as much as possible, however, we will encounter impasses and contradictions without considering them academic prejudices, since contemporary reality leads us precisely to recognize the need to break limits to do science where until then it was not admitted as such.
We will analyze some authors who deal with the issues of contact between modern and ancestral societies, and the images of the "savage" created from testimonies and records of adventurers and explorers, and later, of anthropologists, who gave different meanings to the bases of anthropological investigation. We will observe first the convergence of some points of view, more than the possible oppositions between them, in order to think about how the collaborations of these investigators reiterate channels for understanding the problem of current coexistence between these societies.
We begin by citing Claude Lévy-Strauss: "It was in the 16th century, with the discovery of the New World, that the problem of cultural discontinuities was posed to Western consciousness in a sudden and dramatic way." As suggested by Strauss, the question opens from the beginning, which is actually much earlier than the effective contact with ancestral cultures on American soil. The notions of the "other," of negative difference, of the "barbarian" enemy, are impregnated in the roots of European thought, retroacting to Greco-Roman antiquity that precisely feeds the flow of predominant images in the period when the European launches to the seas and "discovers the New World." From this situation in which the first contact took place flows a form of apprehension conditioned to the difficulty of admitting the Indian as an "equal," a man, this, besides the enterprise being guided by the economic component that the discovery contained since its elaboration in the old world. All the Western logic that guides the initial relations is based on the conjecture about the humanity of these "beings" that inhabit the New World. Thus, it is from that scientific and religious lexicon, motivated by the prerogatives of territorial expansion and emerging capitalism, that the norms of conduct of the conqueror are formulated.
After a few centuries of confrontations, of ethnic transfiguration, marked by the massacre of entire communities of Indians resistant to occupation, of the constant expulsion of these societies that lived in lands coveted by the European enterprise, of submission of these societies to laws strange to Amerindian thought, and finally, of the consolidation of European domination over American territory, a new phase begins, this time marked by the newly born positive science, under the pretext of an attempt to save peoples that were not saved.
Strauss mentions Auguste Comte: "Comte criticizes the dangers of a unitary theory of social and cultural development. He says that it is necessary to study development as a specific property of Western civilization..." The danger is in the investigative method, the error is to compare aspects between ancestral societies and modern society in order to evaluate levels of development.
Thus, the question of the presence or not of "humanity in these peoples" later gave way to the question of their social and cultural "development" which, in truth, preserved in itself the same essence, camouflaging the deformed apprehension of the West, to consider it a scientific object, now put to the test to justify theorists in view of modeling their science, be it Condorcet, Diderot or Rousseau. The focus migrates to an internal question, it is the European constructing an explanation for the entire world from himself. Thus, when Comte criticizes theories about social and cultural discontinuity guided by the notion of "development" and points to the need to understand it as a characteristic of the modern West, he does not do so by recognizing the autonomy of these ancestral societies before the Western model, by admitting that they have [...]
[...] with the traditional societies here, continues; so, more than a personal effort to contact the Other, we need to decisively influence the public policy of the Brazilian State."
For Pálsson, "the paradigm of communalism differs from the paradigms of orientalism and paternalism - notions that maintain variations of actions of domination and economic appropriation of nature - by rejecting the separation of nature and society and the notions of certainty and monologue emphasizing, instead, contingency and dialogue."
To the detriment of a vision that is born for "scientific progress" in the mid-1400s, and grows in the emancipatory voices of Galileo and Bacon, man reconciles with "his nature" and sees himself in it, alive among and in permanent relation with the surroundings, cooperating with a miraculous and mysterious network of interdependence that unites each tiny part of the planet in a single game of existing.
Sacredness is put again, but as a distinctive element of consciousness about respect for living entities, with the chains of cooperation that sustain life as a whole.
"Neild (1989: 239) suggests a hermeneutic approach to translation, which emphasizes the reciprocal nature of journeys; thus, if the process of translation can be described as a love affair, an adequate theory in translation must recognize the function of empathy and seduction. The author reaches the translator, altering his consciousness in the same way that the translator alters the text," this is the form that Pálsson indicates to be the best for the relationship with traditional societies, without which dialogue is not established and ethnocentrism is incurred.
Krenak endorses the issue by stating that "If we continue to be seen as those who are to be discovered and also see cities and large centers and technologies that are developed only as something that threatens us and excludes us, the encounter continues to be postponed. There is a common effort that we can make which is to spread more this vision that our history is important, that this encounter of ours is important, and what each of these peoples brings as heritage, as wealth in their tradition, is important. There is almost no indigenous literature published in Brazil. It even seems that the only language in Brazil is Portuguese and that existing writing is the writing done by whites."
The issue of formulating adequate public policies for coexistence with societies remaining from ancestral peoples in Brazil presents more positive than negative aspects, if we consider Krenak's speech. More encouraging is the work that future anthropologists, ethnologists, and botanists will have ahead of them in the face of the need to find words to translate what these peoples contain in their imagination and knowledge about the territory they still inhabit today. It is certain that none of this will be done if the quality of Western thought is not guided only by instrumental reason and the vices that come from it. It will be the case of introducing the ingredient that Pálsson recognized as love, to verify from it new limits to achieve excellence.
"This understanding that we are peoples who have this heritage and this wealth has been the main reason and the main reason for me to dedicate myself more and more to knowing my culture, knowing the tradition of my people and also recognizing, in the diversity of our cultures, what illuminates our horizon and our capacity as human societies to improve at each epoch, because if there is one thing that everyone wants, it is to improve. Indians, whites, blacks, and all colors of people and cultures in the world yearn to improve." Ailton Krenak.
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