Between dance and architecture of the Yawanawá women: contemporary indigenous spatial practices

Abstract

The aim of this article is to observe different examples of transformation and endurance in the spatial practices of the Yawanawá indigenous population. The intention is thinking together with this people paths that can contribute to the study of their spatialities; therefore, to the affirmation of indigenous knowledge in the academic scope of architecture so that the spatial wisdom and techniques of Amerindian know-how are visualized and reconstituted. Yawanawá women, who are currently connected to global economic and political flows, think, dream and build new architectures in their territory. They materialize, on a daily basis, a form of transgression against the epistemic erasure of the indigenous people, when they circulate complex political strategies through their bodies and (re)existences, which mutate and adapt to capitalist flows and are based on their cosmology and shared values. In this text, it is a matter of claiming contemporary Yawanawá architecture as a locus for the production of knowledge of mutual implication between indigenous and not indigenous.