The edition of Antes o mundo não existia in Berta Gleizer Ribeiro´s correspondence

Abstract

The publication of Antes o mundo não existia (Before the world didn´t exist) (1980), authored by Umúsin Panlõn Kumu and Tolamãn Kenhíri indigenous, was preceded by the steps of translation, transcription and textualization of the mythical story. The manuscripts that gave rise to it are the result of the formal Salesian education interference offered to the Northwest Amazonian indigenous communities. This first etnography drove Berta Gleizer Ribeiro (scholar of desana) to participate of its editorial process, to keep in touch by correspondence with the salesian priests Casimiro Bėkšta and Franz Knobloch and, after its publication, with the anthropologist Dominique Buchillet, who would become later the proofreader of the second edition. This article relates the epistolary documents preserved in Darcy Ribeiro Memorial to the publications that are part of the intellectual production of the letter writers. Beyond the correspondences, the books Os índios das águas pretas (The black Waters indians), by Berta Gleizer Ribeiro (1995) were analyzed; such as the interview given by Casimiro Bėkšta in 1978 and the articles  “Lungo il cauaboris (Storia di una missione)” and “The Aharaibu Indians: a ‘white’ tribe in the Amazon”, by Franz Knobloch. The comparison of these texts emphasized the study of topics like (a) the edition of Antes o mundo não existia (Before the world didn´t exist); (b) indigenous knowledge and authorship; (c) conceptions of ethnographic research; and (d) educational context of Salesian missions and effects of indigenous policies. The theoretical perspectives launched by Berta Gleizer Ribeiro's ethnographic research are used to analyze the interferences of the contact between oral and written traditions in the editing and publication stages of the mythical desana story.