ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of a pilot project which reconnected Indigenous communities to the knowledge documented in the treatise Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (Piso and Marcgraf 1648). The treatise contains knowledge of Indigenous peoples who lived in coastal Brazil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; however, it is presently unknown by Indigenous communities and by Brazilian society in general, despite being available in libraries and online. In order to analyze the preservation of Tupi terminology, a list of words, together with their images, was presented to three Indigenous peoples living in different sociolinguistic and geographic contexts: the Baré, the Apyãwa, and the Tapeba. The Baré live in the Upper Rio Negro and replaced their ancestral Arawak language with Nheengatú, the ‘general language’ that originated from Old Tupi. The Apyãwa live in the cerrado region and speak a Tupi-Guarani language. The Tapeba still live in the coast of Brazil where Old Tupi used to be spoken; they only speak a variety of Brazilian Portuguese, although they still keep a process of ethnic resistance alive. The lexical transformations discussed in this chapter point to the need for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of linguistic and cultural contacts that took place among peoples.
