Unlikely amazons: Brazilian indigenous gender constructs in a modern context

Feminist theory predicts that when traditional societies with egalitarian gender relations contact European state societies in which gender stratification exists, the traditional society will adopt the European gender construct. This rule may be modified in cases where the relations between the two types of society are modulated by interpretive processes which allow the state society to appropriate symbols of the indigenous culture for their own purposes, and the indigenous society to shape contact and change as they occur. This article describes how European contact transformed gender constructs among the Bakairí Indians of central Brazil, while accounting for the presence of an anomalous group of women who behave differently to the typical Indian woman. It explains how individual Bakairí, along with the support of key Brazilian institutions, have employed interpretively the early-contact indigenous version of the female gender role to authenticate the indigenous identity.