Potlach Against the State_Chloe Nahum

CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL

Enawene-nawe potlatch againstthe state

The Enawene are sustained by the Juruena river in central Brazil, where multiple hydroelectric dams are underconstruction and in planning. The Enawene are fishermen whose highly ritualised economic life centres onfeeding the demonic owners of hydraulic resources. In this paper, Nahum-Claudel takes us through tensenegotiations between the Enawene and the para-state hydroelectric company, observing the formers adroitdiplomacy as they repeatedly negotiate wins of ever-larger hand-outs (motors, boats, petrol, money and evenfish) in the lead up to what the company hopes will be a final compensation pay-out. In the era of hydroelectricaccumulation by dispossession (Harvey D. 2005. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press),the Enawene enrol the state in paying the debt to the demon-owners, becoming in a perspectival twist themselves akin to these demons, engaged in an inflationary potlatch against the state. Diplomatic relationsacross this frontier are particular to the Enawene ritual economy, to the very recent onset of their relationswith the state, and to the speed of resource capture in this region. Given the massive expansion of hydroelectricgeneration in Brazil, a nation currently achieving vastly accelerated growth, the analysis is likely to be ofbroader salience.

Key words Enawene-nawe, hydroelectric dams, debt, potlatch, state

I n t r o duc t i o n

The Enawene-nawe (henceforth Enawene) are a 600-strong Amerindian people wholive in a single village in their demarcated territory on the upper Juruena river in theBrazilian state of Mato Grosso. Mato Grosso has the highest rates of deforestation andeconomic growth in all of Brazil; it is Brazils largest soya producer and one of the areasin which a series of new hydroelectric dams are under construction. An Enawene manout fishing one day in 2007 discovered the works site of a 30 MW small hydroelectriccentre called Telegrafica, just 20 km upstream on the Juruena River from Enaweneterritorial limits. It was one of five whose construction was nearing completion in 2009,of a total of 67 in planning stages.1 Until very recently considered an isolated group, theEnawene suddenly find themselves living on an energy frontier, at a time when Brazilsimpressive, feted growth is staked on its accelerated expansion. During my fieldworkin 20089, diplomacy between the Enawene, various state agencies and the dammingcompany was intense and fraught.

Since 2007, the Enawene have exacted ever greater payments from the state inthe form of gasoline, engines and other goods (including fish), which have becomevital means of production in their ritual fishing economy. The Enawene get constantpayments, which increase with the states interestedness in them, and they never cease

1 According to EPE (Pettena 2010: 32), 67 dams are planned for the Juruena alone.

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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 445

to demand recognition in the form of permanent compensation, i.e. a real stake indamming projects rather than a pay-off. I argue that what looks like an example ofindigenous resistance to resource exploitation, opportunistic acquisitiveness, coupledwith deliberate state-sponsored dependence, could be understood as potlatch againstthe state. This title is a play on Clastres now classic Society against the State (1977)and was also inspired by his later re-conceptualisation of the non-coercive nature ofAmerindian leadership in terms of debt: Power relations . . . take the form of a debt thatthe leader must forever pay (2010: 203). I use Potlatch, after Mauss, as an ethnographicspur to thinking about gift-debt logics (see High, this issue); it becomes transfiguredby this new problematic a concept centred on the drive to indebt as a counter-assertionof political sovereignty. The hydroelectric frontier becomes a site for the deliberativediplomatic balancing of powers between rival sovereignties (the Enawene and the state),fought through the medium of vital resources.

If indeed the Enawene are very much plunged into predicaments that are new anddisorientating to them, how is it that they prove to be such experts in foreign diplomacy(Levi-Strauss 1949)? The answer, I suggest, lies in an understanding of Enawene ritualeconomy, which is profoundly debt-oriented. It necessarily includes the state once thelatter seeks to exploit resources that belong to theEnawenes constitutive others, demonscalled Yakairiti. Just as Enawene economy and existence is shadowed by Yakairiti whoown resources (and the fish and the waterways are especially their dominion), so theEnawene become a kind of demonic shadow to exploiters of water resources, imposing,via their infinite demands for goods and recognition, a debt that tugs, galls and harassesagainst the states spectre of limitless profit. Via their adroit politicking, the Enaweneeffectively transform the states limited compensation regime into something muchmore akin to a bond of indebtedness at times we might even say that it comes to lookas though the state is paying them tribute.

To begin, I will put the current situation in its historical perspective with a briefoutline of the Enawenes experience of this frontier, placing emphasis on the relevantactors and events in the current period of rapid, para-state hydroelectric expansion.I then turn to the description of the principle dynamics of Enawene ritual economy(Yankwa). The two expositions come together with the Enawenes recent co-optionof state resources, including hydroelectric damming compensation, for Yankwa. Igo through the accelerated capture of relations with the state and provide a detailedanalysis of the crucial meeting in 2009 when the compensation pay-out was finallyagreed.

The f r on t i e r

The Enawene have gone from a marked situation of isolation to total imbrication ina national Project of Accelerated Growth (PAC) in just ten years. The frontier beganto be felt at least half a century before official contact by a Jesuit mission in 1974(Lisboa 1985).2 In another sense contact began significantly later because the radicalmission effectively fenced in the Enawene, protecting them from outside threat andinfluence and, rather than proselytising, upheld the Enawenes extraordinarily vibrant

2 Intensified attacks from the neighbouring Cinta-Larga through the 1950s and 60s were probablybutterfly effects of the frontier.

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446 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL

religious life. In 1998 the mission ceased to be the sole mediator of Enawene relationswith the outside. That year the Enawene received powered launches from the stategovernorMaggi, as a bribe for building a road through their lands.ThePublic Prosecutor(MPF) stopped the road, but the Enawene began to sporadically visit nearby towns andtravelling further afield to fish became increasingly aware that portions of their ancestralterritory were being encroached upon by cattle, soya and rice farmers. From 1998 to2007 they gradually acquired more outboard engines and launches via state pensionpayments. Since 2007, hydroelectric damming has entailed intense relations with manymore state agencies. Today it is the road-building state governors son, Blairo Maggi,a soya impresario who was also for a time state governor, who is responsible for fivehydroelectric centres (PCH) under construction on the upper Juruena.3

The first five dams on the Juruena were authorised in 2002 and granted a RS 360million loan from the Brazilian development bank.4 Never having been consulted,the Enawene discovered the nearest of the dams (Telegrafica) in 2007. In 2008 thepublic prosecutor investigated the licensing process and ordered that construction atthe dams be halted. This was a small (and temporary, as we shall see) victory in a tugof war between different organs of the state: the public prosecutor, the environmentministry and the National Indian Agency (FUNAI, which has a sort of tutelary rolevis-a`-vis Brazils Amerindian population) interject demands for environmental andsocio-cultural impact studies, legal scrutiny and consultation meetings with affectedpopulations, setting off a chain of bureaucratically cumbersome due-process that slowsdown developments. Affected peoples like the Enawene can throw the force of theirbodies on this side of the tug of war, with acts of blockade and occupation and in thissituation such acts were decisive, halting construction and awakening judicial and otherstate apparatus to their tutelary and constitutional duties.5

In June 2008 the public civil action case was overturned in a Supreme FederalTribunal and works on the dams began again. The judge acknowledged the unconstitu-tional nature of the licensing process but ruled that further financial losses to the nationshould be prevented. In this battle for national interest, the tight mesh of alliancesbehind the PAC won out. The Enawene followed these developments eagerly and amonth after construction resumed, in July 2008, they were called to a meeting withthe National Energy Research Company (EPE); there they were shown maps thatpinpointed potential hydroelectric generation sites all along the Juruena they wereconfrontedwith theplanned exploitationof their entire river basin.They affirmed (alongwith their former enemies and now allies, the Cinta-Larga) their absolute opposition toall dams, stated their refusal to allow teams of hydroelectric viability researchers to entertheir territory and withdrew from compensation negotiations already underway for thefive existing dams. From this time the Enawene talked constantly about the threat posedby damming and a month later they went and burned the site of Telegrafica.

3 A Parliamentary Commission of Investigation has been set up to investigate how so manyhydroelectric licences were granted so quickly and to such a limited circle of investors duringMaggis premiership.

4 By fiat of a law passed in 2002, the usual requirement for environmental impact assessment waswaived for plants generating less than 30 MW. This facilitated a hasty licensing process that, in thecase of dams in question, was deemed unconstitutional by a Public Civil Action Case brought inApril 2008.

5 InDecember 2007 andMay 2008 the Enawene blocked the regions main roadwith a series of claims,including their opposition to the dams.



The state as I deploy it (repetitiously) here corresponds to the Enawenesperception of a frontier that repeats its threat in multiple forms, now includingcompanies who have bought damming concessions to carry out state-defined projects(hence the designation para-state). The Enawene do not use the word estado but talkconstantly about inoti, the word for non-Amerindian men that denotes their wholeworld in relation to our own. In many ways it is akin to what we mean by the frontier.Inotimeets Enawene lives with many faces, always in passionate antagonism. The statethey meet is in their experience duplicitously sub-divided; made up of specific entitiesthat have entered their lexicon as well as peopled by figureheads they know personally:Empresa (the company), ANEEL (the ministry for mining and energy), IBAMA(the environment ministry), FUNAI (the national foundation for indigenous affairs),Municipio (the municipality), MPF (the public prosecutor). Enawene diplomacy withthis multiplicitous state is characterised by a constant hedging of bets with differentagents, relations oscillating between alliance and enmity, co-optation and rejection.For example, negotiating compensation directly with the company and simultaneouslyawaiting the impact of documents lodged by the MPF and other allies to halt the damprojects. The Enawene perceive the blurred boundaries of the state and the cross-cutting ties within it public and private are not meaningfully distinguishable since allthe important actors overlap a point epitomised in the figure of Blairo Maggi.

They are also savvy that FUNAI, who they describe on the one hand as somethinglike our very own government which works for us, is likely to be working traitorouslyagainst their interests;6 or if not, when it is genuinely on side, this is mere emptytalk lacking concrete influence. Another recurrent problem with FUNAI from theEnawenes perspective is that to fulfil its role representing Amerindian interests it getsin the way of negotiations the Enawene seek to make without intermediation. Thesuccess the Enawene have had by which I mean not only the disruption they havedirectly caused to the dams construction but also their success in enrolling others intheir opposition to the dams has been in the measure that they have put differentorgans of the state to work for them, bypassing ineffectual intermediaries and short-circuiting bureaucratic process by, for example, demanding the immediate presenceof high-level officials at road-blocks. In sum, on a very sudden, tense and extremefrontier, the Enawene have actively and rapidly co-opted relations with the state in anexperimental and testy political diplomacy.

A cosmopo l i t i c s o f deb t and an economy o f p l e n i t ude

Yankwa, a mode of life that absorbs the Enawene from the November corn harvestto the planting of manioc gardens in June, is a total social fact akin to Kula, Moka orPotlatch. Its three main pillars are manioc, village life and flutes. The circulation of foodin the villages central arena is the node aroundwhich the prodigious productivity of thefifteen Enawene longhouses that surround it turn like radial extensions of the spokes ofawheel. As soon as food is produced manioc, corn, beans and potatoes are harvested orfish is caught it is owed to others. Food production sustains what Enawene have come

6 They recognise, effectively, that assistance from FUNAI is proportionate to the strategic economicimportance of their territory, with infrastructure or resource projects activating the states tutelaryrelationship (Graham 1995: 61).



to gloss as Ritual, a new reification for the hours of flute playing, rhythmic, steppingdance and singing of cosmographic myths that is an everyday affair in the central arena.The food exchanged and eaten in public there is prepared bywomen, served by the hosts(the men of one clan) and consumed by Yankwa (the men of the remaining eight clanstogether). Yankwa, in addition to referring to The Ritual as a whole and the seasonproper to it, is also a collective noun that could variously be glossed as the dancers,the fishermen and the flutes depending on context. Women make the food and drinkand along with the hosts who serve them and keep the ceremonial hearths burning inthe arena, and are referred to as the owners of Yankwa.

Yankwa sing and dance daily around these hearths for about 23 months beforegoing to build fishing weirs in distant parts of the territory and for about another 23 months after returning to the village with their catch. In a straight-forward idiom,Yankwa is clan-based ceremonialism centred on a dualistic relationship between hostsand women who are the owners of manioc and all the fishermen (Yankwa). In the2-month build up to their departure for the weirs, the hosts feed the singers with ketera(a cooked, porridge-like manioc and corn drink) nightly, and amass manioc starch andfibre with which the fishermen are sent off on their expeditions. When the fishermen(about 100 adult men and many children with them) return, laden with smoked fish,they are met by the hosts with about 4,000 litres of ketera, a great excess designed tosatiate the incomers and to domesticate the demons (Yakairiti) they impersonate. Atthis point the pace of ceremonial exchange peaks with the give and take of manioc forfish and a dizzying alternation of transactional positions between hosts andYankwa. Asa whole, energetic cycles of amassing surplus and evincing expenditure are harmonisedwith the maturation of corn and manioc crops and the spawning and migrations of fish.

People justify all harvesting in terms of feeding or quenching Yankwas thirst,women keenly go (usually daily) to the manioc gardens to pull up roots for Yankwa(on behalf of their fathers or husbands clan) and very rarely go to harvest food forhousehold consumption. The effect is that, during Yankwa, almost all food is revealedpublicly in the arena; everyone eats with Yankwa and through its dynamic there is aconstant revelation of great plenty; lines of full calabashes arranged in the central arenamatching lines of sartorially perfected, coordinated dancers. People are preoccupiedabove all with producing plenty, the beauty of a mass of people and things rows ofcalabashes of fish soup, stacks of fish drying on a rack, baskets of dried manioc breadsor starch balls and sacks of manioc flour. All this plenitude is forYankwa. This could becharacterised as a riverine horticultural version of Batailles general economy of surplusexpenditure (2002), for there is no such thing as subsistence or household economy(Sahlins 1974) where the sphere of generalised exchange inside houses is so restricted infavour of the massive expansion of balanced reciprocity between ceremonial affines inthe central arena.

Like the Gawans for whom the elementary sacrificial act is the separation of foodfrom the self (Munn 1986: 88), the Enawene seek to escape the self-closure implied byeating in perpetual feasts in which no one drinks to excess and a portion of all the foodsthat circulate in the arena are left to spoil and are eventually discarded. In tandem withcoordinating labour in extraordinary ways to produce a dried, storable surplus, a glutof perishable food is periodically cooked in great quantity along with foods said to berotten or sour to the living but that the Yakairiti (subterranean demons) most desire.

This brings us to the invisible Yakairiti to whom this highly visual and sensorypublic ceremonialism is ultimately oriented. These demons dwell underground, their



visible signs being extrusions such as rocks, waterfalls and islands that disrupt the riversflow. However, they inundate the terrestrial world with their presence, which is feltaround the living all of the time and especially at the backs of Yankwa as they dance inthe arena. Everything from the beautiful plenitude of people and calabashes, throughto Yankwas excitation with rousing cries and comical clowning is for the satiety orsatisfaction of these demons.

Enawene life (especially duringYankwa) depends on fishing and harvestingmanioc,beans, potatoes and palms, all of which belong to the Yakairiti. Yankwa is thereforeentailed by the very grounds of Enawene livelihood. Liable to become dissatisfied withthe portion of any harvest that they are fed (especially when the living withhold foodfrom circulation in the arena), the Yakairiti frequently capture living souls, causingillness and death to be ever-present features of life. The Enawene refer to them as thekillers (the literal meaning of Yakariti) and these demons reciprocally call them thedead people (mae nawe). The economy of the living is premised on dis-appropriationin the Yakairitis domain (the ground, the water), so the latters feeding and satisfaction Yankwa must also be a never-ending project of diplomacy. This sacrificial dynamicruns from soliciting the Yakairiti to loosen their hold on resources by allowing fish toshoal into the traps of fishing weirs, to inducing them with food sacrifices to releasetheir hold on captured souls.

Such events blur into an everyday mutual entailment:Yakairiti feed from peoplesdeliberately overflowing calabashes of drink, share pots of fish soup and nightly drinkketera. Since, as mentioned earlier, the Yakairiti are said to most enjoy soured foodsand drinks and to delight in the sight of rotting leftovers, we could say that the livingssurplus is their satiety. This is overtly dramatised inmanyways, probablymost explicitlywhen soured manioc beer is poured into the ground to fill the demons undergroundpans or when salt is licked from hosts cupped palms by Yankwa as they enact thevoracious desirousness of the Yakairiti.

The Enawene channel the whole of their economy and polity into this vitalcosmopolitics, which is a channelling of the energies of the universe. As a sequenceof effective action, Yankwa proceeds from the planting of manioc gardens for twohosting clans one year, through the exhaustion of their first crop a year later, to theexhaustion of the second crop in the third year. Since every two years new gardensare planted for a different pair of host clans, this sequence is never ending. Climacticendings at the point of the exhaustion of each harvest, always precede the clearing orplanting of new gardens.

Here then, as elsewhere in the world, reciprocities between the living are shadowedby a spectre of negative reciprocity sorcery, shame or counter-predation are thecounterparts to great wealth and fame (Munn 1986; Young 1971) and the public stagingofmassive abundance is drivenby amotivating debt.What is clear inmyowndescriptionand in these ethnographic works is that debt is a form of abundance: the vigour ofgarden work, the coordination of impressive collective works, the orchestration ofceremonialism and the expenditure of excess, all generate and are sustained by anenergetic arousal (living for others) that is the vitality of life itself. In contradistinctionto the island Melanesian examples however, among Enawene neither debt to socialothers nor to rival chiefs, is foremost. All of these kinds of others are encompassedby the inhabitants of a different layer of the universe, the Yakairiti, in a mirroringperspectivism between the dead and the living who participate in one anothers being asfigure to ground (Carniero da Cunha 1978): TheYakairiti are the shadow of human life;



Yankwa, in its reified sense, is an annual project to reinstate human origins and existencein relation to this spectre. Yakairiti can be understood as reason, cause, principle, andas literally the earth upon which humans live and move and create the trace of theirexistence (after Weiner 1998: 136). This double sense literal and figurative is indeedcaptured by the visceral existential reality of the Yakairiti who belong to the groundand own its products and towards whose will the Enawenes energies are channelled.After Jorgensen (1998: 104), we might see this phenomenon of spirit ownership asrecognition that the ground everyone sits atop ultimately depends on beings who havea basic indifference to human intentions in other words, there is a foundationalcontingency to human projects.

Weiner asks the question to which we must now turn: What happens then whenhuman being is detached from its grounding (Weiner 1998: 138) as a result of, forexample, the gigantic technological imposition of hydroelectric dams on Enawenelivelihood? Hydroelectric dams are a matter of life and death for the Enawene, not onlybecause they are riverine people who eat only fish (never hunting land animals) butbecause concrete dams usurp the Yakairitis own stone ones (waterfalls) and threatento render ineffective the Enawenes weirs of wood and vine. This is indeed how theEnawene frame their opposition to hydroelectric damming. Here is an excerpt from astatement written by six Enawene men to translate their concerns for the outside worldon the internet:7

They have lied to us, the fish are dying, the water is dirty so we want to be ridof the dams. All the Enawene-nawe are agreed about this, we all want to throwthe dams away. We do not want the money anymore. The water is very dirty,what if the fish are finished? We do not eat meat at all so we do not want thedams. We are not jesting. You can help us, we must not be alone, you can all help,do you understand us? We are very serious. We know about dams because wetoo build dams for Yankwa. The Yakairiti will be angry with us, this is what theEnawene Nawe think about and worry about what if Yankwa ends and Saluma[a dry season ritual] as well? Do you understand?We are not joking. (HalataikwaEnawene-nawe 21/09/08)

Yankwa s deb t d i p l omacy w i t h t he s t a t e

The state is enrolled in Yankwas resource-intensive cosmopolitics with constant tripsto FUNAIs headquarters in Juna, to sustain diplomacy with various state agents.Sometimes this amounts to a daily yoyoof engine-poweredboats (ofwhich theEnawenehad about 50 in 2009) back and forth from the city. These trips, which usually entailseveral kinds of business, are oriented principally to the orchestration of Yankwasweir fishing expeditions through December and January, when drumming up moneyfor gasoline and nautical oil or for engine repairs and new boats are major priorities.I arrived in Juna to begin doctoral fieldwork in January 2008, to meet 20 Enawenemen there seeking help for the ritual from three separate sources: FUNAI, municipalenvironment funds and the hydroelectric company. Through these multiple alliancesthey won 6,000 litres of fuel (6,000 worth) that year. Such wins inflated along the

7 The statement was written in the native language; I translated it for Survival Internationals campaignwebsite and have slightly abridged it here.



course of my fieldwork: in 2009 at the same crucial juncture (but after the burning ofTelegrafica) they obtained a total of 9,000 litres of fuel. A couple of months later inMay, after the Enawenes fishing weirs had failed to yield an unprecedented failure,which was undoubtedly down to hydroelectric works some of Yankwas leaderswent to town to negotiate an advance of R$20,000 (about 7,000) from the upcomingcompensation package, so that they could buy a truck load (3 tonnes) of a transgenicspecies of farmed fish. The fish was smoked and taken back to the hosts and womenin the village where it fed into months of ceremonialism. The Enawene were back intown in early 2010, less than a year after receiving R$1.5 M compensation (an eventwe will come to), drumming up gasoline for that years ritual, and four months later,during the phase of sumptuary expenditure in June, news online told me that Enawenepeople were among 300 Indians occupying another hydroelectric works site, renewingunerring demands for permanent compensation.

This does not negate the states position of tutelage overAmerindians or sovereigntyover resources. From the states position payments are something like solicitory gifts(Malinowski 1922); investments in a strategy of mollification and seduction that sootheresistance to damming. At some obvious but nonetheless essential level also, from theEnawenes position, a communicative relation with the state is inescapable once theyneed gasoline, motors and even fish for Yankwa, and so their ritual economy is entirelyinterconnected with the power of attraction and threat of FUNAI and the company.This does not diminish the states compulsion as soon as an interest in the Enaweneis established by resource exploitation to respond to their relentless demands andthreats. This is not a relation of submission or one-way dependence. Perhaps it couldbe better expressed thus: it has become productive for Enawene livelihood that inoti beperpetually indebted and obligated to them. It is in this tension that the state is enrolledin the continuation of Enawene life, via the satisfaction of the Yakairiti.

This relationship is fraught but a degree of harmonisation rests in an importantworking misunderstanding (Kelly 2011, cit. Sahlins 1985) around culture and ritual.The Enawene appeal to the state on the basis of what is necessary to Yankwa;this chimes with the value placed on the ostentatious ceremonialism as sign of theEnawenes exemplary cultural authenticity. Since Yankwa was named IntangibleCultural Heritage in Brazil (by the government body IPHAN) in 2009 and byUNESCO in 2011, it is often referred to as the most complete and extensiveAmerindian ritual in Brazil. Even if the Enawene do consistently stress that they areworking for the Yakairiti even (and especially) when they acquire gasoline, boats andfish, many inoti persist in misunderstanding that culture and ritual are also abouteconomic and political diplomacy. Instead, the states authenticity-fetishism has led tosituations such as that in 2009 when, after the Enawene had bought farmed fish, theyheard that they had been accused of culture loss by people in FUNAI, an absurditythat angered them. My argument is that given that hydroelectric damming is an assaulton and an appropriation in theYakairitis dominion it makes perfect sense that the statebe enchained in feeding the bottomless debt that binds the Enawene to them.

There is a formal similarity between the relation between theYakairiti andEnaweneand that between the Enawene and the state. The Enawene do not exchange with theYakairiti who are fed by them, in a one-way relationship, or with inoti, by whom theyare fed resources. These two relationships contrast absolutely then to the rigorousbalancing of reciprocities among the Enawene. Just as Yakairiti are said to inspect andaccount for sacks ofmanioc flour in storage in the eaves of Enawene houses and towatch



the rate at which bundles of dry corn diminish against the amounts they have drunk, sotoo the Enawene subject outsiders to their own regime of accountability. On separateoccasions Enawene people assimilated the Yakairitis surveillance of manioc stores totheir holding inoti to account, as kinds of fiscalisation. To give an example closeto home, the Enawene guarded against my own retentiveness, suspicions that profitswere accruing to me via my research (which they understand to be extractive, muchlike hydroelectric damming), by requesting large payments (on one occasion 10,000litres of gasoline, roughly equal to 10,000) to test the depths of my pockets. As theEnawene conceive it, their anthropologists and their NGO like their FUNAI workfor them and are constantly enrolled to serve Enawene projects. In town, Enaweneleaders are tirelessly active, the environment ministry is called upon to take men onfiscalisation rounds (policing their territorial boundaries looking for invasion by loggersor miners); they issue orders in FUNAI HQ get Brasilia on the phone, send this faxthrough, help me draft this document. . .; they hurry along the employment contractof their chief of post so that they might have a FUNAI agent to work for themmore effectively. The rhythm and intensity of these relations has, in recent years, comeclose to the constancy with which the Enawene orient themselves to the desires of theYakairiti.

The Enawene put pressure on state and company agents to a degree they findunbearable so that they desire more than anything to drum up money for gasoline(from a higher level of government or from a pot of environment funding) or to speedup or short-circuit cumbersome bureaucratic processes, so that the Enawene mightbe satisfied and leave for the village. If the Enawenes indebtedness to Yakairiti isalways at the forefront of Enawene peoples minds, composing a kind of collectiveconsciousness that motivates their action, these state agents are thrust into a similarposition of having to constantly apprehend and work for the Enawene. Perhaps the keydifference between the two relationships is that severing the bond with the Yakairiti isnot desirable; Yankwa will always begin again, it is eternal, as they say. Although thesituation should be complex, involving an emotive history of the states obligation toits indigenous citizens, enshrined in the constitution, what is sought in these situationsand specifically in the context of compensation is precisely a pay-off that severs therelationship and sends the Enawene home. It is nonetheless inevitable that they willsoon return and be again at the backs of state agents. By constantly testing and revivingthe states recognition, we could say that the Enawene transform this relationship intosomething like the permanent bond between Enawene and Yakairiti. To a measure theEnawene are currently succeeding in bringing the states perspective around to meettheir own, making compensation a tug of perpetual contestation. In sum, the Enawenebecome demons at the backs of the state.

There is no doubt that in intensity this frontier relationship has been progressivelyratcheted up. Enawene demands are accruing in step with the states appropriation ofhydraulic resources. This is the conjuncture I have likened to potlatch, an ethnographicconcept that I initially defined as the drive to indebt as a counter-assertion of politicalsovereignty. Recognising along with High (this issue) that potlatch had diverseincarnations even within the American North-West and that its nature has been subjectto great debate (my readings are confined to Boas 1966, Codere 1950, Goldman 1975),I want to mine some of the parallels with our situation. First, potlatch, like Yankwa,exist[ed] in the context of a fantastic surplus economy (Codere 1950: 63) and it tooentailed primordial debts to others whose existence was constitutive of human life



(Goldman 1975). In the colonial era its in-built problematic of infinite indebtednessand inflation became starkly apparent when the magnitude of exchanges increasedyearly at a geometric ratio (Goldman 1975: 74) much as Enawene gains from the statehave done. Like potlatch then,Yankwa has thus far effectively channelled new forms ofwealth for its own expansion. Beyond these interesting parallels, potlatch against thestate captures the fundamental unity of contrary aspects of the Enawenes relation tothe frontier. On the one hand, they eagerly enrol outside resources and, on the otherhand, they boycott meetings, block roads, occupy, refuse compensation and go to war.There are many faces to potlatch: it may also take the form of a war in which propertyis killed (Mauss 2002: 1412).

Back to even t s

Remember the Enawene expressed their resolve to keep energy researchers out by force.They reached a pitch of frustration with the impotence of state organs claiming to standup for their interests, with the pretence of consultation, with having been lied to aboutthe scale of the damming projects and with the endless fruitless meetings in town thatput them at the beck and call of the company but through which compensation wasendlessly deferred. They claimed they would boycott all further meetings and werethrowing out compensation.

A few Enawene men nonetheless hedged the collective bets and attended anothercompensation meeting with the company representative in the state capital Cuiabaon the 30 September 2008. This meeting strengthened their resolve. As the attendeesreported upon their return, Maggis environment man had promised now the money isgoing to come, just wait until after lunch, when you come back, youwill see themoney.After lunch he said just wait, we need to do another study, and then the money willcome. The Enawene were prepared to receive compensation for the five dams that werealready under construction, now he was telling them that the same compensation wascontingent upon their agreeing to further works. Insulted, they walked out and wereaggressively pursued by the man who, in his anger, turned on the NGO man presentwith them, accusing him of being the agitator behind the Enawenes intransigence.Doubly patronised and with new proof of the companys underhand dealings, thesefew men returned to the village and ten days later the whole village launched a warriorexpedition and burnt the works site of Telegrafica, causing R$15 million in damages.

This was a massive destruction of wealth, a bonfire of state-incentivised develop-mentalism. In Mausss (2002) conception of the potlatch of destruction, one sovereignpolity gained ascendancy over another by destroying their own or the others goods, in arisky and ambivalent torsion of reciprocity. Following Mausss understanding, burningthe dam was an extreme form of the capture of relations and resources that typifiesthe Enawenes approach to the state it extended their drive to indebt the state intonew realms. Since no compensation money had yet come, it was the expiation of a debtthat the state had persistently refused to recognise. They also simply wanted rid ofthe dam and were performing their disdain for all they could gain by consenting to itsimposition; by burning cars, gasoline, urban infrastructure, motors and machines, theythrew away the goods that would come to them in recompense for its building. Theoutcome of a painfully ambivalent situation, this was also an act of war, a manpowercascade (Wagner 1998: 56) beyond analytical dissection.



What is clear is that the Enawene sought the political and economic recognitionthey had been denied, having been treated repeatedly in a manner that assumedtheir disempowerment. Against the liberal bias of dual discourses of resistance andliberation, which hold out a liberal dream of freedom from the bonds of exploitativerelationships, Robbins (2003) argues that in reality people seek political processesforged through the sustenance of relationships. Just so, this act of destruction, likethe acquisitive form of potlatch that is its twin, was not about breaking free orprofiting, but about binding others to a truly diplomatic relationship one betweenpowers (Stengers 2003). It is for this reason that soon after the act some Enawenewent to Juna to hear what the inoti were saying and thinking a diplomaticreopening.

The state responded well8: a delegation of 84 Enawene men and women wentto Brasilia for meetings with the heads of all the relevant government agencies. Theywere put up in a good hotel, given plenty of money to spend all in R$100 noteswhich are blue, crisp and rare like our 50 notes and they were promised that alltheir demands would be met: they would get a FUNAI chief of post whose solejob was to attend to their administrative needs, a house in Juna, and the presidentof FUNAI would personally do everything in his power to stop the constructionof dams on the Juruena river. Upon their return to the village all energies turned tothe sweet corn harvest that annually inaugurates Yankwa, and to the acquisition ofgasoline that goes with it. As we know, the Enawene acquired a significantly largerquantity of gasoline than they had the previous year. Halfway through their time at thedams, but before it was absolutely clear that the dams would not yield that year, thefishermen went to town for the meeting in which they finally signed the compensationagreement.

F i n a l c ompensa t i o n

Let me take you to a large meeting room. About thirty Enawene men have come fromtheir fishing encampments. Many more Rikbatsa, Nambiquara, Parecis and Cinta-Larga representatives, who will share R$6 million compensation with the Enawene areunited in an audience of about 300 people. They face a panel that unites the companyrepresentative, people from different levels of the FUNAI hierarchy and someone fromthe judiciary. The meeting hopes to negotiate the time scale and procedure for handingover the monies to indigenous associations. We want to pay attention in this meetingto the tension between the states definition of payment as a judicious passing on of thebenefits of development, and the Indians perception that these are tardy, palliative,cosmetic measures (Viveiros de Castro and Andrade 1988: 16, cited in Baines 1999:215) and monies long overdue to them. The Indians will allow them their fiction of dueprocess (in their documents and PowerPoint presentations) as long as the conditions ofpayment allow them autonomy to spend it unencumbered.

The dam reps speech goes over the history of meetings and nine environmentalstudies, which have all shown that the impact of the projects will be low and indirect,

8 Decades of indigenous struggle in Brazil have created the historical conditions in which this actcould lead to conciliatory meetings.



not affecting the livelihoods of those he addresses.9 Then he presents the compensationpackage, which is laid out in tables in PowerPoint and subdivided in familiar terms supporting traditional agricultural/cultural/artisanal practices, a car, computers forthe administration and capacitation of the indigenous organisation. This is a virtuosoversion of the companys judicious attention to due process. All are well aware thatin fact the company had been forced into motion (over and again) by invasions of theworks site and road blocks led by the Enawene. It was all these events that this presentmeeting sought to fold up and put away for good (the burning of Telegraficawas nevermentioned). The representative mentioned only that the basic environmental planshad been redefined successively in the special case of the Enawene. In fact, the plan, averitable shopping list of outboard engines, boats, gasoline provision and vehicles hadbeen modified to conform to Enawene wishes every time they exerted pressure on thecompany and FUNAI.

When FUNAIs legal expert takes over to explain that the money will be releasedgradually over two years, according to a planned, collaborative process in which teamsresponsible for accounting for expenditures, executing the projects and reporting backto FUNAI would be set up within each community (You think that accountability isonly white peoples concern, but it is not, you will all have to capacitate yourselves toshow accountability), the meeting erupts, someone stands up and shouts exasperated:meetings, meetings, meetings! Im sick of all these meetings. Another adds if yougive the money to FUNAI, what will they do? They will make things difficult, I amspeaking as an Indian, not as a white-man, pass this money directly to our associations.They receive great applause. FUNAIs legal expert responds we will have to respondfor any irregular usage of these monies. So everything will have to be complied with,just as it is written in the document. This is a veiled statement of FUNAIs tutelaryposition; that FUNAI are responsible for Indians and have to pick up the pieces for theirmisdemeanours. Her final words are FUNAI is responsible for the payment process,which lies within the remit of the public good, but she is interrupted by a chorusof murmurs to read the act! The audience are referring to the position statementcollaboratively drafted by the five ethnic groups the day before and that stands at thispoint, for the voice they seek to reclaim, having listened and been patronised (in themost literal sense of the term) all afternoon.

As dusk falls on the meeting, FUNAI cede to pressure, agreeing to pay all themonies to the indigenous associationswithin 60 days. Everyonewaits tensely to see if theEnawenewill sign the agreement. They are still adamant that the terms of themeeting arewrong since only permanent compensation, a true stake in the resources being exploited,will do; but they also know that there is no longer diplomatic leverage in not signing: thedams construction would continue, the others would get their money and the Enawenewould simply be left out. They decide to make the company representative sign adocument promising that permanent compensation shall be discussed and reassessed ina future meeting. This is the culmination of the tug of war running through the meetingand the events leading up to it; if the Enawene are to sign the document put beforethem, whose terms are not of their design, then the others must sign theirs, and mustdo so first. The company rep comes and crouches down by the side of the Enaweneleaders to sign their document, in an unambiguous gesture of submission. Immediately

9 The many anthropological and environmental research reports commissioned by the company werealways cited to support assertions of limited liability, regardless of their substantive contents.



the Enawene walk to the front of the room to sign the compensation agreement aftertwo years of broken and deferred meetings.

Conc l u s i o n

I have shown that burning a dam and accepting compensation, although they may lookantithetical one an assertion of sovereignty, the other a capitulation to encompassment in fact compose a single dynamic, a potlatch against the state. I have also argued Ihave argued that what looks like indigenous resistance to resource exploitation andstate-sponsored dependence, a lamentable and even tragic, yet all too familiar situation,has less to do with dependence on white goods (Hugh-Jones 1992) and more withthe deliberative, inherently diplomatic balancing of powers. This meets with the statesattempt to offer a golden handshake in replacement for a livelihood, to free-up para-state companies to continue construction they have already begun. The reader maybe thinking that this situation with Enawene shopping lists fiscalised from Juna cannot hold sway in the longer run. Gordons (2006) andGrahams work (1995), thoughnot analysed in the same terms, bring to light a similar dynamic between Xavante andKayapo people and the Brazilian state.10 With hydroelectric frontiers multiplying apacein Brazil and extending throughout the Amazon basin into neighbouring countries,frontier dynamics like the one I have described are set to become more and more (notless and less) prevalent.

Brazils hydroelectric expansion is a perfect example of neoliberal economic growthfor which Harvey (2005) has coined the term accumulation by dispossession in orderto banish the preconception that predatory practices of primitive or originalaccumulation are a bygone form of capitalism (2005: 144). He convincingly arguesthat in many guises from housing foreclosures, to privatisation, to resource extraction and usuallywith public debt as its lever, accumulation by dispossession has become theprimary form of wealth creation in the neoliberal era. However, if hydroelectric dams,backedby state force, are just somany idyllicmethodsof primitive accumulation (Marx1990: 895), feeding Brazils unprecedented economic growth, then the incorporationof water into capital11 will continue to meet the very ground of peoples being.

Acknow l edgemen t s

The doctoral research resulting in this article was funded by the Economic and SocialResearchCouncil ofGreat Britain. I would also like to thankRupert Stasch and StephenHugh-Jones for invaluable comments on earlier drafts.

Chloe Nahum-ClaudelPembroke CollegeCambridge CB2 1RF, [email protected]

10 Amerindians have been most famous in Anthropologyas debt-peons, subjected to traders whopressed credit on their Indians (see Hugh-Jones 1992: 54; Killick 2011; Walker 2012). In absolutecontrast, the Enawene talk of outsiders who work for them.

11 Paraphrasing Marx, the incorporation of soil into capital (1990: 895).



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Documents

Potlach Against the State_Chloe Nahum