O PAPEL DO MITO NAS NARRATIVAS ORAIS DOS KAINGANG NA BACIA DO LAGO GUAÍBA, PORTO ALEGRE, RS

Abstract

This study deals with the mythical dimension of the Kaingang oral narratives, a Jê Meridional
society whose traditional territories are located in the south of Brazil. It is based on interviews carried out
among Kaingang communities located in the hydrographic region of the Guaíba Lake basin, Rio Grande
do Sul state, analyzed in view of the native etnology and of the myth theory. It was considered specially
the studies of Egon Schaden (1913) and Mircea Eliade (1963), completed by the studies of Robert
Crèpeau (1997), Rogério Reus Gonçalves da Rosa (1998) and Sérgio Baptista da Silva (2002). The
preliminary data allow to recognize that the Kamé-Kairukré cosmologic dualism, revealed in the version
of the myth of the Kaingang origin collected by Telêmaco Borba (1908), remains as a wire coductor of
the contemporary Kaingang thought, orienting its narratives, its history and nature conceptions, its life in
society and its duty notion.