Matipu

The Matipu say they once lived in a village near the mouth of the Kulisevo and Buriti rivers, beside a lagoon. Over time they strengthened ties with the other peoples of the Upper Xingu, forming with them a system of coexistence in which each people keeps its own customs but takes part in the same festivals and alliances.

Like other peoples of the region, they were severely affected by diseases brought by contact in the last century, and their population was reduced to very few. In 2002, an internal political division led to the founding of a second village, called Jagamü, and the people came to live in two settlements.

Their livelihood comes mainly from farming and fishing. Manioc, made into beiju (flatbread) and porridge, is the foundation of the table, served with fish. As across the Upper Xingu, handicrafts are highly valued: there are woven buriti palm goods, bead necklaces and other adornments that accompany the festivals and the exchanges between villages.

Dance is the main expression of collective life and of the Matipu worldview. In the rituals, invitations between villages express alliances, mutual respect and the memory of ancestors, and each generation learns by taking part, listening to the songs and watching the elders. In this way the festival is at once celebration, school and bond between the peoples of the Xingu.

The traditional spirituality of the Matipu is tied to nature and to the narratives that explain the origin of festivals, animals and people. Belief is not a doctrine separate from daily life, but something lived out in the calendar of rituals, in dance and in song, in communion with the other peoples of the Upper Xingu.

Today, part of the people also has some contact with Christianity, and each family’s faith coexists with the collective identity, so that religious choices tend to be lived out in community and not only individually. For this reason, any path of faith must be walked with patience, respect and attention to the life of the group.

The Bible is available in Portuguese, and it is through this language that the Scriptures, as well as audio and video resources, reach those who seek them. But the heart language of a people is the one in which they sing, tell their stories and make their most important decisions, and it is in that language that the Word speaks most deeply. Because the Upper Xingu tradition is strongly oral, audio is often a more natural path than the written text.

The distance and isolation of the villages within the Indigenous territory make lasting contact with Christian communities rare. The people are small and live interwoven with a network of festivals and alliances in which traditional spirituality is part of the collective identity, so that following a new faith can be understood as drifting away from the group. In addition, the message of the gospel almost always arrives in Portuguese, a language learned as a second language, and not in the language in which the people sing and tell their stories.

Like other peoples of the Xingu, the Matipu need health care and protection of the territory and the rivers on which they depend to live. There is also the challenge of keeping the language and customs alive among the young, amid growing contact with the surrounding society.

On the spiritual side, they lack access to God’s Word in forms that speak to the heart, and the company of people who proclaim Jesus with respect for the culture, walking alongside the people over time. More than information, they need relationships of trust, in which the gospel is presented with patience and without requiring anyone to stop being Matipu.