Four different Indian groups live on the Uaça River Basin and Oiapoque River, in the Northern part of Brazil, State of Amapá, at the boarderline with French Guiana. These Indians of heterogeneous ethnic and cultural origins define themselves as "Mixed People". On the other hand they also share many things and thus reffer to this common heritage as "our system". These Indians are very open to the outside world and at the same time have a strong sense of "inwardness". This article written in 1997 analyses the different contexts in which two recurrent geometric designs occur, applied to simple dayly objects or ritual artifacts and which express intelectually and emotionally these opposite and complementary principles. Retrospectively, I try to evaluate our debt towards Lévi-Strauss and his works in terms of what art means to indigenous people and of how we can better interpret the relations between art and society.
Indians of the Lower Oiapoque River; cosmology; History; art and society
