My name is Massimo Canevacci. I'm professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Sciences of Communication, University of Rome "La Sapienza" - Now I'm Visiting  Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies  in the University of São Paulo (IEA-USP, Brazil).

Since 1995, my fieldwork is Bororo culture  at Meruri and Garças villages (Mato Grosso, Brazil). José Carlos Kuguri, the last Bororo mestre dos cantos  passed away on the June 20, 2014. To honor his death, this project aims to collect funds towards the realization of the most important cosmological ritual of their culture: the Bororo Funeral. 

The ritual of the funeral is connected to their philosophy, according to which the master of songs plays a central role through the whole process. The ritual begins with the inhumation of the body of the deceased, followed by his/her exhumation and the transfiguration of his/her skull and bones into an ancestral being (arara). The body of José Carlos was already buried at the center of his aldeia (Garças) at the end of this June. Since then, his body has been watered everyday to facilitate putrefaction until his exhumation, which should take place at the beginning of this October. By then, the most important phase of the Bororo ritual will take place.

Donations may favor the realization not only of the funeral, but of the self-representation project: Beyond the Salesians, Fazendeiros or Rede Globo influences, Bororo culture must survive. The realization of this funeral is crucial to the Bororo people in that it enables them to reproduce their political stance in the world through their practices of autonomous self-representation. As such, it is part and parcel of contemporary human heritage, hence important to everybody else living everywhere in the world. 

I'd like to receive 2.500 US$: it is necessary to fund expenses concerning the arrival and stay of other masters of songs and the participation of other Bororo representatives from several other aldeias in Mato Grosso, who will be also in charge of nominating a successor to José Carlos.