Integrando valores culturais Akwẽ na gestão da água: um estudo de caso na comunidade da aldeia da terra Xerente

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the Akwẽ (Xerente) people and the water resources within their territory, highlighting how water functions as a structuring axis of social, cultural, and political organization. Its objective was to promote an integrated approach to fostering a healthy and safe environment for Akwẽ communities, focusing on the availability of water resources and on the transfer of traditional Akwẽ values and knowledge to contemporary local approaches for assessing water security. The intention was to ensure the acceptability of potable water production through the incorporation of traditional perspectives and practices alongside the methodologies currently employed. The study was conducted in the Xerente Indigenous Territory, encompassing Akwẽ villages located in the sub-basins of Kâ waktû (Ribeirão Preto), Piabanha, and Jenipapo. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied, including semi-structured interviews with health and sanitation agents, ethnographic interviews with elders, field observations, and participatory mapping of water points using GPS, GIS, and satellite imagery. Water quality was evaluated both through community perceptions and laboratory analyses of physical, chemical, and microbiological parameters. Water security indicators were constructed considering cultural, social, environmental, and governance dimensions, and social cartography was used to map community relations, water uses, and forms of social protagonism. The results show that water bodies, rivers, streams, and springs, have shaped village locations, migratory processes, and the continuity of cultural practices, becoming central elements of collective identity and social memory. The study also highlights the political protagonism of the Akwẽ in resisting forced displacements and asserting territorial rights, revealing the group’s resilience in the face of colonial pressures, religious missions, and agricultural expansion. The demarcation of the Xerente and Funil Indigenous Lands strengthened cultural protection, water access, and community governance, ensuring the population’s permanence in their ancestral territories. The research also demonstrates that the local perception of water quality integrates physical, sensory, and spiritual dimensions. Transparency, flow velocity, and purity are considered key criteria for assessing water security and well-being, and water itself is understood as a mediator between the physical and spiritual worlds. The convergence between laboratory analyses and traditional perceptions validates Akwẽ knowledge as a legitimate instrument for water monitoring, reinforcing the need to integrate Indigenous knowledge systems and scientific approaches. Based on participatory methods and social cartography, a Water Management Plan (PGH) was developed, along with a water security tool that incorporates technical, cultural, social, and spiritual dimensions. This tool enables adaptive monitoring, articulates both consumptive and non-consumptive uses of water, strengthens education, capacity-building, and community governance, and legitimizes Indigenous protagonism in the management of their water resources. The study shows that water security among the Akwẽ extends far beyond physical supply; it is inseparable from cultural, spiritual, and environmental protection. The study demonstrates that water security among the Akwẽ is not limited to physical supply, but is inseparable from cultural, spiritual, and environmental protection.