As I conclude the writing of this book in 2022, I am struck by how long it has been since I visited the Pimentel Barbosa and Etênhiritipá communities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I went in June 2019 to conduct a survey of A’uwẽ perspectives regarding public policies of social inclusion and have not been able to return since. FUNAI has prohibited all access by researchers to Indigenous lands since March 2020. When I can return, more of the young children I met in 2004 will have grown seemingly so rapidly that I will have difficulty recognizing them. Most of them will be married, and some young men will have taken additional wives and have more children. My secular age set peers will reintroduce me to their now large families, perhaps ask me about the universities they are considering applying to, and in a few cases discuss with me their new responsibilities as executives of their Indigenous associations. My secular mentors’ mentors, who are about my chronological age, will be showing the first signs of approaching young eldership (ĩhire), while my once spry adoptive father may be walking with a cane.

It is impossible to track all the changes that have occurred and will occur in these A’uwẽ communities as the years pass, but it is necessary to ensure my ethnographic data are current. My notebooks are full of recent updates to and elaborations on notations I made as many as eighteen years ago, which I have rigorously digested and confirmed are consistently incorporated into this book. I have yet to unravel all the interconnections and implications of ethnographic details I offer in this book and can only guess how their meanings may change in the future. As I ponder these possibilities, A’uwẽ perspectives about social and environmental wellness are rapidly transforming in consonance with changing circumstances in the Pimentel Barbosa and Etênhiritipá communities.

Change is a constant for contemporary and historical A’uwẽ people, as others have noted (e.g., Graham 1995, 2002, 2005, 2014, 2016). Their oral history recounts a long series of migrations, many provoked by interactions with non-Indigenous colonists. They also tell of ancestral times when the population enjoyed greater liberty and happiness than they do today. Their experience of engagement with Brazilian society since the 1940s is rife with disagreeable stories of constriction and confinement associated with untrustworthy actors and government representatives. It is also full of conquests through political action, rethinking of old ideas in light of new circumstances, and acquisition of favorable technologies such as trucks, water wells, and textbooks.

Their cerrado territory has been invaded and reduced, with small and not so small cities growing where living elders remember camping on trek just over a half century ago. Yet, their land is well stewarded, with extremely low deforestation and anecdotal evidence of healthy plant and animal populations. Their social spheres have grown, with unwelcome exposure to racial discrimination and institutional dishonesty alongside close affective relationships with non-A’uwẽ friends who have taken them into their homes while they were away from their communities to study, advocated for their environmental rights with the government, and developed with them long-lasting research collaborations. Personally, I have been treated by A’uwẽ as kin, trusted with privileged information, and called on to perform my responsibilities as a member of secular and spiritual age sets. Undoubtedly, I have affected the lives of many of the A’uwẽ I have met and thereby contributed to change, but I hope it has been in ways that promoted the values of interculturalism through dialogue and transparent interaction.

While change is pervasive, some social constructions tether A’uwẽ society to traditionalist concepts of community well-being in ways that enhance resilience. The A’uwẽ life cycle is marked by abundant cherished social moments, many formalized through ritual, which ground contemporary change in tangible concepts of how a good life should be lived. Standing out among these moments are those involving age organization, including informal age grades and secular and spiritual age group systems. Leadership styles, kinship relations, and heritable prerogative ownerships are similarly responsible for orienting people toward good and proper social relations throughout the life cycle. Some subsistence activities, traditional ecological knowledge, and forms of environmental conservation are foci of community attention because of their importance for social activities popularly viewed as traditional and important for the promotion of community wellness today. These dimensions illustrate how social and environmental well-being intersect in contemporary A’uwẽ life.

Reflecting on the process of writing this book, I am drawn to recall how A’uwẽ sociality strikes me as complex and involving some demanding ideas about how to live a good life. Living well in communities is not only about having hedonic experiences. It is also about diligently participating in channeled expressions of confidence, rivalry, endurance, and respect. Multiple configurations of age hierarchy counterbalance rivalrous vigilance with intimate permissiveness in contrasting yet collaborating A’uwẽ models for promoting wellness among others. The plural and mutual construction of difference and equality is based in rigid not fluid formulations of social organization but affords individuals the liberty to view and interact socially with one another in their own creative and boundless ways. A key to understanding social well-being among A’uwẽ at the Pimentel and Etênhiritipá communities is recognizing that unrelenting service to one’s allies and adversaries sets the stage for a life well lived. Knitting these ideas together is a powerful expression of interpersonal solidarity, camaraderie, which upholds individuals within intergenerational blocs of mutual commitment, indulgence, and support. Through camaraderie, people learn to use and care for the cerrado landscape in ways that facilitate the persistence of well-being. These were some of the most memorable themes that emerged from the process of writing this book, which motivated me to scrutinize my notes and recollections of contemporary A’uwẽ social lives as I experienced and observed them from my unique vantage point. In the spirit of camaraderie between students of A’uwẽ culture, which increasingly include Indigenous A’uwẽ scholars, I look forward to future publications that draw on different perspectives to complement and critique the ethnographic representations I present in this book.