reposted from 2019
I learned a new word: “Metalute”. It comes from the Mehinaku language, a tribe that still lives in forests of Brazil and means that one is naked unless wearing feathers. I first read about this in a New York Times article (great article on the transformative, talismanic power of feathers, August, 2019) that referenced the anthropologist Thomas Gregor. I found his Mehinaku paper (in Portuguese) entitled The Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village that was published in 1977 and was able to sort of muddle my way through it with my Spanish.