What the vedores rastejam (track) in Bahia's caatinga

Abstract

Many people in the caatinga of Bahia (Brazil) are able to rastejar (track) groundwater, which is why they are known as veeiros or vedores. This ancestral native practice reveals a relationality, that plays a central role in the vedores ability to coexist with drought and climate change, which questions some ontological assumptions of modern science. From an ethnographic description of the practice of rastejar water, in this paper, I will investigate how these specialists are affected by this experience and how they can also affect it. Since rastejar does not connect two objects (human and non-human), but diverts them from that modern relational model, to then make them allies insofar is in alterity that they connect. Finally, I propose that the native concept of rastejar goes beyond the common sense of "to track", since is sufficiently open to the semantic depth of water, that is, it is a non-anthropocentric concept-praxis that allows itself to be used by non-human lives.