Yanomami
The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil.
Etymology
The ethnonym Yanomami was produced by anthropologists based on the word yanõmami, which, in the expression yanõmami thëpë, signifies "human beings." This expression is opposed to the categories yaro and yai, but also napë.According to ethnologist Jacques Lizot:
Yanomamö and Yanomama are variant spellings. Supporters of the work on the tribe of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon usually use Yanomamö. Those who oppose his work or are neutral usually use Yanomami or Yanomama.
History
The first report of the Yanomami is from 1654, when a Spanish expedition under Apolinar Diaz de la Fuente visited some Ye'kuana people living on the Padamo River. Diaz wrote:From approximately 1630 to 1720, the other river-based indigenous societies who lived in the same region were wiped out or reduced as a result of slave-hunting expeditions by the conquistadors and bandeirantes. In 2004, journalist Charles C. Mann suggested that the Yanomami descend from farmers who fled those expeditions and pressure from European expansion. Sustained contact with the outside world began in the 1950s with the arrival of members of the New Tribes Mission as well as Catholic missionaries from the Society of Jesus and Salesians of Don Bosco.
In Roraima, the 1970s saw the implementation of development projects within the framework of the "National Integration Plan" launched by the Brazilian military governments of the time. This meant the opening of a stretch of perimeter road and various colonization programs on land traditionally occupied by the Yanomami. During the same period, the Amazonian resources survey project RADAM detected important mineral deposits in the region. This triggered a progressive movement of gold prospectors, which after 1987 took the form of a real gold rush. Hundreds of clandestine runways were opened by gold miners in the major tributaries of the Branco River between 1987 and 1990. The number of gold miners in the Yanomami area of Roraima was then estimated at 30 to 40 thousand, about five times the indigenous population resident there. Although the intensity of this gold rush has subsided greatly since 1990, gold prospecting continues today in the Yanomami land, spreading violence and serious health and social problems.
Increasing pressure from farmers, cattle ranchers, and gold miners, as well as those interested in securing the Brazilian border by constructing roads and military bases near Yanomami communities, led to a campaign to defend the rights of the Yanomami to live in a protected area. In 1978 the Pro-Yanomami Commission was established. Originally named the Commission for the Creation of a Yanomami Park, it is a Brazilian non-governmental nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of the territorial, cultural, and civil and political rights of the Yanomami. CCPY devoted itself to a long national and international campaign to inform and sensitize public opinion and put pressure on the Brazilian government to demarcate an area suited to the needs of the Yanomami. After 13 years the Yanomami indigenous land was officially demarcated in 1991 and approved and registered in 1992, thus ensuring that indigenous people had the constitutional right to the exclusive use of almost located in the States of Roraima and Amazonas.
The Alto Orinoco-Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve was created in 1993 with the objective of preserving the traditional territory and lifestyle of the Yanomami and Ye'kuana peoples.
However, while the constitution of Venezuela recognizes indigenous peoples’ rights to their ancestral domains, few have received official title to their territories and the government has announced it will open up large parts of the Amazon rainforest to legal mining.
Organization
The Yanomami do not recognize themselves as a united group, but rather as individuals associated with their politically autonomous villages. Yanomami communities are grouped together because they have similar ages and kinship, and militaristic coalitions interweave communities together. The Yanomami have common historical ties to Carib speakers who resided near the Orinoco river and moved to the highlands of Brazil and Venezuela, the location the Yanomami currently occupy.Mature men hold most political and religious authority. A tuxawa acts as the leader of each village, but no single leader presides over the whole of those classified as Yanomami. Headmen gain political power by demonstrating skill in settling disputes both within the village and with neighboring communities. A consensus of mature males is usually required for action that involves the community, but individuals are not required to take part. Local descent groups also play important roles in regulating marriages and settling disputes within villages.
Domestic life
Groups of Yanomami live in villages usually consisting of their children and extended families. Villages vary in size, but usually contain between 50 and 400 people. In this largely communal system, the entire village lives under a common roof called the shabono. Shabonos have a characteristic oval shape, with open grounds in the center measuring an average of. The shabono shelter constitutes the perimeter of the village, if it has not been fortified with palisades.Under the roof, divisions exist marked only by support posts, partitioning individual houses and spaces. Shabonos are built from raw materials from the surrounding rainforest, such as leaves, vines, and tree trunks. They are susceptible to heavy damage from rains, winds, and insect infestation. As a result, new shabonos are constructed every 4 to 6 years.
The Yanomami can be classified as foraging horticulturalists, depending heavily on rainforest resources; they use slash-and-burn horticulture, grow bananas, gather fruit, and hunt animals and fish. Crops compose up to 75% of the calories in the Yanomami diet. Protein is supplied by wild resources obtained through gathering, hunting, and fishing. When the soil becomes exhausted, Yanomami frequently move to avoid areas that have become overused, a practice known as shifting cultivation.
Children stay close to their mothers when young; most of the childrearing is done by women. Yanomami groups are a famous example of the approximately 50 documented societies that openly accept polyandry, though polygyny among Amazonian tribes has also been observed. Many unions are monogamous. Polygamous families consist of a large patrifocal family unit based on one man, and smaller matrifocal subfamilies: each woman's family unit, composed of the woman and her children. Life in the village is centered around the small, matrilocal family unit, whereas the larger patrilocal unit has more political importance beyond the village.
Men of the Yanomami are said to commit significant intervals of bride service living with their in-laws, and levirate or sororate marriage might be practiced in the event of the death of a spouse. Kin groups tend to be localized in villages and their genealogical depth is rather shallow. Kinship is critical in the arrangement of marriage and very strong bonds develop between kin groups who exchange women. Their kinship system can be described in terms of Iroquois classificatory pattern. To quote anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, “In a word, everyone in Yanomamo society is called by some kinship term that can be translated into what we would call blood relatives.”
The Yanomami are known as hunters, fishers, and horticulturists. The women cultivate cooking plantains and cassava in gardens as their main crops. Men do the heavy work of clearing areas of forest for the gardens. Another food source for the Yanomami is grubs. Often the Yanomami will cut down palms in order to facilitate the growth of grubs. The traditional Yanomami diet is very low in edible salt. Their blood pressure is characteristically among the lowest of any demographic group. For this reason, the Yanomami have been the subject of studies seeking to link hypertension to sodium consumption.
Rituals are a very important part of Yanomami culture. The Yanomami celebrate a good harvest with a big feast to which nearby villages are invited. The Yanomami village members gather large amounts of food, which helps to maintain good relations with their neighbors. They also decorate their bodies with feathers and flowers. During the feast, the Yanomami eat a lot, and the women dance and sing late into the night.
Hallucinogens or entheogens, known as yakoana or ebene, are used by Yanomami shamans as part of healing rituals for members of the community who are ill. Yakoana also refers to the tree from which it is derived, Virola elongata. Yopo, derived from a different plant with hallucinogenic effects, is usually cultivated in the garden by the shaman. The Xamatari also mix the powdered bark of Virola elongata with the powdered seeds of yopo to create the drug ebene. The drugs facilitate communication with the hekura, spirits that are believed to govern many aspects of the physical world. Women do not engage in this practice, known as shapuri.
The Yanomami people practice ritual endocannibalism, in which they consume the bones of deceased kinsmen. The body is wrapped in leaves and placed in the forest some distance from the shabono; then after insects have consumed the soft tissue, the bones are collected and cremated. The ashes are then mixed with a kind of soup made from bananas, which is consumed by the entire community. The ashes may be preserved in a gourd and the ritual repeated annually until the ashes are gone. All of the dead person's personal belongings are also burned, because it is believed that they may harbor some evil spirits. In daily conversation, no reference may be made to a dead person except on the annual "day of remembrance", when the ashes of the dead are consumed and people recall the lives of their deceased relatives. This tradition is meant to strengthen the Yanomami people and keep the spirit of that individual alive. Infanticide is also noted amongst the Yanomami for reasons of disability, adultery, and rape.
The women are responsible for many domestic duties and chores, excluding hunting and killing game for food. Although the women do not hunt, they do work in the gardens and gather fruits, tubers, nuts and other wild foodstuffs. The garden plots are sectioned off by family, and grow bananas, plantains, sugarcane, mangoes, sweet potatoes, papayas, cassava, maize, and other crops. Yanomami women cultivate until the gardens are no longer fertile, and then move their plots. Women are expected to carry of crops on their backs during harvesting, using bark straps and woven baskets.
In the mornings, while the men are off hunting, the women and young children go off in search of termite nests and other grubs, which will later be roasted at the family hearths. The women also pursue frogs, terrestrial crabs, or caterpillars, or even look for vines that can be woven into baskets. While some women gather these small sources of food, other women go off and fish for several hours during the day. The women also prepare cassava, shredding the roots and expressing the toxic juice, then roasting the flour to make flat cakes, which they cook over a small pile of coals.
Yanomami women are expected to take responsibility for the children, who are expected to help their mothers with domestic chores from a very young age, and mothers rely very much on help from their daughters. Boys typically become the responsibility of the male members of the community after about age 8.
Using small strings of bark and roots, Yanomami women weave and decorate baskets. They use these baskets to carry plants, crops, and food to bring back to the shabono. They use a red berry known as onoto or urucu to dye the baskets, as well as to paint their bodies and dye their loin cloths. After the baskets are painted, they are further decorated with masticated charcoal pigment.