|
|
Hands Around the World |
|
|
|
Hands Around the World |
|
Indian Cultures from Around the World
Area: Amazonas, in the Javari river basin, Brazil (Map). The Marubo live on the upper course of the Curuçá and Ituí rivers, in the Javari basin, situated in the Amazonian municipality of Atalaia do Norte. The region is full of small hills, with peaks often linked by ridges and covered by tropical rainforest.
Population: 1,043 (in 2000)
Language Root: Pano
First Contact: turn of the century
Economy: Hunting, Fishing, Agriculture
Today: Fighting to stop a new highway as well as gas and oil exploration on their lands.
Anyone arriving for the first time at a place inhabited by the Marubo would make a mistake in attempting to estimate the population by the number of constructions. In fact, the only construction actually inhabited is the oblong long house in the centre, located on the top of the hill and covered by ivorypalm straw from the ridge of the roof to the ground. This is where the village residents sleep, prepare meals, eat, receive visitors, sing curing chants, and observe the shaman’s sessions. Other constructions are located on the surrounding slopes, erected on stilts with their floors and walls made from rufflepalm bark and thatched roofs. These buildings serve more as deposits and are individually owned. Generally, the deposits are used to store items acquired from whites: iron tools, firearms, aluminum pans, steel cable to bind timber logs, tin bowls for latex, knives to incise rubber trees, clothing and textiles, sewing machines and so on.
The clearing for new swiddens is opened collectively by men from the maloca and then divided between the nuclear families who plant three basic staple crops – maize, manioc (aipi cassava) and banana – in addition to papaya and guava, as well as those plants intended for other uses, such as tobacco, nettles and cotton. Hunting trips, today undertaken with firearms, focus primarily on the spider monkey (Ateles sp.?) and the wooly monkey (Lagothrix sp.), the only two species of primates considered edible. The collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) is also frequent, while tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) are more rare. During the drier season it is fairly common for a hunter to return with a paca (Cuniculus paca). Among bird game, the piping guan (Pipile sp.) and curassow (Crax sp.) are frequently killed. Individual fishing is done with hook and line, while collective fishing makes use of a cultivated fish poison, whose leaves are mashed with earth in holes, so that small balls of the mixture are formed: these are then dissolved in the water.
Text from © Instituto Socioambiental. You can find their web site here: http://www.socioambiental.org/e/
----------------------------------------------
Many Marubo became directly involved in the rubber trade, locked into debt by the rubber traders. The trade had the effect of breaking up the traditional communities. Every family lived alone to collect their rubber. Economy took precedence over the social and religious ties of the community. The rubber economy collapsed in 1938. By this time, the rubber industry had reduced the Marubo to near extinction. Today, they are one of the guiding forces of the indigenous movement in Brazil.
Additional Information
Click here to visit our Native American Indian
market for baskets, pottery, and other hand made crafts
Hands Around the World
111 E. Main, Jonesborough, Tennessee 37659
Phone: (423) 753-8177 Fax: (423) 913-2489
