The Akuntsu (also known as Akunt'su or Akunsu) are an

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

Rondônia Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). To the west is a short border with the state of Acre, to the north is the state of Amazonas, in the east is Mato Grosso, ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Their land is part of the

Rio Omerê Indigenous Territory The Rio Omerê Indigenous Territory is an indigenous territory for isolated indigenous peoples in Rondônia, Brazil. The territory consists of 26,000 hectares of forest on the Omerê River and is home to the Kanoê and Akuntsu The Akuntsu (al ...

, a small indigenous territory which is also inhabited by a group of

Kanoê The Kanoê (also as the Canoe, Kapixaná and Kapixanã) are an indigenous people of southern Rondônia, Brazil, near the Bolivian border. There are two major groups of Kanoê: one residing in the region of the Guaporé River and another in the Ri ...

. The Akuntsu were victims of a

massacre A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...

perpetrated by Brazilian cattle ranchers in the 1980s and currently number just three individuals. It is unlikely that the

Akuntsu language Akuntsu is a Tupian language of Brazil. Peaceful contact with the Akuntsu people was only made in 1995; they had been massacred by cattle ranchers in the 1980s. The Akuntsu language is spoken only by members of the tribe and not fully understo ...

or culture will survive after their deaths, leading several observers to describe them as victims of

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

Culture

The Akuntsu are primarily

hunter-gatherers A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

, but supplement their diet with some

swidden agriculture Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an ar ...

. Game is particularly abundant in their reserve because it acts as a refuge for animals whose habitats have been destroyed by deforestation in the surrounding area. The Akuntsu have a typical

material culture Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...

for the region and practice various

shamanic Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...

rituals. The

is spoken only by members of the tribe and not fully understood by any outsider. It belongs to the Tuparí language family."Akuntsu: Introduction."
''Povos Indígenas no Brasil.'' Retrieved 16 Feb 2012.

Pre-contact history

The Akuntsu are considered an " isolated tribe" by the Brazilian government, having only recently come into contact with global state societies. They were not officially contacted by

FUNAI is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it is also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recorders to major corporations such as Sh ...

until 1995. The word Akuntsu is an

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

applied to the tribe by the

, who were contacted shortly before the Akuntsu, meaning roughly "other Indians". The nearby Tupari are also recorded as knowing of a group called the 'Akontsu' or 'Wakontsón' whom they had never visited. In both cases, the Akuntsu had a reputation for being "dangerous" and seemingly had little contact with neighbouring indigenous peoples. In an incident that took place some time before 1996, a Kanoê family, the sole survivors of a massacre, attempted to contact the Akuntsu to find marriage partners. The Akuntsu resisted these overtures and in the conflict that followed a Kanoê woman was killed by the Akuntsu. Although one of the Kanoê did become pregnant by an Akuntsu man, tensions continued and the Kanoê eventually moved away from the Akuntsu at the suggestion of FUNAI workers. Before official contact, the Akuntsu had violent confrontations with white

colonists A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer. Settle ...

, loggers and cattle ranchers who began entering their land in the 1970s, after the construction of a highway. The seven survivors encountered in 1995 reported an attack by armed cattle ranchers some time around 1990, in which the majority of the tribe was killed. Several of the survivors possessed scars and bullets lodged in their body. FUNAI had previously discovered the site of the massacre: an Akuntsu village, home to around 30 people, which had been bulldozed in an attempt to cover up the evidence. At least fifteen were killed in this attack, which is thought to have been motivated by the knowledge that if the Akuntsu were officially contacted the forest would be declared an indigenous reserve and closed off to logging and cattle ranching.

Post-contact history

A FUNAI team had been attempting to make contact with isolated indigenous groups in

Corumbiara Corumbiara is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Its population in 2020 was 7,220 and its area is 3,060 km².IBGE The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ( pt, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estat ...

since 1985, following reports made the previous year. Farmers in the area, however, consistently denied the presence of any indigenous people in the area and FUNAI issued the opinion that if uncontacted tribes had been there, they had since moved on. In December 1986, a state interdiction on the area that had been put in place for FUNAI to conduct its search was lifted and farmers, cattle ranchers and loggers were able to resume legal expansion into the forest. The leader of the FUNAI team, however, continued searching and in 1995 encountered the Kanoê who in turn informed them of the Akuntsu. When an expedition finally made official contact with the Akuntsu in October of that year the tribe numbered seven: two men, three adult women and two young girls. The 26,000 hectare

Igarapé Omerê Indigenous Territory Igarapé is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte and to the microregion of Belo Horizonte. In 2020 the estimated population was 43,817. See also * List ...

was created for the Akuntsu and Kanoê, but the area of protected forest is still threatened by loggers and cattle ranchers which FUNAI have been unable to eject. In January 2000, the youngest girl died when a tree fell on her father's house during a storm. In October 2009, the oldest member of the group, Ururú, died. Im 2016, the shaman and chieftain of the Akunstu, Konibu, died in his sleep, bringing the remaining population down to three. It is considered unlikely that the Akuntsu language or culture will survive following the deaths of the tribe's remaining members. For this reason several observers have described the tribe as the victims of

. The neighbouring Kanoê have been similarly reduced in number through contact with settlers, as were the people of the so-called

Man of the Hole The Man of the Hole (; – ), or the Tanaru Indian (), was an indigenous person who lived alone in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. He was the sole inhabitant of the Tanaru Indigenous Territory, a protected indigeno ...

, an individual living alone in the Igarapé Omerê reserve who was believed the sole survivor of his tribe.

References

External links

Akuntsu - Survival International
{{authority control Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples of the Amazon Genocide of indigenous peoples of South America