Xingu Peoples
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Xingu peoples are
indigenous peoples of Brazil Indigenous peoples in Brazil ( pt, povos indígenas no Brasil) or Indigenous Brazilians ( pt, indígenas brasileiros, links=no) once comprised an estimated 2000 tribes and nations inhabiting what is now the country of Brazil, before European con ...
living near the
Xingu River The Xingu River ( ; pt, Rio Xingu, ; Mẽbêngôkre: ''Byti'', ) is a river in north Brazil. It is a southeast tributary of the Amazon River and one of the largest clearwater rivers in the Amazon basin, accounting for about 5% of its water. ...
. They have many cultural similarities despite their different ethnologies. Xingu people represent fifteen tribes and all four of Brazil's indigenous language groups, but they share similar belief systems, rituals and ceremonies.


Precolumbian history

The Upper Xingu region was heavily populated prior to European and African contact. Densely populated settlements developed from 1200 to 1600 CE. Ancient roads and bridges linked communities that were often surrounded by ditches or moats. The villages were pre-planned and featured circular plazas. Archaeologists have unearthed 19 villages so far.Wren, Kathleen
"Lost cities of the Amazon revealed."
'NBC News' (retrieved 25 June 2019)


Post-contact history

Kuikuro The Kuikuro are an indigenous people from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Their language, Kuikuro, is a part of the Cariban language family. The Kuikuro have many similarities with other Xingu tribes. They have a population of 592 in 2010, up ...
oral history says Portuguese slavers arrived in the Xingu region around 1750. Xinuguano population was estimated in the tens of thousands but was dramatically reduced by diseases and slavery by Portuguese. In the centuries since the penetration of the Europeans into South America, the Xingu fled from different regions to avoid the spread of deadly disease and enslavement by the Portuguese. By the end of the 19th century, about 3,000 natives lived at the Alto Xingu, where their current political status has kept them protected against foreign intruders. By the mid twentieth century this number had been reduced by foreign epidemic diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox and malaria to less than 1,000. Only an estimated 500 Xingu peoples were alive in the 1950s. The Brazilian
Villas-Bôas brothers Orlando (1914–2002) and his brothers Cláudio (1916–1998) and Leonardo Villas-Bôas (1918–1961) were Brazilian brothers who worked in indigenous activism. In 1961 they succeeded in getting the entire upper Xingu legally protected, making i ...
visited the area beginning in 1946, and pushed for the creation of the Parque Indígena do Xingu, eventually established in 1961. Their story is told in a film, '' Xingu''. The number of Xingu living there in 32 settlements has risen again to over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years. The Xingu living in this region have similar habits and social systems, despite different languages. Specifically, they consist of the following peoples: the
Aweti The Aweti people are a group of Native Americans living in the Xingu Indigenous Park, close to the headwaters of the Xingu River in Brazil. The Aweti inhabit two villages in the region. One is called Tazu’jyretam, and the other is unnamed. ...
, Kalapalo, Kamaiurá, Kayapó,
Kuikuro The Kuikuro are an indigenous people from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Their language, Kuikuro, is a part of the Cariban language family. The Kuikuro have many similarities with other Xingu tribes. They have a population of 592 in 2010, up ...
,
Matipu The Matipu people are an indigenous people of Brazil. They live in the southern part of the Xingu Indigenous Park in the state of Mato Grosso. Their a population is estimated at about 149 individuals in 2011, up from population of 40 in the 1995 ce ...
,
Mehinako The Mehinaku, Mehináko or Mehinacu are an indigenous people of Brazil. They live in the Indigenous Park of the Xingu, located around the headwaters of the Xingu River in Mato Grosso. They currently reside in area around the Tuatuari River, Tuatu ...
, Nahukuá, Suyá, Trumai,
Wauja The Waura or Wauja (waujá) are an indigenous people of Brazil. Their language, Waura language, Waura, is an Arawakan language. They live in the region near the Upper Xingu River, in the Xingu Indigenous Park, and had a population of 487 in 2010. ...
and
Yawalapiti The Yawalapiti (also Jaulapiti, Yaulapiti, or Yawalapití) are an indigenous tribe in the Amazonian Basin of Brazil. The name is also spelled Iaualapiti in Portuguese. The current village Yawalapiti is situated more to the south, between the Tu ...
.


Intertribal relations

The different tribes comprising the Xingu have not been reported to battle each other in war. The only violence seen between the groups are murders from
witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
, wrestling matches that take place either between people of the same tribe or between people of different tribes as a means of letting people release the anger they have towards one another, and defending themselves from invasions from other tribes. The Xingu classify people into three different categories that they believe exist because the Sun gave people different personal traits; these categories are the Xingu people, the other indigenous people, and the white people. In a Wauja myth, the Xingu are seen as peaceful whereas these other two groups are seen as violent. The Xingu people maintain peace within their own tribes through trade, intermarriage, and ceremonies.


Trade

Tribes specialize in specific items, such as pottery (Wauja tribe), wooden bowls (Kamayurá tribes), accessories (Kalapalo and Kuikuru tribes) and decorations (Yawalapití tribe) made from shells, and salt (Trumaí and Mehinaku tribes).


Intermarriage

For the Kuikuru and Mehinaku tribes, the percentages of marriages that occur between members of these tribes and other tribes are 30% and 35% respectively. Members of the Yawalapití tribe try to marry people from the Kamayurá, Kuikuru, Kalapalo, and Mehinaku tribes.


Ceremonies, religious practices, and community

One religious practice that the Xingu engage in involves fishing, as many people within the Xingu communities depend on eating fish to provide them with protein. Specifically,
shamans 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 ...
expel smoke from herbs in an attempt to prevent the fishermen from being harmed by alligators. The community participates in the preparation of the fish, in which many fish are heated on an open fire. Women prepare beiju, which are pancakes that are made of
cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...
. All of the Xingu tribes attend ceremonies to inaugurate new tribal chiefs and honor deceased chiefs.


Kuarup and response to COVID-19

Yawalapiti Chief Aritana and eleven other Xingu people died from the
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
virus. Aritana passed away in August 2020 at the age of 71. The members of the Xingu community commemorated the victims of COVID-19 by putting four painted tree trunks at the center of the village. The spirits are believed to be contained within the tree trunks and are believed to move to the underworld to be with their ancestors. The death of Aritana and three Xingu elders caused women to cry for multiple days. To commemorate Aritana’s death, the Xingu participated in a funeral ceremony called the Kuarup, where ritualistic dances and combat are performed to honor the cycle of life. The combat ritual consists of a competition in which warriors from various tribes perform a dance followed by a wrestling match. The Kuarup also consists of a feast. Men honored the life of Aritana by holding a parade where they blew bamboo trumpets and by painting their bodies black and red. The black paint came from fruit of the jenipapo tree and the red paint came from urucum seeds.


Environmental changes

Xingu people have historically used fire as a landscaping tool. For centuries, they have understood and utilized the environment based on oral traditions. Xingu tribes from the twenty-first century are noticing changes in the level of fire in the rainforest as well as hotter temperatures, changing rain patterns, and higher river levels. For generations, the Xingu and other tribes in the South American lowlands have been using the emergence of the
Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance ...
to predict the start of the rainy season, but now this method is not able to be used as consistently. Evidence of the rising river is seen in a meeting of Waurá elders about the year 2005, when turtles failed to hatch because the river rose at an earlier point in the year than what was observed in previous years.


Activism and land

In May 2019, Xingu women held a women’s conference with around 200 attendees in the
Ilha Grande Ilha Grande ( "Big Island") is an island located off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. The island, which is part of the municipality of Angra dos Reis, remains largely undeveloped. For almost a century it was closed by the Brazilian go ...
where they discussed issues concerning climate change, deforestation, concerns about president Jair Bolsonaro’s treatment of indigenous peoples, and the distribution between gender, occupations, and leadership. In some families, the men carried out household tasks while the women participated in the conference. Between July and August 2019, 147 square kilometers or 57.8 square miles of the Xingu’s land was destroyed, which was a 172% increase from the July to August period in 2018. Factors that contribute to the loss of land include invasions, illegal activity, and
forest fires A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identif ...
. The recent changes in Xingu land have caused the loss of plants used in medicine. In August 2019, Xingu women joined the First Brazilian Indigenous Women’s March in Brasilia. The purpose of the march was to promote the defense of indigenous lands and allow indigenous women to be seen in and participate in places outside of their tribes.


Notes


Further reading

Stenzel, Kris & Bruna Franchetto (eds.) (2017). ''On This and Other Worlds: Voices from Amazonia''. Berlin: Language Science Press. . . Open access.


External links


The Indians of the Xingu: Cultural Homogenization in the Amazon Rainforest

A Report on the Xingu Peoples and the LandA Xingu case study
the Rainforest Action Network
Xingu
on ''Povos indigenous no Brasil''
Sounds from Xingu: Indigenous Ethnographers in Brazil
Baltic +

National Gallery of Art {{DEFAULTSORT:Xingu Peoples Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples of the Amazon