The Urarina are an indigenous people of the

Peruvian Amazon Basin Peruvian Amazonia ( es, Amazonía del Perú) is the area of the Amazon rainforest included within the country of Peru, from east of the Andes to the borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. This region comprises 60% of the country and ...

( Loreto) who inhabit the valleys of the

Chambira The Chambira River is a major tributary of the Marañón River, and has been the traditional territory of the Urarina peoples for at least the past 350 years, if not longer. Located in the Amazon jungle of Peru, otherwise known as the Selva, the Ch ...

, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and historical sources, they have resided in the

Chambira Basin The Chambira River is a major tributary of the Marañón River, and has been the traditional territory of the Urarina peoples for at least the past 350 years, if not longer. Located in the Amazon jungle of Peru, otherwise known as the Selva, the Ch ...

of contemporary northeastern Peru for centuries. The Urarina refer to themselves as ''Kachá'' (lit. "person"), while ethnologists know them by the

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

Urarina. The local vernacular term for the Urarina is ''Shimaku'', which is considered by the Urarina to be pejorative, as it is a Quechua term meaning "unreliable". The ethnonym "Urarina" may be from Quechua--''uray'' meaning below, and ''rina'' referring to ''runa'', or ''people''. Urarina is rendered in Quechua as ''uray-runa'' or ''people from below'' or ''down stream people''.

Society and culture

Urarina society and culture have been given little attention in the burgeoning ethnographic literature of the region, and only sporadic references in the encyclopedic genre of Peruvian Amazonia. Accounts of the Urarina peoples are limited to the data reported by Castillo, by the German ethnologist G. Tessmann in his ''Die Indianer Nordost-Peru'', and to the observations of

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

and contemporary adventure seekers. The Urarina are a

semi-mobile Semimobile is an ethnological term for a practice noted among a number of Indigenous Peoples of the Upper Amazon, such as the Urarina. This symbiotic form of indigenous production, exchange and consumption articulates among nomadic patterns of resi ...

hunting and horticultural society whose population is estimated to be around 2,000. Urarina settlements are composed of multiple longhouse groups, located on high ground (''restingas'') or embankments along the flood-free margins of the

's many rivers and streams. The embankments are bounded by low-lying territories (''tahuampa '' and ''bajiales'') that are susceptible to flooding during the annual rainy season (roughly November–May). Urarina local politics are characterized by a mercurial balance of power between demes united through affinal ties and episodic political alliances, exchange relations, and disputation. Surrounded by the Jivaroan, and the Tupi–Guarani-speaking

Cocama-Cocamilla Cocama (Kokáma) is a language spoken by thousands of people in western South America. It is spoken along the banks of the Northeastern lower Ucayali, lower Marañón, and Huallaga rivers and in neighboring areas of Brazil and an isolated area ...

indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon, the Urarina have an elaborate

animist Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, Soul, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct Spirituality, spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—Animal, animals, Plant, plants, Ro ...

ic cosmological system. It is based on ayahuasca

shamanism Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a Spirit world (Spiritualism), spirit world through Altered state of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, such as tranc ...

, which is based in part on the profoundly ritualized consumption of '' Brugmansia suaveolens''. The Urarina customarily practice

brideservice Bride service has traditionally been portrayed in the anthropological literature as the service rendered by the bridegroom to a bride's family as a bride price or part of one (see dowry). Bride service and bride wealth models frame anthropologica ...

uxorilocal In social anthropology, matrilocal residence or matrilocality (also uxorilocal residence or uxorilocality) is the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife's parents. Thus, the female offspring of a mother remain ...

patterns of post- nuptial residence, debt peonage and sororal polygyny. While men are esteemed for their hunting prowess and shamanic skills, Urarina women are likewise recognized for their craftsmanship: the women are consummate producers of woven palm-fiber bast mats, hammocks, and net-bags.

Language

Documentation of the

Urarina language Urarina is an isolated language spoken in Peru, specifically in the Loreto Region of Northwest Peru, by the Urarina people. There are around 3,000 speakers in Urarinas District (along the Chambira River). It uses a Latin script. It is also kno ...

, which has been classified as a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...

or unclassified language by Terrence Kaufman (1990) is now under-way. Linguistic work among the Urarina was first pioneered by

SIL International SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to ex ...

Mythology

The Urarina have a deluge-myth, in which a man saved himself from the deluge while climbing a cudí (amasiza,

Erythrina ''Erythrina'' is a genus of plants in the pea family, Fabaceae. It contains about 130 species, which are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. They are trees, with the larger species growing up to in height. The generic na ...

elei) tree; the man's wife was transformed into a termites' nest clinging to that tree, while their two sons became birds. Afterwards that man acquired a wife, a different woman, one who had at first summoned successively a pit viper, a spider, and a giant biting ant in an unsuccessful attempt to evade him. In another Urarina deluge-myth, a deluge was produced, on the occasion of a cassava-beer festival, by the urination by the daughter of the ayahuasca-god, "giving rise to the

chthonic The word chthonic (), or chthonian, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ''χθών, "khthon"'', meaning earth or soil. It translates more directly from χθόνιος or "in, under, or beneath the earth" which can be differentiated from Γῆ ...

world of spirits". The Urarina continue to tell elaborate myths and stories about the violence that they experience from outsiders, which historically has included forced-labor

conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

, rape, disease, concubinage, and abusive treatment at the hands of outsiders. Portions of the Bible were first published in Urarina in 1973; however, the complete Bible is not published.

Survival

Despite challenges to their ongoing cultural survival, including ecocide, inadequate health-care, and

cultural appropriation Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from ...

, the Urarina have both been inspired by and resisted the violence of the

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 a ...

and postcolonial encounters in Amazonia, particularly during the Alberto Fujimori regime.

Indigenous rights

Contemporary indigenous resistance has involved intercultural education projects, as well as Urarina political mobilization.Jackson, Jean E and

Kay B.Warren The name Kay is found both as a surname (see Kay (surname)) and as a given name. In English-speaking countries, it is usually a feminine name, often a short form of Katherine or one of its variants; but it is also used as a first name in its own r ...

. "Indigenous Movements in Latin America, 1992-2004: Controversies, Ironies, New Directions." ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' 2005, Vol. 34 Issue 1, p549-573, 25p (http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120529 Brief online review and paid full access)

Notes

References

Bartholomew Dean : "The Poetics of Creation : Urarina Cosmogony and Historical Consciousness". In :- ''LATIN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURES JOURNAL'', Vol. 10 (1994)

External links

* Defensoría del Pueblo, Per

* Language Museu

DGH in the Peruvian Amazons
by Jonathan Harris {{authority control Indigenous peoples in Peru Indigenous languages of the South American Northern Foothills Upper Amazon Shamanism of the Americas