Tukano people
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The Tucano people (sometimes spelt Tukano) are a group of Indigenous South Americans in the northwestern Amazon, along the Vaupés River and the surrounding area. They are mostly in
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, but some are in
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 ...
. They are usually described as being made up of many separate
tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...
s, but that oversimplifies the social and linguistic structure of the region.


Culture

The Tucano are multilingual because men must marry outside their language group: no man may have a wife who speaks his language, which would be viewed as a kind of
incest Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption ...
. Men choose women from various neighboring tribes who speak other languages. Furthermore, on marriage, women move into the men's households or longhouses. Consequently, in any village several languages are used: the language of the men; the various languages spoken by women who originate from different neighboring tribes; and a widespread regional 'trade' language. Children are born into the multilingual environment: the child's father speaks one language (considered the
Tucano language Tucano, also Tukano or Tucana, endonym ''Dahseyé'' (Dasea), is a Tucanoan language spoken in Amazonas State, Brazil, Amazonas, Brazil and Colombia. Many Tariana people, speakers of the endangered language, endangered Tariana language are switch ...
), the child's mother another, other women with whom the child has daily contact, and perhaps still others. However, everyone in the community is interested in language-learning so most people can speak most of the languages. Multilingualism is taken for granted, and moving from one language to another in the course of a single conversation is very common. In fact, multilingualism is so usual that the Tucano are hardly conscious that they do speak different languages as they shift easily from one to another. They cannot readily tell an outsider how many languages they speak, and they must be suitably prompted to enumerate the languages that they speak and to describe how well they speak each one.


Divisions

As mentioned above, the Tucano practice linguistic exogamy. Members of a linguistic descent group marry outside their own linguistic descent group. As a result, it is normal for Tucano people to speak two, three, or more Tucanoan languages, and any Tucano household (
longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...
) is likely to be host to numerous languages. The descent groups (sometimes referred to as ''tribes'') all have their accompanying language; some of the most well known are listed below: *
Bara Tukano Bara may refer to: Names * Bara (name), a given name and surname * Barah (surname) or Borah, an Assamese surname Places Bhutan * Bara Gewog, a former village block of Samtse District Bosnia and Herzegovina * Bara Lake * Bara, Bosanski Petrovac, ...
*
Barasana Barasana (alternate names ''Barazana'', Panenua'', ''Pareroa'', or ''Taiwano is an exonym applied to an Amazonian people, considered distinct from the Taiwano, though the dialect of the latter is almost identical to that of the Barasana, and outs ...
* Cubeo (the Cubeo do not practice exogamy) *
Desana Desana (''Dzan-a'' in Piedmontese) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Vercelli in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about southwest of Vercelli. Desana borders the following municipalities: Asiglian ...
*
Macuna The Macuna are a Tucanoan-speaking group of the eastern part of the Amazon basin, located around the confluence of the Pira Paraná River and Apaporis river, in the Colombian Vaupés Department and the Brazilian state of Amazonas. There are no ...
* Wanano *Tucano (or
Tucano Proper Tucano may refer to: * Tucano people, indigenous people of Brazil and Colombia * The Tucano language of Brazil and Colombia, part of the Tucanoan family of languages * Embraer EMB 312 Tucano, a Brazilian turboprop training aircraft ** Short Tucano â ...
)


Subsistence

The Tucano are
swidden 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 called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegeta ...
horticulturalists and grow
manioc ''Manihot esculenta'', 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 cultivated a ...
and other staples in forest clearings. They also hunt, trap, fish, and forage wild plants and animals.


Further reading

*Chernela, Janet M. ''The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space'' (1996). . * Jackson, Jean E. ''The Fish People - Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia'' (1983). . * Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. ''Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano Indians of the Northwest Amazon.'' .


References


External links


The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge
on the
National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

Tukano - Indigenous Peoples in Brazil. Instituto Socioambiental
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tucano People Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples in Colombia Indigenous peoples of the Amazon