Waimiri-Atroari

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Waimiri-Atroari

ETHNONYMS: Atroahi, Atroahy, Atrohai, Atruahí, Boanari, Bonari, Crichanás, Hiaupiri, Jauaperí, Krixaná, Mauáua, Mawawa, U-ah-miri, Uaimeris, Uaimirys, Uamerys, Uassahy, Waimirys, Wuaiamares, Yaguaperí, Yauaperi, Yauaperí

Orientation

Identification. The Waimiri-Atroari are a South American Indian group in Brazil. The name "Waimiri-Atroari," given to this indigenous population by the regional population, is of undetermined origin. "Waimiri" is perhaps derived from the Lingua Geral (Tupí) aumirim (u?ïwa miri, meaning "small arrow").

Location. The Waimiri-Atroari occupy the extreme north of the state of Amazonas, south of Roraima, in the area of the Alalaù, Camanaù, and Curiuaù rivers and their headwaters. About one-third of their total population was transferred in 1987 from the Rio Abonari (tributary of the Rio Uatumã) and its headwaters by the Brazilian National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio, FUNAI) and ELETRONORTE (the Brazilian government electricity company) when the B albina hydroelectric plan led to the flooding of the river basin.

Demography. In 1982-1983 the Waimiri-Atroari population was reduced to approximately 332 after a long series of deadly epidemics, mainly the result of the construction of the BR-174 highway, which bifurcates their territory. At the end of the nineteenth century, Barbosa Rodrigues estimated the indigenous population of the Rio Jauaperí to be about 2,000. By 1973 the Waimiri-Atroari population had been reduced to about 600 to 1,000 (Figueiredo Costa). Since 1987 reports from FUNAI/ELETRONORTE employees suggest an increasingly rapid population growth.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Waimiri-Atroari language belongs to the Carib Family. There are very small dialectal differences between local groups.

History and Cultural Relations

In the seventeenth century slave trader Pedro da Costa Favella, with an army of soldiers and "civilized Indians," massacred and enslaved Indians on the Rio Urubu, to the south of the present-day territory of the Waimiri-Atroari. There are reports of eighteenth-century expeditions to capture Indian slaves, together with missionary activity on the Rio Jauaperí. Attempts to settle the Indians of this river continued in the nineteenth century. Many documents from the mid-nineteenth century reveal a long history of interethnic conflicts. The provincial government organized punitive expeditions in which hundreds of Indians were massacred. In 1884 Barbosa Rodrigues (1885) established nonviolent relations for a short time with the Indians of the Rio Jauaperí and tried to pacify them. After more conflicts and massacres of Indians, Alipio Bandeira reestablished nonviolent contact in 1911, indicating that the initiative for violence always came from the non-Indian population.

The Indian Protection Service (SPI) founded an Indian post on the Rio Jauaperí, where many Indians died from epidemics. After land invasions, the post was moved upriver. The new post was invaded and destroyed, however, by a gang of armed Brazil-nut gatherers led by a trader with support from the local government. The SPI abandoned the post and in the 1940s established posts on the Rio Camanaú, which were destroyed several times by the Indians. Invasions of their territory forced the WaimiriAtroari to retreat to the headwaters of their rivers. In 1968 FUNAI started an intensive campaign to "attract" the Waimiri-Atroari to Indian posts, in conjunction with those constructing the BR-174 highway between Manaus and Boa Vista; the Waimiri-Atroari Indian Reserve was created in 1971. The FUNAI "attraction front" directly confronted the Indians, who were situated between them and the gangs of road builders from the army and construction companies. The Indians, after indiscriminate contacts with soldiers, laborers, and FUNAI workers, suffered lethal epidemics of Western diseases, which wiped out entire villages. In their struggle to combat what they believed to be attacks of sorcery, and in view of the mass deaths, they attacked other Waimiri-Atroari villages and made several attacks against FUNAI posts.

The indigenist policy in this area was directed by the army, which recommended the use of force to frighten the Indians. The Waimiri-Atroari population was drastically reduced within the space of a few years; the survivers were settled at FUNAI posts between 1978 and 1983. They were subjected to a rigid regime, directed by a large contingent of FUNAI workers and forced to work on imposed projects aimed at reorienting their lives to attend to the ecomomic interests of the federal government. The FUNAI "attraction front" imposed drastic transformations on their way of life in an attempt to resocialize them as sedentary agriculturists. During these years many more Wairmir-Atroari died in epidemics, often in consequence of omissions by FUNAI.

Beginning in 1979, the Paranapanema Mining Company invaded Waimiri-Atroari territory. After a series of cartographic manipulations in which the name of the upper course of the Rio Uatumã was changed, in 1981 a presidential decree dismembered about one-third of Waimiri-Atroari territory to favor Paranapanema, thereby canceling the Indian reserve and turning what remained into a "temporarily prohibited area." In 1982 the mining company encroached again, constructing a private access road linking the BR-174 highway to the dismembered area. FUNAI authorized the highway's construction after it had already been started. In 1987 about one-third of the Waimiri-Atroari population was transferred from the headwaters of the Rio Abonari because the river had been transformed into a huge putrid lake of flooded forest by the Balbina hydroelectric scheme. This was the same area that had been disappropriated from the reserve by decree in 1981. In 1987 an agreement was signed between FUNAI and ELETRONORTE to finance an aid program aimed at the Waimiri-Atroari. The Waimiri-Atroari Program now administers the indigenist policy in the area.

Despite the demarcation and homologation of the Indian area in 1989 and the subprograms that focused on providing assistance in health, education, and environment and production, the pressures exerted by big companies continued. From 1986 Mineração Taboco (Paranapanema) started enticing the young Waimiri-Atroari "captains," trained and appointed by FUNAI as intercultural agents, to sign inequitable agreements accepting economic projects, including cattle raising, in exchange for permission to occupy more of their territory. In 1987 five captains signed an agreement with Paranapanema and FUNAI that allowed the mining company to advance over the entire Indian territory in exchange for royalties. In 1989 ten captains, together with FUNAI employees, signed an agreement to receive advance monthly royalty payments for mining activities that Paranapanema planned to undertake within the Indian territory.

At the same time, a plan using forged documents was set up as an incentive to the Waimiri-Atroari to ban the continuation of an ethnological research proposal. The document "showed" the Indians that the ethnologist was an agent of a supposed "tin cartel" that was using Indians to try to prevent the Paranapanema Mining Company from advancing over Indian territory, purportedly to favor international tin-mining interests. This marked another step in a long series of irregular procedures that this mining company, together with FUNAI, have been using against the Waimiri-Atroari.

Settlements

In the past the Waimiri-Atroari lived in dispersed villages, usually in one round or oval communal house of up to 18 or 20 meters in diameter, with two doors, and divided spatially by posts into areas for families. These traditional houses were of palm leaves. Today the Waimiri-Atroari live in settlements managed by the Waimiri-Atroari Program/FUNAI/ELETRONORTE. These settlements are located near the FUNAI Indian posts or at localities with easy access to them. The Paranapanema Mining Company constructed two concrete houses for the principal captain and his brother. ELETRONORTE supervised the construction of a communal house with a concrete base for one of the groups transferred in consequence of the flooding caused by the dam. Some settlements were built, under FUNAI supervision, with small houses for individual families.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities . The WaimiriAtroari practiced slash-and-burn horticulture, planting in their gardens plantains, bananas, sweet and bitter manioc, several kinds of sweet potatoes, sugarcane, and pineapples. They hunted, fished, and collected wild foods from the forest. Since the late 1970s FUNAI has imposed economic projects to produce manioc flour and grow bananas for sale. It also organized Brazil-nut-gathering and handicraft-production projects. The Waimir-Atroari now hunt and fish only on weekends. Since 1985 the Paranapanema Mining Company has been financing cattle-raising projects, set-up by FUNAI, in an attempt to fix the Waimiri-Atroari in small restricted areas. Cattle raising is totally inappropriate in this region; it is contrary to the customs of the people and harmful to the tropical forest. Yet, despite initial failures and the destruction of gardens by cattle, the Waimiri-Atroari captains have been pressured by FUNAI and Paranapanema to convince the Waimiri-Atroari that that cattle raising will be their future. FUNAI policies in this regard are creating extreme inequalities within Waimiri-Atroari society. A group of captains and young men who are more receptive to imposed FUNAI projects have been given disproportionate access to industrially manufactured goods, drastically altering traditional exchange relationships.

Industrial Arts. Traditionally, Waimiri-Atroari women made bracelets of arumã (Ischnosiphon ovatus ), beadwork, hammocks, bow strings, women's loincloths, and ceramics. Men made fans, several kinds of baskets with black geometrical motifs, carrying baskets, bows and arrows, paddles, canoes, fish traps, and, occasionally, aruma bracelets. Today, some of these crafts are made for sale.

Trade. From at least the middle of the nineteenth century, the Waimiri-Atroari traded with the regional population of the Rio Negro to obtain iron. In 1968 the missionized Wáiwai from Guyana, who were interested in converting the Waimiri-Atroari to Christianity, initiated contacts with them. At least two Waimiri-Atroari are now living with the Wáiwai on the Anauá and Mapuera rivers. Through the Wáiwai they obtained beads brought from Suriname. Today the Waimiri-Atroari trade agricultural and craft products through FUNAI and directly with the regional population.

Division of Labor. In horticultural work, men traditionally felled trees and burned the clearings, whereas women did most of the planting, weeding, and collecting of horticultural products from the gardens. With agricultural work now directed by FUNAI, plantations are prepared and planted principally by men. Traditionally, the men fished and hunted, but today women also fish occasionally; hunting with shotguns or bows and arrows remains restricted to men. Women used to prepare manioc bread. Today, the preparation of manioc flour, following regional methods, has been defined by FUNAI as a masculine task, although women participate in some secondary phases. Fruit collecting has been largely discontinued and industrially produced food is obtained from FUNAI. Paranapanema has provided frozen chickens for the principal captain. Men build houses and, in the past, made canoes. Today they receive aluminum boats from the program.

Land Tenure. In the past the Waimiri-Atroari divided their gardens, each family cultivating a plot. Traditionally, all had equal access to hunting, fishing, and collecting territory. According to the plantation system imposed by FUNAI, the land is planted collectively in some settlements, as ordered by FUNAI workers, and the sale of products and distribution of profits are controlled by the workers and Waimiri-Atroari captains. Since 1986, some young captains have been enticed to sign agreements that permit a large mining company to extract minerals from the Indians' lands.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The Waimiri-Atroari term for people is ki?inyá, and they traditionally divided their social world between kiinyá (we people) and ka?aminyá (others). Aska includes kinsmen and coresidents, whereas ba?ashrá are Waimiri-Atroari who inhabit other villages. There are no clans or corporate groups.

Kinship Terminology. Waimiri-Atroari kinship terminology may be described as of the Dravidian type. All individuals classified at the same generational level are included in terms of bifurcation between cross cousins and parallel cousins; the latter correspond to the terms for brother and sister, the former are comparable to affines. Among the parallel cousins there is a secondary distinction between elder and younger, and a distinction of sex only among elder parallel cousins. At the first ascending and first descending generational levels, there is a distinction between cross and parallel relatives, as well as a secondary distinction between linear and collateral relatives. In the second ascending generation and above, all men are called by one term and all women by another term. In the second descending generation and below, all are classified by a single term with no distinction by sex.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. The preferential marriage, according to the Waimiri-Atroari, is between people classified as bilateral cross cousins, with a strong preference for village endogamy between close relatives, either genealogically or by coresidence (there being no distinction in Waimiri-Atroari thinking). Another frequent type of marriage is between ya'wi and baski (mother's brother-sister's daughter), especially when the prospective spouses are of similar age or as a marriage for widowers. Marriages between people in the category of parallel cousins are thought of as being rather incestuous but are preferred to marriages between individuals from distant villages. There was one example of a union between an elderly yuhi and a batimki (father's sister-brother's son), thought of as highly incestuous but practiced as a temporary arrangement until a marriageable girl reaches puberty.

The Waimiri-Atroari relate that, in the past, there was a slight tendency toward uxorilocal residence after marriage, at least temporarily, in the case of intervillage marriages. The young husband was expected to work for his father-in-law and contribute fish and game to his wife's family. In recent years there has been some interference from FUNAI workers, who were attempting to change marriage customs and were ordering the young people to marry. There is no marked marriage ceremony—the young man simply moves his hammock beside his wife's. During adolescence, a period of trial marriage is common. Polygynous marriages occur but are disapproved of by FUNAI workers. There are cases of polygamy and polyandry, espedaily between groups of brothers and of sisters, sometimes with temporary exchanges of spouses. Levirate and sororate occur.

Domestic Unit. In the past the ideal Waimiri-Atroari village was a closed unit of about thirty to sixty or more endogamous bilateral kindred. In practice, the village members were usually closely related, although the WaimiriAtroari conception of kindred (aska) makes no absolute distinction between genealogical ties and those of coresidence. A village was often made up of a leader with his daughters and sons-in-law as the core members. In several present-day settlements the Waimiri-Atroari are establishing nuclear-family households.

Inheritance. The Waimiri-Atroari traditionally owned useful personal objects, but these were burned together with the body at death. Today industrially manufactured items are kept by close relatives, and the dead are buried facing east, in cemeteries, according to the customs imposed by FUNAI workers.

Socialization. Children traditionally were socialized at home. In late 1985 a school was started at one settlement, and by 1989 schools were operating in all ten settlements. Infants are always in the company of their mothers, mothers' sisters, elder sisters, or mothers' mothers when they have living relatives of these categories. Fathers and their brothers also dedicate time to their children. Social codes of behaviors between certain classes of kin are learned from infancy. In recent years the Waimiri-Atroari have been eager to have schools, which are seen as a means of gaining greater access to the national society.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. In the past, the mature and older men who had large families and were skilled at hunting and fishing exercised most political influence. Shamans, who had knowledge of songs, ritual chants, and herbal medicines and who were skilled at mediating between spirits, also had prestige. Women influenced their fathers', husbands', and sons' opinions in political matters. FUNAI has imposed a political structure on the Waimiri-Atroari, appointing young captains who represent the power and coercion of the national government but who have little authority themselves. The older men have been discredited and their status and influence undermined.

Political Organization. Communities are linked by kinship, marriage, and by the FUNAI posts to which they are designated. Attempts to organize communities at a tribal level were at first unsuccessful. The Waimiri-Atroari Program has promoted more interaction between communities, especially among the younger people, providing more motorboats and motor vehicles.

Social Control. Rules for conduct between categories of kin are recognized. The relationship between a man and his parents-in-law demands respect, especially if they are from another village. Serious disputes typically lead factions to leave the village and form another settlement. In the past disputes sometimes led to violence, but it has been suppressed in recent years by government officials. Illness was usually attributed to sorcery, with accusations of sorcery directed at distant villages.

Conflict. The Waimiri-Atroari say that they formerly conducted occasional raids in distant villages to obtain wives. Documents from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth reveal a long history of interethnic conflicts, punitive expeditions organized by local governments and traders in forest products, and massacres carried out by members of the regional population. The Indians defended themselves, attacking people who invaded their territory. During the construction of the BR-174 highway in the early 1970s, the mass deaths resulting from epidemics destroyed the Indians' network of villages, leading the survivors from scattered villages to unite in trying to repel the invaders. From 1978 on, some young WaimiriAtroari came to live at the FUNAI Indian posts, where they were confronted with a way of life completely different from their traditional one. In the following years these young men were sent by FUNAI workers to bring the other Waimiri-Atroari to live in the government-administered settlements.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Traditional beliefs have been largely repressed owing to the presence of an extremely large contingent of FUNAI workers (in 1983 there were 59 male workers for about 332 Waimiri-Atroari, of whom 88 were adult males over 15 years of age). Many of these FUNAI workers are of Indian origin, often with long-term urban experience, and from other ethnic groups that have had centuries of contact with the outside world. They transmitted to the Waimiri-Atroari an ideology and model of the "civilized Indian" (caboclo ) incorporating all the negative stereotypes of the Indians held by the national society. This has led the Waimiri-Atroari to repudiate their own culture and aspire to follow the life-style of the FUNAI employees. Today their own beliefs are adapted to and combined with the beliefs and worldview of the government employees.

The Waimiri-Atroari refer to the Christian God as "Big Daddy" or "Daddy of the sky." Traditionally, they also referred to the sky as made of stone, and to another world, below the rivers, populated by beings similar to those of this world. Animals come from the sky and replenish those hunted by men. The mythical figure Mawá, who climbed up to the sky on a liana that he cut, is sometimes assimilated to Jesus. The forest is inhabited by various kinds of supernatural beings, referred to as yirkwá, yamaí, and yananá. Both Waimiri-Atroari men and women observe dietary restrictions, especially when they have young children. An extensive body of myths includes such episodes as the first man, the origin of crops, a legendary "great" flood, the first woman (given by the giant watersnake), and the origin of the White man (who came from "the place of fire"), the origin of thunder.

Religious Practitioners. Shamans mediate between spiritual beings (karaiwa ), which converse with the WaimiriAtroari during sessions in the dark. There are few shamans still alive, and their practice has been censured by government employees and young Waimiri-Atroari captains. The shamans passed through a long apprenticeship in which they learned songs, ritual chants, cures, and ceremonial ritual activities. Tobacco and other drugs are not used by Waimiri-Atroari shamans.

Ceremonies. The Waimiri-Atroari perform many ceremonies, such as those carried out when the gardens have produced abundantly and after killing a jaguar. Some of the most important ceremonies are for the initiation of male children at about 3 years of age, to "make the child grow, and be a successful hunter." This complex series of ceremonies includes whipping rites and the bathing of the child with an infusion of red karowri leaves (Arrabidaea chica ) mixed with other leaves and tree barks. Each lasts for three days and involves the participation of members of other villages, who are invited and received with ritual chants. The karowri rite emphasized the relationship between the batimki and his ya'wi and wihi (sister's son-mother's brother, brother's son-father's sister), the child's potential parents-in-law. Today the Waimiri-Atroari also observe national ceremonies such as raising the flag on Independence Day and June feasts.

Arts. The Waimiri-Atroari make various kinds of baskets, some with geometrical motifs. The men and women dance separately in rows and circles with separate songs. Modern Brazilian music is popular among the young people, many of whom have radio/tape-recorders. Some mature and elderly men and women are known as singers. The shamans must know an extremely large body of songs. Use is made of cane flutes (now often made of plastic pipe), nut whistles (replaced by small glass containers), and rattles during some dances.

Medicine. Diseases were interpreted as spirit attacks. Today indigenous medicine has been devalued by the FUNAI employees from the dominant society, and the Waimiri-Atroari rely more on Western medicines. Shamanic diagnoses and cures are rarely used. It is believed that sickness was brought about by a foreign object entering the body, fired by a sorcerer.

Death and Afterlife. Death was associated with the separation of the akaha (soul or spirit) from the body. The akaha was thought to return by pathways to the forest and old village sites where it had lived in the past. WaimiriAtroari sometimes express fear of an akaha in the dark or one seen in dreams. Today they refer to death in terms of the Christian God carrying away the spirit to the sky.