Aguaruna
The Awajún or Aguaruna are an ethnic group in South America who live in the northern rainforest area of Peru up to the border with Ecuador .
Settlement area
The Aguaruna are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Shuar ( Jívaro ) in Ecuador. The traditional settlement area of the Aguaruna is the area of the Marañón River . You currently own communal land titles in four Peruvian departments: Amazon , Cajamarca , Loreto and San Martín . According to the Peruvian census of 1993, there were 45,137 members.
language
The Aguaruna language is one of the Jívaro languages and is most closely related to the Huambisa language. Although many Aguaruna also speak Spanish, there has been no tendency towards language loss to date. The children learn to read and write in the language of their people in their own schools of the Aguaruna. According to SIL International , most of the aguaruna should be able to read and write in their language and practice this among themselves for commercial purposes.
Material culture
The aguaruna ( yáakat ) villages are built without streets or squares in the traditional way, made of wood ( bamboo ) and other plant material, mostly along a river.
In addition to fishing, hunting and collecting wild plants, the aguaruna live from shifting agriculture .
Recently, rice , coffee , cocoa and bananas have also been grown for marketing . Its own traditional medicinal plants are also marketed.
Male crafts are rope and textile manufacture including feather ornaments, basket weaving and canoeing, while women u. a. are responsible for pottery and jewelry making.
In communal work ( ipáámu ) z. B. houses of young couples, care of the fields and sometimes the sowing of cassava and peanuts .
history
Despite repeated attempts by the Incas under Huayna Cápac and Tupac Inca Yupanqui , they never succeeded in subjugating the Aguaruna.
The Spaniards began the Conquista of the Aguaruna in 1549 with the establishment of the towns of Jaén de Bracamoros and Santa Maria de Nieva . Fifty years later, the Aguaruna succeeded in driving the Spaniards out for the next centuries. Renewed colonization only began again in the time of the Republic of Peru with the settlement of farmers in Borja in 1865 . Any attempts of the Dominicans and Jesuits to the Aguaruna proselytize failed. In contrast, since the 1950s, the evangelical missionaries who came from the USA and who are associated with the Summer Linguistic Institute have succeeded in Christianizing part of the Aguaruna.
religion
The most important deities of the Aguaruna religion include the sun ( etsa ), mother earth ( núgkui ; cf. also Pachamama ), water or river spirits ( tsúgki ) and finally the father of the shamans ( bikut ) who is into various hallucinogenic plants transformed, which in connection with the Ayahuasca ( Quechua : "Liana of the dead") enable communication with higher worlds.
Like the Shuar , the Aguaruna were previously known for their shrunken heads ( tsantsa ).
Recent history
Since the middle of the 20th century, the Aguaruna have been threatened by colonization, the associated road construction and planned oil production . This is flanked by the missionary activities of the Linguistic Summer Institute. Unlike many other ethnic groups, however, the Aguaruna have managed to maintain their ethnic identity and organize themselves politically. A total of 12 political associations have been founded by Aguaruna since then, including Organización Central de Comunidades Aguarunas del Alto Marañón OCCAAM (founded 1975 ), Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa CAH (since 1977 , together with the closely related Huambisa ). The Aguaruna also played a prominent role in the establishment of the international "Coordination Council of Amazonian Indigenous Organizations" ( COICA ), which represents indigenous people from all Amazonian states. The Aguaruna Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan was chairman of the COICA for several years.
In the mid-1990s, the Aguaruna succeeded in negotiating a new contract with the US pharmaceutical company GD Searle & Company and ethnobotanists at Washington University , after a previous contract had resulted in Searle exploiting the traditional knowledge of the Aguaruna without adequate consideration. The new contract contained a so-called "know-how license", whereby the group was allowed to use the knowledge for license fees, but the Aguaruna still retained the intellectual property rights.
literature
- Michael F. Brown: Upriver. The Turbulent Life and Times of an Amazonian People . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 2014, ISBN 978-0-674-36807-1 .
- German by Laura Su Bischoff: Upstream. The eventful life of an Amazon people . Konstanz University Press, Konstanz 2015, ISBN 978-3-86253-065-6 .