Arara (Ukarãgmã)
The Arara Ukarãngmã are an indigenous people of around 200 members in the Brazilian Amazon. Ukarãngmã means "people of the red macaw".
Way of life
The people live from hunting and fishing and grow cassava , sweet potatoes, grain, bananas and pineapples. For celebrations and rituals, the Arara paint themselves with extraordinarily beautiful, strong paintings, for which they use black paint called genipapo. They live in large communal houses made of wood and palm fronds.
Problems
The people were contacted as a result of the Transamazônica road construction project , which began in 1972 and is intended to connect the continent's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. For many years they avoided all contact and fought to defend their country. As a result of contact, the Arara suffer from established diseases against which they have no immune system.
Today the life of the Arara is threatened by the activities of jaguar hunters, rubber tappers, settlers and loggers. In addition, the Arara forests are rich in mahogany and other hardwoods and are therefore very popular with logging companies. They bulldozed roads through the land of the Arara, which has now brought an estimated 1,000 settler families into the area.
As the loggers and settlers continue to destroy the forest, the area on which the Arara depend is becoming scarce.
Web links
- Press release about the Arara at www.survivalinternational.de
- Márnio Teixeira-Pinto: Arara - Povos Indígenas no Brasil. In: pib.socioambiental.org. Instituto Socioambiental , July 26, 2018 .