Matis

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Position of the settlement area of ​​the Matis

The Matis are an indigenous people of Brazil of around 300 members who live in two separate villages . They live from hunting and plant production .

geography

Their settlement area is in the Javari Valley (Vale do Javari), the Terra Indígena do Vale do Javari created in 2001 , a large indigenous area in northwestern Brazil near the Peruvian border.

First contact

In the years 1975–1976, the Matis were first contacted by the Brazilian organization FUNAI for the protection of the indigenous population . But it wasn't until 1978 that FUNAI employees managed to visit the five Matis villages at the time. The contact with FUNAI employees and the translator Marubo , as well as the intrusion of loggers into the Matis territory, had devastating consequences for the Matis. Due to a lack of natural defenses and no medication for “Western” diseases, their population decreased from an estimated several hundred in the late 1970s to no more than 87 people in 1983. In 1985 there were only seven Matis who were older than 40 years . The Matis say that at times there were not enough people healthy enough to bury the dead. Three of the former five villages are now abandoned and are only visited occasionally to harvest the fruit trees.

language

The Matís language (ISO code: mpq) belongs to the family of Pano languages .

Culture

Food acquisition and agriculture

The Matis live primarily from hunting and the fruits of the forest and the steppe. You also do some horticulture in slash and burn. For hunting they use four meter long blowguns and arrows dipped in curare . This enables them to hit exactly up to a distance of 30 meters. They also trap animals in pits and traps. They hunt peccaries , Weißbartpekaris , tapirs , sloths , spider monkeys , woolly monkeys , titi monkeys , tamarins , alligators , macaws and various Hühnervögel . In addition to hunting, the Matis also fish. To do this, they use a plant called Huaca , which they mix with clay and ferment. By introducing the resulting product into a body of water, such as a lake, the oxygen content of the water is reduced and the fish float to the surface of the water, where the Matis collect them. The Matis know many properties of the jungle plants including their medicinal uses.

Horticulture is practiced on migratory cultivation areas created by slash and burn. These cultivation areas are not created permanently, but each created field is planted only once. Each field is cultivated with different plants that spread over several years on all sides of the cultivated area. The main products of these plantations are cassava , bananas , peach palms and corn . The main fruits that are collected are: the fruits of the Oenocarpus bataua , the fruits of the buriti palm , puna , cocoa and cupuaçu .

Body shaping

Matis with Tawa and Detashkete at the World Social Forum 2009 in Belém

Members of the Matis traditionally wear tattooed lines and various facial piercings . These include widened ear piercings , septum piercings in the nasal septum, various forms of labret piercings in the mouth area and several small nostril piercings through the nostrils, which with their jewelry are reminiscent of a cat's whiskers . Peach palm spines are usually used for piercing . The facial decorations and tattoos are a sign of tribal affiliation and are the appearance of a jaguar similar, which is why the Matis also Jaguar people are called. The individual decorations are carried out in stages in a predetermined order, depending on the age, gender and stage of development of the member. After the people came into contact with the western world, the performance of traditional body modifications and the number of individual piercings have declined.

Piercings

Between the ages of four and five, the children first have their earlobes pierced and an ear stud, the so-called paw, inserted. This is widened over time with stakes of various sizes . When the hole has reached a diameter of about 1.5 centimeters, a tawa , a stake with a washer, is inserted.

At the age of about eight, the children get their first Nostril piercings , the so-called Demush . Over the years, they are expanded by about ten more on each nostril and give the Matis the typical aesthetic of whiskers with their inserted black needles. As a further step, the tribe members have their nasal septum pierced and also gradually widened in order to be able to use a detashkete , a special wooden stake. The men later replace their stake with a piece of jewelry made from the shell of a river mussel.

During puberty, the Matis get their lip jewelry put on , comparable to the modern labret piercing . A distinction is traditionally made between jewelry for men and women. Women wear a kwiot centered in their lower lip - larger jewelry, mostly made of light wood - while men only rarely wear smaller jewelry there. Heads of families can usually be recognized by jewelry made of black wood in this place. The so-called mananukit are reserved for men ; two high-pricked sticks made of black palm wood in the upper lip, which protrude on the face to the left and right of the nose and are pricked between the ages of 16 and 20 years.

Tattoos

One to two years after the onset of the kwiot in the lip, when the Matis are considered adults, they get four lines tattooed on each side of the face: two vertical lines about ten centimeters long from the outer forehead over the temples to the cheekbones and six to eight lines about 15 centimeters long diagonally across the cheek, from the nose to about the maxillary joint. The latter can also be of different numbers on both sides. This so-called Musha takes place as part of two ceremonies and is performed on both boys and girls. Several adult teenagers also have two horizontal lines tattooed on their foreheads. The night dance ceremonies can last up to 14 days and take several weeks of preparation time. Herbal drugs are consumed during the celebrations. The spirits of the ancestors should also be present during the entire time.

The spines of the peach palm are used for tattooing. The black color is obtained from resin , Jenipapo , Mamon and Wisute as well as a mixture of special burnt plant leaves. After the tattoo is complete, the teenagers usually take a bath to wash the blood off the body and then withdraw from the community for five days.

The Musha ritual was abandoned by the Matis in the late 20th century, but resumed in 1986 after about ten years of exposure.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matis. In: M. Paul Lewis (Ed.): Ethnologue. Languages ​​of the World. 16th ed. SIL International, Dallas Tex 2009. ISBN 1-55671-216-2 ISSN  0364-9288
  2. ↑ The Matis at Povos Indígenas no Brasil
  3. ↑ Matis face ornaments , accessed July 7, 2020.
  4. ↑ The "Musha" ceremony , accessed July 7, 2020.

Coordinates: 4 ° 57 ′ 0 ″  S , 72 ° 31 ′ 59 ″  W.