Aguaruna people

The Aguaruna or Awajún are an ethnic group in South America who live in the northern rainforest area of Peru to the border with Ecuador.

Settlement area

The Aguaruna are culturally and linguistically with the Shuar ( Jívaro ) are closely related in Ecuador. The traditional settlement area of ​​the Aguaruna is the area of the River Marañón. You are currently owns municipal land titles in four departments of Peru: Amazonas, Cajamarca, Loreto and San Martín. After the Peruvian census of 1993 they numbered 45 137 members.

Language

The language of the Aguaruna is one of the Jívaro languages ​​and is related to the Huambisa language the next. Although many Aguaruna also speak Spanish, there is so far no tendencies of a voice loss. The children learn to read and write in the language of their people in their own schools of Aguaruna. According to SIL International, most Aguaruna to read and write in their own language and this can also practice for commercial purposes with each other.

Material Culture

The Villages of Aguaruna ( yáakat ) be built without roads and squares in traditional style wooden ( bamboo) and additional plant material, usually along a river.

Besides fishing, hunting and gathering of wild plants, the Aguaruna live from shifting cultivation.

Lately, rice, coffee, cocoa and bananas are grown for marketing. Also own traditional medicinal plants are marketed.

Male hand works are cord and textile production, including the spring jewelry, basketry and canoe building, among other things, while women are responsible for pottery and jewelry manufacturing.

In community work ( ipáámu ) eg houses young couples, care of the fields are as is sometimes done the sowing of cassava and peanut.

History

Despite repeated attempts by the Inca Huayna Capac and Tupac Inca under Yupanqui never succeeded in this, to subdue the Aguaruna.

The Spaniards began the conquest of the Aguaruna 1549 with the establishment of places of Jaén de Santa Maria de Nieva and Bracamoros. Already fifty years later succeeded the Aguaruna to expel the Spaniards for the next few centuries. The re- colonization only began again in the period of the Republic of Peru with the settlement of farmers in Borja 1865. Any attempts of Dominicans and Jesuits to evangelize the Aguaruna failed. However, it is since the 1950s, the coming of the U.S. evangelical, associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics missionaries managed to Christianize a part of the Aguaruna.

Religion

Among the most important deities of the traditional religion of the Aguaruna the sun ( Etsa ), the mother earth belong ( Núgkui; see also Pachamama ), water or river spirits ( Tsúgki ) and finally the father of the shaman ( Bikut ) which hallucinogenic in different transformed plants, which in conjunction with the Ayahuasca: enable ( Quechua " vine of the dead " ) to communicate with the higher worlds.

As the Shuar were also aware of the Aguaruna earlier for their shrunken heads ( tzantza ).

Recent history

Since the mid-20th century, the Aguaruna by colonization, associated road construction and planned oil production are threatened. This is accompanied by the missionary activities of the Linguistics Summer Institute. Unlike many other ethnic groups, it is however the Aguaruna managed to preserve their ethnic identity and to organize themselves politically. A total of 12 political associations have since been founded by Aguaruna, including Organización Central de Comunidades del Alto Marañón Aguarunas OCCAAM (founded in 1975), the Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa CAH (since 1977, together with the closely related Huambisa ). The Aguaruna also played a prominent role in the founding of the international "Coordination Council of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon " ( COICA ), which represents Indigenous from all states of Amazonia. The Aguaruna Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan was for several years Chairman of COICA.

The mid-1990s succeeded in Aguaruna to negotiate a new contract with the U.S. pharmaceutical company GD Searle & Company and ethno botanists Washington University after the previous contract had run out that Searle would have exploited the traditional knowledge of Aguaruna without appropriate compensation. The new contract included a so called " know- how license " where the Group against royalties was allowed to use the knowledge, Aguaruna but still retained the intellectual property rights.