Yanomami
Total population
Regions with significant populations
Venezuela, Brazil
Language(s)
Yanomaman languages
Religion(s)
shamanism

The Yanomamö are a large native tribe of South America. They reside in the Amazon rainforest, among the hills that line the border between Brazil and Venezuela. Due to the remoteness of their residence, they had remained largely uncontacted by the outside world until the beginning of the last century. This has allowed them to retain several aspects of their culture that factors such as population explosion and growth in material wealth have eradicated from the rest of the world. As a result, the Yanomamö have come to be one the most well-studied groups by modern science. Fierce People is a 2005 American drama film. ... Yanomaman (also Yanomam, Yanomáman, Yamomámi, Yanomamana, Shamatari, Shirianan) is small family of languages spoken in northwestern Brazil (Roraima, Amazonas) and southern Venezuela. ... This article is about the practice of shamanism; for other uses, see Shaman (disambiguation). ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... Map of the Amazon rainforest ecoregions as delineated by the WWF. Yellow line encloses the Amazon rainforest. ...

The word Yanomamö means 'human being' in their language. The word is supposed to be prounonced with thorough nasalization. The phonetic sound 'ö' does not occur in the English language and as a result has led to different accounts of how Yanomamö is spelled and pronounced. Some anthropologists had published the spelling Yanomamɨ, but because many presses and typesetters eliminate these diacritical marks, an incorrect pronunciation of 'Yanomamee' has emerged.

Most of the information in this article describes a Yanomamö way of life that existed prior to the 1960s. Sustained contact with missionaries, government officials, miners, journalists, tourists, anthropologists and others has led to significant changes to this way of life. It should also be noted that large variations might exist from village to village. There are always individuals and communitites who break the rules and hence deviations from what is presented below may be observed.

Domestic life, clothing and diet

The Yanomamö live in villages usually consisting of their kin and marrigeable lineages (see below). Village sizes vary though as a guideline they can contain between 50 and 400 people. In what is largely a communal system, the entire village lives under a common roof called the Shabono. Shabonos have a characteristic oval shape with open grounds in the center measuring an average of a 100 yards. The Shabono itself is the perimeter of the village, if it has not been fortified with palisade walls.

Under the roof, divisions exist marked only by support posts, partitioning individual houses and spaces. Shabonos are built from raw materials from the surrounding jungles, such as leaves, vines and tree trunks. This leaves them very susceptible to heavy damage from rains, winds, and insect infestation. As a result, new shabonos have to be built every 1 to 2 years.

The Yanomamis are dependent upon the forest; they use "slash-and-burn" horticulture, grow bananas, fish, gather fruit, and hunt animals. Yanomami Indians frequently move to avoid areas that become overused — a practice known as shifting cultivation. This article is about the agricultural practice of slash and burn. ... Horticulture (Latin: hortus (garden plant) + cultura (culture)) are classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. ... Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned. ...

As with many other Native Americans of tropical South America, the Yanomami traditionally wore minimal clothing. The sole exception to this was a string-like belt worn by the men, worn underneath the stomach. Traditionally the women wore no clothing at all.

The children stay close to their mother; most of the childrearing is done by women. The Yanomami practiced polygamy (though many unions were monogamous). Polygamous families consisted of a large patrifocal family unit based on one man, and smaller matrifocal sub-families: each woman's family unit, composed of the woman and her children. Life within the village is centered more around the small, matrilocal family unit, whereas the larger patrilocal unit has more political importance. Polygamy has been a feature of human culture since earliest history. ...

The Yanomami are known as hunters, fishers, and horticulturists, cultivating as their main crops plantains and cassava in "gardens", areas of the forest cleared for cultivation. Another food source of the Yanomami are grubs.^[1] Traditionally they did not farm, and the practice of felling palms in order to facilitate the growth of the grubs was the Yanomami's closest approach to cultivation. The traditional Yanomami diet is famously low in salt, and their blood pressure is among the lowest of any demographic group on the planet.^[2] The Yanomami have thus been made the subject of studies seeking to link hypertension to sodium consumption. This article is about the fruit. ... Yuca redirects here. ... Edible salt is mostly sodium chloride (NaCl). ... A sphygmomanometer, a device used for measuring arterial pressure. ... For other forms of hypertension, see Hypertension (disambiguation). ... For sodium in the diet, see Salt. ...

The Yanomami celebrate a good harvest with a big feast to which nearby villages are invited. The Yanomami members gather huge amounts of food, which helps to maintain good relations with their neighbours. They also decorate their bodies with feathers and flowers. During the feast the Yanomami eat a lot and the women dance and sing late into the night.

Yanomamo language

In the Yanomamö language, Gŭycan (not to be confused with the related Yanomámi language), if a vowel is phonemically nasalized, all vowels after it in the word are also nasalized. So if the ogonek — the symbol denoting nasalized vowels — is written under the first vowel, the whole word is nasalized. All the vowels in "Yanomami" are nasal, but it is unclear whether they are phonemically nasal or nasal just because of the nasal consonants. Also, consonants can be accented with the closing of the epiglottis to form a "flat" sounding consonant; an example of this is 'Maţ' (epiglottis closed), meaning 'bone', while 'Mat' (quasi-soft 't' sound with an open throat) means 'rain'. Yanomaman (also Yanomam, Yanomáman, Yamomámi, Yanomamana, Shamatari, Shirianan) is small language family of northwestern Brazil (Roraima, Amazonas) and southern Venezuela. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In phonetics, nasalization refers to a sound that is produced with a lowered velum so air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... It has been suggested that Ę be merged into this article or section. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ...

There are many different variations and dialects of the language, such that people from different villages cannot always understand each other. The Yanomami language is believed by linguists to be unrelated to all other South American indigenous languages, and indeed the origins of the language are unknown. For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ...

It should be noted that "Yanomamö" is not what the Yanomamö call themselves, but is rather a word in their language meaning 'man', adopted by American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon as a convenient way to refer to the culture and by extension the people. An image from the Yanomamo Series Napoleon A. Chagnon (born in 1938 in Port Austin, Michigan) is an American anthropologist and retired professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ...

Violence

More than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare.^[3] Men who participated in killings had more wives and children than those who did not.^[4] Some Yanomamo men, however, reflected on the futility of their feuds and made it known that they would have nothing to do with the raiding.^[4] These findings, originally reported by Chagnon, have been empirically replicated several times.^[5]

The accounts of missionaries to the area have recounted constant infighting in the tribes for women or prestige, and evidence of continuous warfare for the enslavement of neighboring tribes such as the Macu before the arrival of European settlers and government. Maku (also Macu, Makú) is an (unclassified) language isolate that is spoken on the Brazil-Venezuela border in Roraima along the Uraricoera River. ...

Violence among the Yanomami is often domestic, with women commonly beaten by their husbands in disputes. The violence is seen as an act of love by the women, however. Women will shave their head after a beating to show off their bumps. They will even put a red dusting on the bump showing it off even further. ^[6]

In the mid-70s, golddiggers and garimpeiros started to invade the Yanomami country. They killed members of the Yanomami tribe and stole their land. In 1990, more than 40,000 garimpeiros enter the Yanomami land^{[citation needed]}. In 1992 the president of Brazil, Collor de Melo, accepted the opening of a Yanomami Park that was founded by Brazilian anthropologists and Survival International--a project that started in the early 70s. Today, non-Yanomami continue to enter the land. The Brazilian and Venezuelan governments do not have enforcement programs to prevent the entry of outsiders into this land^{[citation needed]}.

Ethical controversy has arisen concerning Yanomami blood taken by scientists such as Napoleon Chagnon and his associate James Neel for study. Yanomami religious tradition prohibits the keeping of any bodily matter after the death of that person, but the donors were not warned that blood samples would be kept indefinitely for experimentation. Several prominent Yanomami delegations have sent letters to scientists experimenting on the blood, demanding its return, and while the scientists have promised to return or destroy the samples, years have passed without confirmed action. Bioethics is the ethics of biological science and medicine. ... Darkness in El Dorado (subtitled: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon) is a controversial book published by the investigative journalist Patrick Tierney in 2000. ... For other uses, see Blood (disambiguation). ... An image from the Yanomamo Series Napoleon A. Chagnon (born in 1938 in Port Austin, Michigan) is an American anthropologist and retired professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ...

Members of the American Anthropological Association weighed in on a dispute that has divided their discipline, voting 846 to 338 to rescind a 2002 report on allegations of misconduct by scholars studying the Yanomami indigenous people. The dispute has raged since Patrick Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado in 2000. The book charged that anthropologists had repeatedly caused harm — and in some cases, death — to members of the Yanomami people they had studied in the 1960s in Venezuela and Brazil.^[7] American Anthropological Association (AAA) was founded in 1902 and claims to be, the worlds largest professional organization of individuals interested in anthropology. Although there were several other American anthropological societies in existence at the turn of the 20th century, this new, national organization was formed to promote the science... Patrick Tierney is an investigative journalist who works as a volunteer to the UCIS at the University of Pittsburgh. ... Darkness in El Dorado (subtitled: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon) is a controversial book published by the investigative journalist Patrick Tierney in 2000. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...

In a newsletter published on 7 August 2006, the Indianist Missionary Council reported that: "In a plenary session, the [Brazilian] Supreme Federal Court (STF) reaffirmed that the crime known as the Haximu massacre [perpetrated on the Yanomami in 1993]^[8] was a genocide and that the decision of a federal court to sentence miners to 19 years in prison for genocide in connection with other offenses, such as smuggling and illegal mining, is valid. It was a unanimous decision made during the judgment of Extraordinary Appeal (RE) 351487 today, the 3rd, in the morning by justices of the Supreme Court".^[9] is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Genocide (disambiguation). ...

Commenting on the case, the NGO Survival International said "The UN convention on genocide, ratified by Brazil, states that the killing 'with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group' is genocide. The Supreme ruling is highly significant and sends an important warning to those who continue to commit crimes against indigenous peoples in Brazil."^[8] NGO is an abbreviation or code for: Non-governmental organization Nagoya Airport (IATA code) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples, helping them preserve their land and culture. ... The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951. ...

In popular culture

Amazonia, a novel by James Rollins, starts in a Yanomami village. Under the pen name James Rollins, former veterinarian Dr. Jim Czajkowski (1961 - ) writes such bestselling, action-packed adventure-thrillers as Subterranean (1999), Excavation (2000), Deep Fathom (2001), Amazonia (2002), Ice Hunt (2003), Sandstorm (2004), and Map of Bones Rollins is an amateur spelunker and a certified scuba diver. ...

The Yanomami reputation for violence was fictionalised in Ruggero Deodato's controversial film Cannibal Holocaust. Ruggero Deodato, born May 7, 1939 in Potenza, Italy, film director, actor, screen writer. ... For the Brutal Juice song, see Cannibal Holocaust (song). ...

See also

• Visual anthropology
• Tim Asch

Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that developed out of the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and since the mid-1990s, new media. ... Tim Asch (July 16, 1932 - October 3, 1994, Los Angeles, California), was a noted anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. ...

References

1. ^ Chagnon, Napoleon, Yanomamo: The Fifth Edition
2. ^ Yanomami Indians in the INTERSALT study (accessed14 January 2007)
3. ^ Keeley: War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage
4. ^ ^{a b} (Chagnon 1998; Chagnon 1992)
5. ^ (Ember, 1978; Keeley, 1996; Knauft, 1987)
6. ^ Chagnon, Napoleon. Yanomamo: Fifth Edition. Thompson Learning. 1997. p. 124-5.
7. ^ http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/29/anthro
8. ^ ^{a b} Supreme Court upholds genocide ruling, Survival International 4 August 2006
9. ^ Federal Court is competent to judge the Haximu genocide Indianist Missionary Council

is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples, helping them preserve their land and culture. ... is the 216th day of the year (217th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Further reading

• Yanomami Myths and Legends
• Dennison Berwick, "Savages, The Life And Killing of the Yanomani" [1]
• Napoleon Chagnon, The Yanomamo (Formerly subtitled "The Fierce People")
• Kenneth Good, Into the Heart
• Jacques Lizot, Tales of the Yanomamo
• Wiliam Milliken and Bruce Albert, Yanomami: A Forest People
• Alcida Ramos, Sanuma Memories
• Dirk Wittenborn, Fierce People
• Redmond O'Hanlon, "In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon"
• Helena Valero, Yanoama: The Story of Helena Valero, a Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians, an eyewitness account of a captive who came of age in the tribe.
• Mark Andrew Ritchie, Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman's Story (ISBN 0-9646952-3-5)
• Maria Inês Smiljanic, Os enviados de Dom Bosco entre os Masiripiwëiteri. O impacto missionário sobre o sistema social e cultural dos Yanomami ocidentais (Amazonas, Brasil.) Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 2002, 88, pp. 137-158**[2]
• Rose, Peter and Conlon, Anne, Yanomamo - a musical entertainment published by Josef Weinberger, London (1983)

Born in England in 1956, Dennison Berwick emigrated to Canada in 1980. ... An image from the Yanomamo Series Napoleon A. Chagnon (born in 1938 in Port Austin, Michigan) is an American anthropologist and retired professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ... Redmond OHanlon (born 1947) is a British author. ...

External links

• Indigenous Peoples of Brazil - Yanomami
• Watch free docu on Yanomami Indians. How a hopeless failure turns into a nerve-wrecking story
• Room 2017, director Rob Smits visits the Yanomami (online documentary)
• Arnold Perey, How Much Feeling? Includes discussion of the life of Fusiwe, a Yanomama head man