Aguaruna

*"For the Aguaruna people's language see Aguaruna language."

The Aguaruna (or Awajún, the name they prefer) are an indigenous people of the Peruvian jungle. Historically, they lived primarily on the banks of the Marañón River, a tributary of the Amazon in northern Peru near the border with Ecuador. Currently, they possess titled community lands in four of Peru's regions: Amazonas, Cajamarca, Loreto, and San Martin. According to Peru's 1993 Census the Aguaruna numbered approximately 45,000. World Census data for 2000 lists their population at just over 38,000.

They always had the reputation of being brave warriors, standing out for their skills in war. Physically there are differences between the Aguarunas and other inhabitants from the Peruvian rainforest. Their average height is taller – especially between men – and their physical constitution denotes strength.

The Aguarunas handle a traditional ideological and material culture. The Aguarunas are located in the geographical area of the Marañón river, that is to say in the banks of the Marañón river and of its tributaries, the rivers Santiago, Nieva, Cenepa, Numpatakay and Chiriaco.

Language

The language of the Awajun belongs to the Jivaroan family, along with Shuar, Achuar and Huambisa.
*See: Aguaruna language

Customs

The Aguarunas' families, either monogamous or polygamous, are placed in dispersed form, grouped in extensive families or forming major magnitude towns.

Examples of the last case constitute the towns of Yutupiza on the Santiago river and Japaime on the Nieva.

In the cases in which exist a pattern of nucleate population, these towns, called in their native language "yáakat", are not provided with streets, neither footpaths, nor squares, being constituted by housings of traditional construction. These houses are distributed in a kind of asymmetric form and the tendency is usually to be placed in a linear form along the river.

Another typical aspect of the Aguarunas consists on the fact that they have traditionally worked as a seminomadic population, due to the insuitability of the soil for agriculture and the extremely elementary agrarian traditional technology, which brings as a consequence the depletion of the ground in a short period of two or three years.

Major species of animals that are hunted include sajino, huangana, Brazilian Tapir (sachavaca), Little Red Brocket, ocelot and otorongo (jaguar). Species which are less commonly hunted include majaz, ronsoco, achuni, añuje, carachupa, otter, diverse classes of monkeys and birds.

Traditionally they used a spear perfected with "pijuayo" (palm tree of very hard wood) and the blowpipe for hunting. At present the spear has been almost completely displaced by the pellet shotgun but they also continue using the blowpipe.

From the animals that they hunt they utilize the meat, the leather, the skins, the feathers, the teeth and the bones. That is to say, with a double purpose: nutritive and, also, handmade, medicinal and a witchcraft purpose.

They gather wild fruits of some palm trees, like the uvilla and some shrubs. Also buds of palm trees, stems, barks, and resins. They extract the "leche caspi" and gather the honey of wild bees, eatable worms (suris) and coleopterous. Finally, medicinal plants and lianas. They use everything gathered in feeding, in some crafts, in traditional medicine, in witchcraft and as fuel, inside an ancestral pattern of self-sufficiency.

As agricultural instruments, they use the traditional "tacarpo" (stick with sharp top, made of wood from the palm tree called "pijuayo"); together with the axe, the machete and the shovel.

The principal crafts are masculine activities like the ropemaking, the basketry, the construction of canoes, the textile; feminine activities like the ceramics and the making of necklaces made of seeds, of insects' small wings and beads. The males make crowns of exquisite feathers as well as cotton ribbons in whose ends they places feathers and human hair. These adornments are kept in cartridges of bamboo.

Between the Aguarunas, there is the traditional institution of mutual help known in their language as "ipáámu", which works principally in the construction of young couples' housing, in the cleanliness of the small farms and, with less frequency, in sowing the yuca and peanut.

History

Unlike many other cultural groups in what is now Peru, the Aguaruna were never successfully conquered by the Inca, although there are accounts of attempts to extend into the territory by Incas Huayna Capac and Tupac Inca Yupanqui.

The Spanish conquistadors first encountered the Aguaruna in 1549 when the towns of Jaén de Bracamoros and Santa Maria de Nieva were founded. Fifty years later, a rebellion among the indigenous people of the region forced the Spaniards out of the area. An agricultural colony was later established at Borja in 1865. Attempts by Dominican and Jesuit missionaries to convert the Aguarunas were largely unsuccessful.

Traditionally, the economy of the Aguaruna is based mostly on hunting, fishing and subsistence agriculture. However, over the last few decades they have increasingly become engaged in various market activities. Some communities now cultivate rice, coffee, cocoa and bananas for sale, either in local markets or for transport to coastal cities like Chiclayo. Maintenance of the transandean oil pipeline and the medicinal plant industry also play roles in the local economy.

Religion

The Aguarunas traditionally believed in many spirits and mythological figures, among them: "Etsa", or the Sun; "Núgkui", or mother earth, who ensures agricultural success and provides the clay for ceramics; "Tsúgki", water spirits who live in the rivers; and "Bikut", or father shaman, who transforms himself into hallucinogenic plants that, mixed with ayahuasca, allows one to communicate with other superior worlds.

Young men would traditionally take drugs including ayahuasca to help them see visions. The visions were believed to be the souls of dead warriors, and if the young man showed no fear he would receive spirit power known as "ajútap". A man with such spirit power would be invulnerable in battle.

In the past, the Aguarunas engaged in the practice of shrinking human heads to make "tzantza".

Evangelical missionaries began contacting the Aguaruna in the mid-20th century, and today many Aguarunas have converted to Christianity.

I

In the latter half of the 20th century, the arrival of Protestant and Jesuit missionaries, the building of roads, and the construction of an oil pipeline created substantial tension between the Aguaruna people, poor agricultural colonists, state agencies, and profit-seeking corporations [http://www.native-net.org/archive/nl/9512/0020.html] . In response to new threats to their way of life the Aguaruna began to organize a political and social response to defend themselves on the basis of principles consistent with other rights of indigenous peoples. The most historic organizations of Aguaruna communities include the Organización Central de Comunidades Aguarunas del Alto Marañon (OCCAAM), founded in 1975, and the "Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa" (CAH), an organization founded in 1977 that represents the Aguaruna and a closely related ethnic group, the Huambisa. Since then Aguaruna community organizers have founded more than 12 local organizations (including an Aguaruna women's federation). Although not all "local organizations" attain the same stature. At the time, the Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa was widely regarded the primary political entity representing the Aguaruna (and Huambisa) peoples. The Aguaruna, through the Consejo Aguaruna Huambisa, also played an absolutely central role in national level indigenous movements in Peru and in the founding of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), which represents Amazonian peoples from all over the South American continent.

In the mid 1990s Aguaruna were involved in negotiating a novel bioprospecting agreement with a US based pharmaceutical multinational, G.D. Searle & Company (then part of Monsanto), and a group of ethnobotanists from Washington University. The project involved a controversy over violations of the Aguarunas' rights over their genetic and cultural resources and to an equitable share in the potential profits derived from pharmaceuticals based on their traditional knowledge of medicinal plants. The US National Institutes of Health froze funding to the Washington University scientists, who collected Aguaruna medicinal plants and knowledge without a benefit-sharing agreement in place, a practice widely-termed as biopiracy.

Faced with criticism, Washington University's scientists sought out a different indigenous organization, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Amazónicas del Perú (CONAP), to sign an agreement because they were not able to reach an agreement with the Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa. (CONAP is not an Aguaruna organization.) Smaller and less-widely known Aguaruna organizations affiliated with CONAP proved to be more pliable to Washington University's plans, and signed a "know-how license" in order to lease indigenous medicinal knowledge directly to Monsanto while allegedly retaining the collective intellectual property rights to it. The "know-how license" concept as applied to indigenous peoples' knowledge is a legal first, according to its inventor, an Irish attorney who inserted himself into the negotiations despite the fact that his offers to represent the Aguaruna were declined by the "Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa", due to his employment at an environmental NGO associated with the "Alberto Fujimori" administration. The Aguaruna organizations became co-applicants on a patent for a possible malaria cure, which did not pan out. In the end, no Western pharmaceuticals resulted from this bioprospecting, and very few of the benefits offered to the Aguaruna materialized.

References

* Adelaar, Willem F.H. with the collaboration of Pieter C. Muysken. (2004) The languages of the Andes (especially section 4.4 The Jivaroan languages) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Asangkay Sejekam, Nexar. (2006). Awajún. Ilustraciones fonéticas de lenguas amerindias, ed. Stephen A. Marlett. Lima: SIL International y Universidad Ricardo Palma. © 2006 Nexar Asangkay Sejekam. [http://lengamer.org/publicaciones/trabajos/awajun_afi.pdf]
* Asangkay Sejekam, Nexar. (2006). La situación sociolingüística de la lengua awajún en 2006. Situaciones sociolingüísticas de lenguas amerindias, ed. Stephen A. Marlett. Lima: SIL International and Universidad Ricardo Palma. [http://www.lengamer.org/publicaciones/trabajos/awajun_socio.pdf]
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997) American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Corbera Mori, Ángel, (1984) Bibliografía de la familia lingüística jíbaro (1). Lima: Centro de Investigación de Lingüística Aplicada, Documento de Trabajo 48, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
* Greene, Shane. 2004 "Indigenous People Incorporated?" Current Anthropology, 45(2).
* Greene, Shane. 2006 "Getting over the Andes" Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(2).
* Larson, Mildred L., compiler. 1958. Vocabulario comparado de las lenguas aguaruna y castellano. Lima: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
* Solís Fonseca, Gustavo. (2003) Lenguas en la amazonía peruana Lima: Edición por demanda.
* Uwarai Yagkug, Abel; Isaac Paz Suikai, and Jaime Regan. (1998). Diccionario aguaruna-castellano, awajún chícham apáchnaujai. Lima: Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica.
* Wipio D., Gerardo, Alejandro Paati Antunce S. and Martha Jakway. 1996. Diccionario aguaruna - castellano, castellano - aguaruna. Serie Lingüística Peruana, 39. Lima: Ministerio de Educación and Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

External links

* [http://www.peruecologico.com.pe/etnias_aguaruna.htm www.peruecologico.com]