The tribe is no stranger to handiwork, as they make their own tools out of branches and rocks, torches out of tree resin, and hammocks out of palm tree fibers. Members of the group live with their extended families and go on gathering and hunting trips together, leaving their group base and living in makeshift shelters made of palm leaves for several weeks. To this day, roughly 100 members of the tribe live in secluded areas of the bush to keep themselves hidden from strangers.Ĭhildren of the tribe are taught to hunt with handcrafted bows and arrows from an early age. When European conquerors began penetrating the Latin American country in the early nineteenth century, the tribe became nomadic to remain concealed from them. When the monkey returns to the forest, Awa can still recognize it because, for them, it is hanima - a part of the family. Although they eat monkeys, a baby monkey integrated into an Awa family and breastfed will never be slaughtered for a meal. Their pets include coatis, wild pigs, king vultures and monkeys. They are expert hunters but great pet keepers. What is Awá TribeĪll That's Interesting mentioned that the Awá tribe, also known as the Guajá or Awá-Guajá, is a group of hunter-gatherers who live in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The report also triggered the founding of Survival International, a human rights organization that campaigns on behalf of indigenous tribal peoples, and who consider the Awá to be “Earth’s most threatened tribe”.TOPSHOT - Aerial view of deforestation in the Menkragnoti Indigenous Territory in Altamira, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon basin, on August 28, 2019. This is the Brazilian government body that establishes and carries out policies relating to indigenous peoples. In 1967, the 7,000-page Figueiredo report exposed the true extent of the criminal actions and genocide carried out against the indigenous population of Brazil, and the National Indian Foundation, or FUNAI, was established in response. For instance, when Brazil’s military dictatorship took over in 1964, it implemented a policy of “assimilating” indigenous people to reach its goal of national unification, which included wiping out those peoples who refused to cooperate, by dropping bombs or feeding them sugar laced with arsenic. In Maranhão, the Awá had moved into the territory of the Guajajara, the largest tribe in Brazil with more than 20,000 members, and they remained unable to secure or defend any land for growing crops.īy 1973, when the Awá were contacted by outsiders for the first time, they had fully adapted to living a nomadic lifestyle, and had lost all of their farming skills and even the knowledge of how to make fire.įollowing the unwelcome invasion of the Portuguese, the Awá, and many other indigenous Indians, continued to suffer great atrocities at the hands of loggers, colonists, and ranchers. Enslaved by the Portuguese, and with their numbers greatly reduced by the introduction of smallpox, the remaining Awá eventually fled east to Maranhão, perhaps prompted by the bloody revolt on the Portuguese plantations, the Rebelião da Cabanagem, which took place between 18, and claimed as many as 30,000 lives.įearful of their vulnerability as sedentary agriculturists, the Awá now became nomadic hunter-gathers, able to build a shelter within hours and abandon it only days later, melting back into the forest. Originally from Pará, a state to the west of Maranhão, the Awá were living in villages and farming crops when the Portuguese settlers arrived 500 years ago.
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