The indigenous people

The indigenous people

The Brazilian indigenous peoples were mostly semi-nomadic tribes who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. Many of the groups which existed in 1500, died out as a consequence of the European settlement, and many were intergrated into the Brazilian population. The natives, like the Kayapo and the Yanomami have their roots in Brazil from the beginning of time.  The people of other nationalities immigrated to Brazil from other countries from as early as the 1500's.

The indigenous people have a different culture from the urbanized people in the cities. Brazil Indians are the only racial group that does not share the same culture or language with the rest of the population.

In addition, at the time of the Portuguese discovery, there were an estimated five million indigenous people in Brazil! Though in 1988, for the first time, the Brazilian government recognized the Indians’ right to their land, culture and language, exploitory rights still remain.

Due to globalization, Indian reservations also suffer illegal invasions from gold diggers, land grabbers and mining companies. In 2004, newly discovered diamond fields on Indian reservations in the Amazon led to serious conflicts between the local tribes and miners.

In reality, the rights of Brazil’s indigenous peoples are far from guaranteed.

There are 234 different groups of indigenous people

Go to this web to see the whole list of indigenous people.

The Kayapo Indians are an indigenous tribe inhabiting land on both sides of the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil on the Central Brazilian Plateau. Nine Kayapo villages are scattered throughout the territory, creating a 28.4 million acre home for more than 5,000 people.¹ The dominant ecosystems are tropical rainforest and grassland in which the Kayapo hunt, fish, and practice swidden agriculture (slash and burn). The Kayapo wear intricate beadwork and headdresses in ceremonies and decorate their bodies with dye coming from the plants genipapo and urucu. The Kayapo refer to themselves as Mebêngokrê, which means ‘the men from the water place.’

Picture from iccfoundation

The gold diggers, who use mercury, have threatened their rivers, which are essential to their survivals and to those of their environment, so that the population and the whole ecosystem has been endangered.

The indigenous chiefs of Kayapo

Next, a popular indigenous tribe in the studies of modern science.

The Ya̧nomamö are a large population of indigenous Amerindian people in 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 unconnected by the outside world until the beginning of the 20th century. This 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.

The modern science analysed the difference between the childhood of yanomami and the modern cities. 

A Yanamamö girl is expected to help her mother from a young age and by the age of ten will be running a house. By the age of twelve or thirteen she is probably married and will have started to have babies.

Boys on the other hand, have far fewer responsibilities. They don’t marry until later than girls and are allowed to play well into their teens. Western notions of childhood simply do not ‘fit’ in these cases, where children’s competence and responsibilities are understood very differently.

Reference :

"BBC/OU Open2.net - History - Different cultures, different childhoods." BBC/OU Open2.net - Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2010. <http://www.open2.net/theinventionofchildhood/culturalchildhoods.html>.