The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon Basin (Loreto) who inhabit the Chambira

Chambira

The Chambira River is a major tributary river of the Marañón River, and has been the traditional territory of the Urarina peoples for at least the past 350 years, if not much longer. Made up of "palm-swamps", the region takes its name from the Chambira palm. Until relatively recently, the Chambira...

, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both archaeological and historical sources, they have resided in the Chambira Basin of contemporary northeastern Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 for centuries. The Urarina refer to themselves as Kachá (lit. "person"), while ethnologists know them by the ethnonym

Ethnonym

An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...

 Urarina. The local vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 term for the Urarina is Shimaku, which is considered by the Urarina to be pejorative. The ethnonym "Urarina" may in fact be from Quechua

Quechua languages

Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...

--uray meaning below, and rina referring to runa, or people. Urarina is thus rendered in Quechua as uray-runa or people from below or down stream people.

Society and culture

Urarina society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 and culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 have received exceptionally little attention in the burgeoning ethnographic literature of the region, and only sporadic references in the encyclopedic genre of Peruvian Amazonia. Accounts of the Urarina peoples are limited to the data reported by Castillo, by the racist information relayed by the German ethnologist G. Tessmann in his magnum opus Die Indianer Nordost-Peru, and to the erratic and idiosyncratic observations of missionaries and contemporary adventure seekers.

The Urarina are a culturally vibrant, semi-mobile

Semi-mobile

Semimobile is an ethnological term for a practice noted among a number of Indigenous Peoples of the Upper Amazon, such as the Urarina. This symbiotic form of indigenous production, exchange and consumption articulates among nomadic patterns of residence, agricultural practices and extractive...

 hunting and horticultural society whose population is estimated to be around 2,000. Urarina settlements are composed of multiple longhouse groups, located on high ground (restingas) or embankments along the flood-free margins of the Chambira Basins many rivers and streams. The embankments are bounded by low-lying territories (tahuampa and bajiales) that are susceptible to flooding during the annual rainy season (roughly November–May).

Urarina local politics are characterized by a mercurial balance of power between deme

Deme

In Ancient Greece, a deme or demos was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in...

s united through affinal ties and episodic political alliances, exchange relations and disputation. Surrounded by the Jivaroan, and the Tupi–Guarani-speaking Cocama-Cocamilla

Cocama-Cocamilla

Cocama is an indigenous language spoken by thousands of native people in western South America. It is spoken along the banks of the Northeastern lower Ucayali, lower Marañón, and Huallaga rivers and in neighboring areas of Brazil and an isolated area in Colombia. There are three dialects...

 indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon, the Urarina have an elaborate animistic cosmological

Cosmology

Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

 system predicated on ayahuasca

Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...

 shamanism

Shamanism

Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...

, which is based in part on the profoundly ritual

Ritual

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....

ized consumption of Brugmansia

Brugmansia

Brugmansia is a genus of seven species of flowering plants in the family Solanaceae, native to subtropical regions of South America, along the Andes from Colombia to northern Chile, and also in southeastern Brazil. They are known as Angel's Trumpets, sharing that name with the closely related genus...

 suaveolens.

The Urarina customarily practice brideservice

Brideservice

Bride service has traditionally been portrayed in the anthropological literature as the service rendered by the bridegroom to a bride's family as a bride price or part of one ....

, uxorilocal patterns of post-nuptial residence, and sororal polygyny

Polygyny

Polygyny is a form of marriage in which a man has two or more wives at the same time. In countries where the practice is illegal, the man is referred to as a bigamist or a polygamist...

. While men are esteemed for their hunting prowess and shamanic skills, Urarina women are likewise recognized for their craftsmanship: the women are consummate producers of woven

Woven

A woven is a cloth formed by weaving. It only stretches in the bias directions , unless the threads are elastic. Woven cloth usually frays at the edges, unless measures are taken to counter this, such as the use of pinking shears or hemming.Woven fabrics are worked on a loom and made of many...

 palm-fiber bast mats, hammocks, and net-bags.

Language

Documentation of the Urarina language

Urarina language

Urarina is a language spoken in Peru, specifically in the Loreto Region of Northwest Peru, by the Urarina people. There are only around 3000 speakers alive today according to the 2002 Ethnologue. It uses a Latin script...

, which has been classified as a language isolate

Language isolate

A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...

 or unclassified language

Unclassified language

Unclassified languages are languages whose genetic affiliation has not been established by means of historical linguistics. If this state of affairs continues after significant study of the language and efforts to relate it to other languages, as in the case of Basque, it is termed a language...

 by Terrence Kaufman

Terrence Kaufman

Terrence Kaufman is an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He is currently a professor at the department of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh....

 (1990) is now under-way. Linguistic work among the Urarina was first pioneered by SIL International

SIL International

SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...

. The Urarina continue to tell elaborate myths

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 and stories about the violence

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

 that they experience from outsiders, which historically has included forced-labor conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

, rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

, disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

, concubinage

Concubinage

Concubinage is the state of a woman or man in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented, relationship with somebody to whom they cannot be married, often because of a difference in social status or economic condition.-Concubinage:...

, and abusive treatment at the hands of outsiders. Portions of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 were first published in Urarina in 1973; however, the complete Bible is not published.

Mythology

The Urarina have a deluge-myth, in which a man saved himself from the deluge while climbing a cudí (amasiza, Erythrina elei) tree; the man's wife was transformed into a termites' nest clinging to that tree, while their two sons became birds. Afterwards that man acquired a wife, a different woman, one who had at first summoned successively a pit viper, a spider, and a giant biting ant in an unsuccessful attempt to evade him.
In another Urarina deluge-myth, a deluge was produced, on the occasion of a cassave-beer festival, by the urination by the daughter of the ayahuasca-god, "giving rise to the chthonic world of spirits".

Survival

Despite challenges to their on-going cultural survival, including ecocide

Ecocide

The neologism ecocide can be used to refer to any large-scale destruction of the natural environment or over-consumption of critical non-renewable resources...

, inadequate health-care, and cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of...

, the Urarina have both been inspired by and resisted the violence of the colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 and postcolonial encounters in Amazonia, particularly during the Alberto Fujimori

Alberto Fujimori

Alberto Fujimori Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism, uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of...

 dictatorship.

Indigenous rights

Contemporary indigenous

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 resistance has involved intercultural education projects, as well as Urarina political mobilization

Mobilization

Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...

.

See also

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
  
  , (incomplete) Urarina version http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/ura.htm from the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos

External links

• Defensoría del Pueblo, Peru http://www.iidh.ed.cr/comunidades/ombudsnet/docs/docsomb_ie/informe%20defensorial%20n47%20-%20peru.pdf
• Language Museum http://www.language-museum.com/u/urarina.php
• DGH in the Peruvian Amazons by Jonathan Harris