Tribe

Katukina Pano

As in their current "games", abbreviated forms of ancient rituals in which the constitution of society emerges from the interaction between participants, the Katukina emphasise in their own history contacts with neighbouring indigenous groups, from which they reformulate and reconstruct their social orders. It is for no other reason that Father Tastevin, at the beginning of the 20th century, defined them as...

"showcase of all races".

Location and population

There are two Indigenous Lands (TIs) inhabited by the Katukina. The Gregório River IT, the first to be demarcated in the State of Acre in 1982, is located in the municipality of Tarauacá and is also inhabited by the Yawanawá. Following a boundary revision process completed in 2006, this TI now covers 187,400 hectares. The inhabitants of this TI are located in two villages: one on the banks of the Gregório River and the other on the banks of the Tauari River.

The TI of the Campinas River, demarcated in 1984 and with 32,624 hectares – located on the border of the states of Amazonas and Acre – is circumscribed to the limits of the municipalities of Ipixuna (AM) and Tarauacá (AC). However, the headquarters of the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul is the closest urban centre to the aforementioned area, only 55 kilometres from the village. The IT of the Campinas River, in its entire east-west extension, is cut by route BR-364 (Rio Branco-Cruzeiro do Sul). From the margins of the road, the Katukina who live there are distributed in five villages: Campinas, Varinawa, Samaúma, Masheya and Bananeira.

At the beginning of 2000, the asphalting works of the above-mentioned road advanced on the IT of the Campinas River, altering its ecological and economic conditions. For this reason, game animals are now scarce, a large part of the diet is made up of industrialised items bought in the city, and the transit of vehicles and strangers through their lands is frequent.

NAME AND DEFINITION

Defining who the Katukina are, guided solely by the name of the group, is not a simple task. Since the first half of the last century, historical records produced by missionaries, travellers and government agents about the indigenous populations of the Juruá River refer to indigenous groups known by the name Katukina. However, “Katukina” (or Catuquinha, Katokina, Katukena and Katukino) is a generic term that came to be attributed to five linguistically distinct but geographically close groups, according to anthropologist Paul Rivet (1920). Today, that number has been reduced to three: one belonging to the Katukino linguistic family in the Jutaí River region in the state of Amazonas, and two belonging to the Pano linguistic family in the state of Acre.

Neither of the two Pano groups known by the name “Katukina” recognises it as a self-designation. The members of one of these groups, located on the banks of the Envira River near the city of Feijó, prefer to be recognised as Shanenawa, the way they call themselves. Those of the other group do not recognise the name “Katukina” as having any meaning in their language, although they adopt it, mentioning that the name was indeed “given by the government”.

This article refers only to the latter group. The name “Katukina” became accepted by the members of their respective villages, located along the Campinas and Gregório rivers. In recent years, due to the actions of young indigenous leaders, the use of the name Noke Kuin, which is loosely translated as “true people”, has been consolidating. Within the group, six other self-designations are still recognised, referring to the six clans into which they are divided: Varinawa (people of the Sun), Kamanawa (people of the Ounce), Satanawa (people of the Otter), Waninawa (people of the Pupuña1), Nainawa (people of the Sky), Numanawa (people of Juruti2). It is important to note that, with the exception of Nainawa, these names are identical to the names of some of the sections of the Marúbo people.