Tribe
Nukini
The Nukini are part of a group of Pano-speaking peoples that inhabit the Jurua Valley region and are characterised by a very similar way of life and worldview, and have in common the devastating historical experience of expropriation, violence and exploitation by the rubber company since the mid-19th century. Today, the Nukini Indigenous Land is one of the most important mosaic of protected areas in Brazil and the world, located close to the Serra do Divisor National Park. In the meantime, the Nukini are claiming the extension of their official territory, which would affect a portion of the Park. Whether or not the overlapping becomes effective, one of the main challenges for these people is to guarantee their physical and cultural reproduction, and to be able to establish quality relations with environmentalists and other actors working in the park, whose interests do not always coincide and often cause a series of conflicts that hinder dialogue and joint action for the protection of the area, which is constantly threatened by loggers, hunters and traffickers.
Population, location and environment
The Nukini families are distributed along the Timbaúba, Meia Dúzia, República, Capanawa igarapés and on the left bank of the Môa River. Most of them are located in the interior of the Nukini Indigenous Land (TI), in the municipality of Mâncio Lima. In 2003, there were approximately 553 people in this TI. It is also possible to find some members of this people in other municipalities of the State of Acre, such as Cruzeiro do Sul, Rodrigues Alves and Rio Branco.
Acre, the Juruá and the environment
The Nukini Indigenous Land is located in Acre, in the extreme southwest of the Brazilian Amazon. The state has international borders with Peru and Bolivia, and national borders with the states of Amazonas and Rondônia. The relief is composed mainly of sedimentary rocks, which form a regular platform that descends gently to about 300 metres at the borders to a little more than 100 metres at the borders with the State of Amazonas. In the extreme west, the highest point of the state is located, where the structure of the relief is modified by the presence of the Sierra del Divisor, a branch of the Peruvian Sierra de Contamana, which has a maximum altitude of 600 metres.
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The soils of the Acre, shelter a natural vegetation composed mainly of Dense Tropical Rainforest and Open Tropical Rainforest, characterised by its floristic heterogeneity of high economic value. The climate, in turn, is of the warm and humid equatorial type, marked by high temperatures, high rates of rainfall and high relative humidity. The hydrography of Acre is formed by the Juruá and Purus basins, tributaries of the right bank of the Solimões River.
The Juruá River basin occupies a vast area of 250,000 km². The total length of the Juruá River is 3,280 km, with an elevation difference of 410 m above sea level. The river originates in Peru at an altitude of 453 m above sea level and is called Paxiúba, then joins the Salambô and from there downstream it is called Juruá. It crosses the northwestern part of the state of Acre do Sul towards the north, and then enters the state of Amazonas and drains into the Solimões river.
The Juruá River, on the right bank, has nine main tributaries: Breu, Caipora, São João, Acuriá, Tejo, Grajaú, Natal, Humaitá and Valparaíso. And nine other major tributaries on the left bank: Amônea, Aparição, São Luiz, Paratati, Rio das Minas, Ouro Preto, Juruá-Mirim, Paraná dos Mouras and Môa. The TI Nukini is located on the left bank of the upper Môa River.
This TI is included in a “mosaic” of 25 federal lands in the upper Juruá that make up a large region of socio-environmental relevance for indigenous and regional populations, and where national and international interests converge. Among the lands belonging to the federal government, there is a National Park, three Extractive Reserves and 21 Indigenous Lands [2005 data].
The values attributed to biodiversity in the Serra do Divisor National Park (PNSD) are among the highest already found in the Brazilian Amazon. All this environmental diversity has been used and conserved for centuries by the people living in this vast region, including the Nukini, whose lands contain much of this biodiversity.
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Name and Language
The present-day Nukini are peoples of the Pano linguistic family. Possibly in the past they had another self-designation. In some historiographical texts, the Nukini are also referred to by the terms Inucuini, Nucuiny, Nukuini, Nucuini, Nucuini, Inocú-inins and Remo.
As a result of contact with the agents of the rubber expansion front, there are few Nukini speakers of the mother tongue today. Possibly because they have been historically ridiculed and discriminated against when speaking their language, these peoples have stopped passing it on to their descendants, generating a child population educated only in Portuguese.
Speakers of the Pano language family can be found in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. In Brazil, the Pano indigenous societies are located in the south and west of the state of Acre, from where they extend eastwards to the western part of Rondônia and northwards into the state of Amazonas, between the Juruá and Javari rivers.