HISTORY
The Munduruku are distributed along the Tapajós river in the state of Pará; there is also a part of the population near the Madeira River, in the state of Amazonas, and some families in Mato Grosso. Their population - according to the 2010 census [1] - corresponds approximately to 13,103 people. These indigenous people belong to the Munduruku language family of the Tupi trunk. Their self-denomination is “Wuy jugu”; while the designation Munduruku - which is how they have been known since the late 18th century - was the name the Parintintins - a rival community that lived in the region between Tapajós and Madeira rivers - attributed to them. This denomination has the meaning of "red ants", referring to the Munduruku warriors who attacked the rival territories en masse [2]. The Munduruku are presented as a warrior population of headhunters: they attacked neighboring peoples to obtain their heads as trophies. They only killed men, while women and children were kidnapped and introduced in the community and after receiving the group's tattoos they became munduruku. The heads of the enemies were considered as propitiatory lucky charms and moreover they gave guarantees to the owner who was celebrated and fed by the community. The number of heads cut off affected social organization: with 10 heads-trophies a man could become a leader. The trophy was exhibited during hunting and war because it attested the strength and value of the warrior and was also a warning to nearby invaders [3].
CONTACTS AND MISSIONS
The Munduruku people have had about 200 years of contact with non-indigenous people, and two of their villages in Tapajós host religious missions. In Aldeia Missão Cururu there is a Catholic (Franciscan) mission and in Sai-Gray village there is a Protestant one (Batista) [4]. The Catholic Mission spread principles of Catholicism, such as mandatory infant baptism and religious marriage. The Mission still performs important tasks in education and health today. In recent times, despite the disagreement with indigenous beliefs, the Church has tried to contribute to the organization process of the Munduruku in order to delimit and protect the land and support their claims for rights. The Baptist Mission, like the Catholic one, played an important role in school education, helping spread the writing in the Munduruku language among young people [5].
DEMARCATION OF LANDS
The first official demarcation was made by the SPI between 1910 and 1920, but it included very small lands. Consequently, Munduruku continued to struggle, driving out usurpers, woodcutters and pariwat hunters. In 1967 with the foundation of FUNAI, another attempt of demarcation began. The official organization recognized the legitimacy of a demarcation process that included larger lands than those mapped by the SPI. In 1967 a topographical survey was made but it did not satisfy the indigenous demands, so the Munduruku mobilized and contributed actively to the demarcation processes. This fact has strengthened their collective identity and their community, including young people in the fight against land usurpation and stimulating debate and discussion. This process was fundamental to reorganize the social structure of the community: the leaders’ councils were reorganized including the young members of the group [6]. The demarcation is a process that is continuing today: indeed, the Munduruku are still engaged in the fight against land usurpation and government plans that could compromise their biosocial reproduction.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The Munduruku society has a social organization based on the existence of two exogamous halves, identified as the red half and the white one. In the organization of their society, the offspring is patrilineal, which means that the children inherit the clan of the father. Instead, the housing rule is matrilocal, for this reason, the newly married boy must live in the house of his father-in-law, to whom he must give his respects. Preferential marriage occurs with cross cousins, which means that the boy or girl tends to marry the daughter of the mother's brother or the son of the father's sister respectively. Marriage is a very important sphere of social rapports for the balance of society, essential for the good relationship of families, for relations of exchange and solidarity and for the political organization of the community [7].
COSMOLOGY
The Munduruku believe that their world was created by the powerful god Karosakaybu who transformed the first humans into animals and natural elements, to ensure sustenance for future generations. They are convinced that Karosakaybu lives in the forest and continues to control it.
“In the vast Mundurucânia, in the upper Tapajós, inhabits the creator god of the world, Karosakaybu, according to Munduruku”
The Munduruku have a very deep relationship with the environment, they think that every living being has a spirit and is able to communicate with humans because before being animals or plants they were human beings. For this reason, they have the capacity to think and act and the ability for revenge consequently, so humans must respect and protect them. Motherhood is a fundamental concept in the Munduruku cosmology: all natural elements have a mother who protects her children and Munduruku follow strict labels to respect these “mother-spirits”. For example, they ask permission to the “Hunt Mother” to be able to hunt, otherwise, the mother could take revenge by throwing disease or famine on community. This explains why the Munduruku keep away parawat hunters, fishermen or usurpers who do not respect their spirits. In fact,the environment for the Munduruku is not something productive, they do not share the capitalist vision of the environment as a producer of resources, rather they consider it as a reproducer of social life. According to their perspective, all human and non-human beings are endowed with intentionality, so the Munduruku have adopted strategies to relate to some of them to try to domesticate or pacify these entities. These practices serve to prevent disease or suffer evil deeds. According to the Munduruku, it is necessary to create harmonious conditions of social life to guarantee collective health and it is also fundamental to maintain the link with the environment, neighbours and relatives by helping each other [8].
SAÚDE INDIGENA
The notion of indigenous care should not be related to the Western biomedical paradigm of curing the body of the single individual from pathologies. On the contrary, caring for the Munduruku corresponds to a set of collective practices aimed at the well-being of the whole community [9]. Health is directly related to nourishment: if an individual is healthy it means that his family has enough food to survive, but if he doesn’t want to eat the shaman will have to be called. In the case of the Munduruku there is a strong belief that the shaman is responsible for the health of the community, not only of the sick people. He is assigned the task of keeping the community safe from external threats, such as evil spirits and witchcraft done by enemies or by Pajes bravos (sorcerers). Contacts with the pariwat have contributed to the introduction of a non-indigenous health system, coordinated by FUNASA; in fact there is a health center in the larger villages and this is absolutely necessary because contact with non-Indians has brought new diseases unknown to shamans and for which the natives have no natural resistance. However, the Munduruku consider the activity of the shaman necessary since for them the disease often has a supernatural motivation and therefore must be treated on another level of healing [11].
"The wamõat [12] has extensive knowledge of medicinal plants and animals and has the ability to recognize the causes of diseases, he knows whether they are due to natural/physical reasons (such as poor diet, exposure to rain, etc.) or supernatural/metaphysical (such as having offended another member of the community or being the victim of some kaoxi (sorcery), he also knows how to listen to spirits and can communicate with them [13]."
Therefore his role and his knowledge cannot be simplistically compared to that of a Western doctor, because shamans retain ancestral knowledge of techniques aimed at maintaining the health of both body and spirit. Moreover, they retain sight and hearing, which allow them to see and hear beings from the spirit world who can cause disease or help the healing.Furthermore, it is important to consider that for the restoration of the health of a Munduruku person, the presence of his relatives is necessary. For them, the support of their families during the recovery is a fundamental factor for the improvement of the patient, the absence or removal of his relatives can be equivalent to a death sentence [14].
ASSOCIATIONS
WAKO BORUN
The Munduruku Wakoborun Women's Association was created in 2018 to strengthen the group of warrior women and to support the struggles of the Ipereğ Ayũ movement against major development projects that threaten their territory.
IPEREĞ AYŨ
Ipereğ Ayũ is the resistance movement of the Munduruku people in the fight against major development projects that threaten their territory. It was created in 2012 in the context of the intense fight against the construction of Belo Monte Megadam and against the Tapajós and Teles Pires River power plants.
References:
[1],[4],[11],[13],[14] N. Martin Peres Costa, Estuto Etnoterminologico preliminar do sistema de cura e cuidados do povo Mundurukù (Tupi), Universidade de Brasilia, 2013
[3] S.F. Santos, A.D. Salles, S.M.F. Mendonça de Souza, F.R. Nascimento, Os Munduruku e as "cabeças-troféu", Revista do Museo de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, 17:365-380, 2007
[8],[9],[10] D. Scopel, R. Dias-Scopel, E. J. Langdon, A cosmografia Munduruku em movimento: saude, território e estratégias de sobrevivência na Amazônia brasileira, Bol. Mus. Para. Emilio Goeldi. Cienc. Hum., Belém, v.13, n.1, p.89-108, jan.-abr., 2018
[12] Wamõat is a Munduruku term to indicate the shaman.
[2],[5],[7] https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Munduruku
https://www.telmadmonteiro.com/2010/08/karosakaybu-o-deus-munduruku.html