Asháninka - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

For the languages known as Ashaninka, see Asháninka language
Asháninka language
Asháninka is an Arawakan language spoken by the Asháninca people along the Apurímac, Ene, Perené, and Tambo Rivers and tributaries in Perú. Their ethnic group numbers from 25,000 to 30,000. Many of them still speak their native tongue....

or Ajyíninka Apurucayali (also sometimes called Ashaninka).

The Asháninka or Asháninca (also known by the exonym "Campa" or "Kampa", which is considered derogatory) are an indigenous people living in the rainforests of 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....

and in the State of Acre Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

Their ancestral lands are in the forests of Junín

Junín Region

Junín is a region in the central highlands and westernmost Amazonia of Peru. Its capital is Huancayo.-Geography:The region has a very heterogeneous topography. The western cordillera located near the border with the Lima Region, has snowy and ice covered peaks. On the east, there are high glacier...

, Pasco

Pasco Region

Pasco is a region in central Peru. Its capital is Cerro de Pasco.-Political division:The region is divided into 3 provinces , which are composed of 28 districts .-Provinces:...

, Huánuco

Huánuco Region

Huánuco is a region in central Peru. It is bordered by the La Libertad, San Martín, Loreto and Ucayali regions on the north; the Ucayali Region on the east; the Pasco Region on the south; and the Lima and Ancash regions on the west. Its capital is the city of Huánuco.Huánuco has a rough topography...

and part of Ucayali

Ucayali Region

Ucayali is an inland region in Peru. Located in the Amazon rainforest, its name is derived from the Ucayali River. The regional capital is the city of Pucallpa.-Boundaries:...

Population

The Asháninka (their name means: our kinsmen) are estimated between 25,000 and 45,000. Only a few hundred of these live on the Brazilian side of the border. That means that among the 300,000 native people from 65 different ethnic groups in the Peruvian Amazon, the Asháninka are the largest indigenous group.

The nation is made up of seven different groups who live scattered in more than 200 communities along the jungle valleys: the Cutivireni, the Perené Asheninga, the Atsiri, the Nomatsiguenga, and the Caquinteo.

Subsistence

The Asháninka are mostly dependent on subsistence agriculture. They use the slash-and-burn method to clear lands and to plant yucca roots, sweet potato, corn, bananas, rice, coffee, cacao and sugar cane in biodiversity-friendly techniques. They live from hunting and fishing, primarily using bows and arrows or spears, as well as from collecting fruit and vegetables in the jungle.

History

The Asháninka were known by the Incas

Inca Empire

The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...

as Anti or Campa. The Antis, who gave their name to the Inca province of Antisuyu, were notorious for their fierce independence, and their warlike skills in successfully protecting their land and culture against intrusion from outsiders.

Traditional dress

The Asháninka traditional dress, commonly known as a kushma (a word 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...

), is a robe made from cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

that is collected, spun, dyed and woven by women on loom

Loom

A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...

s. Typically the robes are dyed either brown or a bright royal blue. The shoulders of the garments are ornamented with seeds. A full length robe can take up to three months to complete.

Traditionally, women wear their hair long, and over the shoulder, While typically men wear their hair short or in "bowl" cuts below the ear. Around their necks they wear a large variety of necklaces and bracelets made with seeds, the teeth of tapir

Tapir

A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...

, peccary

Peccary

A peccary is a medium-sized mammal of the family Tayassuidae, or New World Pigs. Peccaries are members of the artiodactyl suborder Suina, as are the pig family and possibly the hippopotamus family...

and monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

s, and brightly colored feathers. Traditionally the Asháninka men, women and children paint their faces in a variety of designs using the bright red crushed seeds of Achiote (Bixa orellana) (annatto

Annatto

Annatto, sometimes called roucou or achiote, is a derivative of the achiote trees of tropical regions of the Americas, used to produce a yellow to orange food coloring and also as a flavoring...

) fruits. For ceremonial purposes, the men also wear woven circles of palm leaves decorated with feathers on their heads, and the women wear a woven cotton head dress.

It is increasingly common to see Asháninka – men more than women – wearing castoff western clothes, particularly in areas where western Christian missionaries have been able to exert influence.

Threats

The Asháninka are known historically to be fiercely independent, and were noted for their "bravery and independence" by the Spanish conquistadors. During the rubber boom

Rubber boom

The rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related with the extraction and commercialization of rubber...

(1839–1913), the Asháninka were enslaved by rubber tappers and an estimated 80% of the Asháninka population was killed.

For over a century, there has been encroachment onto Asháninka land from rubber tappers, logger

Lumberjack

A lumberjack is a worker in the logging industry who performs the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to a bygone era when hand tools were used in harvesting trees principally from virgin forest...

s, Maoist

Maoism

Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...

guerrilla

Guerrilla warfare

Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

s, drug traffickers, colonisers, and oil companies. For much of their history, they resisted acculturation and outside influence. Since the 1950s, Asháninka territories have been reduced and their settlements have been systematically destroyed, resulting in a retreat by Asháninka people into the jungle. Some Asháninka fled to Brazil, and now a small community of 600 or so have land rights in the state of Acre

Acre (state)

Acre is one of the 27 states of Brazil. It is situated in the southwest of the Northern Region, bordering Amazonas to the north, Rondônia to the east, Bolivia to the southeast and the Ucayali Region of Peru to the south and west. It occupies an area of 152,581.4 km2, being slightly smaller...

.

During the 1980s and 1990s, internal conflict in Peru

Internal conflict in Peru

It has been estimated that nearly 70,000 people died in the internal conflict in Peru that started in 1980 and, although still ongoing, had greatly wound down by 2000. The principal actors in the war were the Shining Path , the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the government of Peru.A great...

caused massive displacement, disappearance, and death among the Asháninka communities located in the Ene, Tambo and Perene valleys in the Vilcabamba Mountain range. In this period Ashaninka chacres (garden plots) were burned, Asháninka legal papers were destroyed, some Asháninka were forced on pain of death to join the Shining Path

Shining Path

Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...

, and others were enslaved. Many fled into the interior and others gathered in the thousands in small areas for protection. Because Asháninka communities are usually very small, this caused great disturbance. They could neither hunt nor fish effectively due to the danger posed by armed groups in the forest, thus malnutrition became increasingly threatening. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2001 after the fall of president Alberto Fujimori, to examine abuses committed during the 1980s and 1990s, when Peru was plagued by the worst political violence in the history of the republic...

, 10,000 Asháninka were displaced, 6,000 Asháninka died, and 5,000 Asháninka were taken captive by the Shining Path during this time, and thirty to forty Asháninka communities disappeared.

Malaria is on the rise in Asháninka communities due to logging and the illegal clearing of tracts of lands by loggers and colonists, as are other diseases bought in by "outsiders".

In the mid-2000s, the Asháninka gained legal title to a portion of their lands which they had mapped using GPS technology; these lands are now a National Park and a Reserved Zone, Otishi National Park

Otishi National Park

The Otishi National Park is a protected area in Peru located in the Junín Region , Junín Province and Satipo Province, Río Tambo District and in the Cusco Region , La Convención Province, Echarate District. It protects Southwest Amazon moist forests at lower elevations and Peruvian Yungas at...

. To date most Asháninka have returned to their ancestral lands, some from as far afield as the Urubamba

Urubamba

Urubamba may refer to: In places:* Urubamba, Peru, a small town in Peru, near the Urubamba River* Urubamba Province, a province of the Cusco Region, southern Peru* Urubamba River, a river in Peru...

river. The Asháninka are involved in new capacity building projects and projects that seek to support the Asháninka in their quest to record, maintain and strengthen their culture for future generations and address the problems and threats from the "outside".

Current threats (either directly or indirectly) are from oil companies, drug traffickers, colonists, illegal lumberers, illegal roads, conservation groups, missionary groups, and diseases bought by outsiders. Roads are being built into the forest to extract mahogany and cedar trees for export to markets in the United States and Europe despite an international embargo.

Religious missionary groups are intent on changing Asháninka culture and belief systems, and some other groups who are exploiting problems within the communities became worse as a direct result of the violent upheavals of the communities over a decade ago. Some Conservation programs in the area have also been less than fair to the Asháninka in their move to create Conservation zones in this "important ecologically diverse area", choosing plants and animals over the Indigenous rights

Indigenous rights

Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the preservation of their land, language, religion and other elements of cultural...

, and it remains to be seen if this will pose a threat to their lives and land in the future.

Other Asháninka have moved further into the interior, choosing voluntary isolation rather than have any more contact with the world beyond their lands.
See article http://otishi.org/aislados_vol_ing.htm

For a list of Indigenous Organisations and NGOs that work with the Asháninka in tte Cordillera Vilcabamba, see http://otishi.org/orgarea_ing.htm.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.