Korubo
Encyclopedia
Vale do Javari
Vale do Javari is one of the largest reservations for indigenous peoples in Brazil. It lies at the western end of Amazonas state, next to the border with Loreto Region, Peru, and derives its name from Javari River, which is the most important of the region...
, in the Western Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
. The group calls themselves 'Dslala', and in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
they are referred to as caceteiros (clubbers). Much of what the outside world knows of this group is based on the research of Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo
Sydney Possuelo
Sydney Ferreira Possuelo is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples....
who first contacted the tribe in October 1996 and journalist Paul Raffaele.
The Korubo are some of the last people on Earth to live in near isolation
Uncontacted peoples
Uncontacted people, also referred to as isolated people or lost tribes, are communities who live, or have lived, either by choice or by circumstance, without significant contact with globalized civilisation....
from modern society although they have on numerous occasions had violent contact with the surrounding communities.
An offshoot of the group is led by a woman named Maya. This splinter group has around 23 members and the larger group is estimated to have 150 members.
Culture
Their hunting and war weapon of choice is the club, and aside from poison dartsDart (missile)
Darts are missile weapons, designed to fly such that a sharp, often weighted point will strike first. They can be distinguished from javelins by fletching and a shaft that is shorter and/or more flexible, and from arrows by the fact that they are not of the right length to use with a normal...
they use no other ranged weapons. Their workday is about 4-5 hours long. They often live inside large, communal huts called malocas.
They have no known spiritual
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
or religious practices. They occasionally practice infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
for unknown reasons. Both men and women paint themselves with a red dye from the roucou plant.
Their diet includes fish, spider monkey
Spider monkey
Spider monkeys of the genus Ateles are New World monkeys in the subfamily Atelinae, family Atelidae. Like other atelines, they are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil...
s, 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...
, birds, wild pig, fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
, manioc and corn
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
. A leading cause of illness and death within the tribe is by malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, which is brought by outsiders. They have some knowledge of agriculture, making clearings for harvests of crops.
A dispute between about 20 members and the main tribe caused the two bands to separate. The main tribe is for the time being in complete isolation whereas the smaller band of Korubo have frequent interaction with neighbouring settlements and FUNAI employees. Population figures of the main tribe are unknown but estimated from aerial reconnaissance of houses to be a few hundred individuals.
National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, is the official journal of the National Geographic Society. It published its first issue in 1888, just nine months after the Society itself was founded...
wrote an article about them in its August 2003 edition called After First Contact. More recently, The Smithsonian
Smithsonian (magazine)
Smithsonian is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970.-History:...
wrote an article about the same tribe called Out of Time in its April 2005 edition.
According to Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
, the Korubo language may belong to the Panoan languages
Panoan languages
Panoan is a family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, and Bolivia. It is a branch of the larger Pano–Tacanan family.-Family division:Panoan consists of some two dozen languages:...
and may be the same as the Marúbo language.
Involvement with FUNAI
A first peaceful contact in 1972 ended tragically and over the following decades Brazil's FUNAIFundação Nacional do Índio
Fundação Nacional do Índio or FUNAI is a Brazilian governmental protection agency for Indian interests and their culture.It was originally called the SPI and was founded by the Brazilian Marshal Cândido Rondon in 1910, who also created the agency's motto, "Die if necessary, but never kill." The...
agency lost seven civil servants in attempts to establish a peaceful relation with them. This finally occurred in 1996.
Little is known about these people, because of FUNAI's refusal to let anthropologists study the group. After a long history from the 1950s of massacres of this indigenous people a special department of FUNAI organized an expedition in 1996 to establish a first peaceful contact with them. The Korubo in the past have killed trespassers on their land and the latest incident occurred year 2000, when Korubo warriors killed three lumbermen near the Indian Reservation. FUNAI helps the Korubo by giving them modern immunization shots and checking up on them often. FUNAI also established a national park that encompasses the Korubo's land in order to stop logging in the area. Their goal is to prevent further contact with the tribe by modern society in order to preserve their way of life for several more years.
Skirmishes with western world
- Soon after it broke away from the larger Korubo, the splinter group was chased away by the settlers of Lodario, killing two members.
- Led by their warrior Ta'van, the Korubo killed three loggers.
- Ta'van also killed close friend to Possuelo and FUNAIFunaiFunai Electric is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. The company was founded in 1961. It owns the subsidiary Funai Corporation, Inc., established in the United States since 1991, to market and maintain Funai-licensed brands such as Sylvania, Emerson Radio,...
member, Raimundo (Sobral) Batista Magalhaes, on August 22, 1997. Sobral was attempting to take back a tarpaulinTarpaulinA tarpaulin, colloquially tarp, is a large sheet of strong, flexible, water-resistant or waterproof material, often cloth such as canvas or polyester coated with urethane, or made of plastics such as polyethylene. In some places such as Australia, and in military slang, a tarp may be known as a...
from the group.
Miscellanea
- They are commonly referred to as "Korubo" although this is not the name they have given themselves. In fact "Korubo" is a degrading, negative label given by a former enemy tribe and later adopted as a tribal designation by the outside world.
- Among local people they are often referred to as "caceteiros" which was wrongly translated by a French journalist as "headsmashers" because of the similarity to the French word "casse-tête". "Caceteiro", however, actually means "clubber" or "man with a club", referring simply to their weapons, just as the neighbouring isolated people called "Flecheiros" are simply "archers", also referring to the weapons they use.
See also
- Sydney PossueloSydney PossueloSydney Ferreira Possuelo is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples....
- The protector of Uncontacted Indians - Other Uncontacted Groups of Brazil
External links
- Out Of Time by Paul Raffaele, Smithsonian April 2005
- The Last Tribal Battle by Diana Schemo New York Times October 1999
- Death of Expert in Indigenous Issues Could Have Been Avoided Indianist Missionary Council Newsletter n. 275
- Ethnologue Report for Korubo