Seven Yanomami die in suspected swine flu outbreak

Seven Yanomami Indians living on the border between Venezuela and Brazil have died from an outbreak of the Type A H1NI "swine flu" virus in the last three weeks, according to reports from Venezuelan sources and the UK-based NGO Survival International.

Raidan Bernade, a Venezuelan doctor based in La Esmeralda on the Orinoco, said that a 35-year-old Yanomami woman was confirmed to have died from swine flu but it was not possible to confirm that the six babies who died - the oldest just 1-year-old - had died of the illness.

Some 1,000 Yanomami are reported to have contracted the virus and Yamilet Mirabal, the government's deputy minister of indigenous affairs for the region, has confirmed that suspected cases of swine flu had been detected in the jungle villages of Mavaca, Platanal and Hatakoa and that medical teams had been dispatched to treat the sick.

Bernade, meanwhile, told news agencies that: "everything is under control" and that many of the flu cases the indigenous Yanomami are suffering from are down to a seasonal flu.

The UK-based indigenous rights group Survival International has called on the governments of Venezuela and Brazil to take urgent action to protect the 32,000 Yanomami who live in the isolated border area, where there is little access to medical care.

"The situation is critical. Both governments must take immediate action to halt the epidemic and radically improve the health care to the Yanomami. If they do not, we could once more see hundreds of Yanomami dying of treatable diseases," said Stephen Corry, director of Survival International.

"This would be utterly devastating for this isolated tribe, whose population has only just recovered from the epidemics which decimated their population 20 years ago," he added, referring to malaria outbreaks in the 1980s and 1990s introduced by wildcat gold miners known as garimpeiros.

The Yanomami, who are linguistically and culturally related to the Sanema, are the largest relatively isolated tribe in the Amazon rainforest and due to their isolation have very little resistance to introduced diseases such as flu.

Click here to read Yanomami Myth 1: The Origin of Fire

Click here to read Yanomami Myth 2: The Origin of Endo-Cannibalism

Video of Sanema Shaman Ritual with Bruce Parry

The Dolphin People: Novel set in Venezuelan jungle

A small plane crashes deep in the Venezuelan jungle. A family fleeing the post-WWII nightmare of occupied Germany is captured by a warlike tribe living far from civilization who think they are magical river dolphins in human form. Can they keep up the pretence? Or will they be discovered and cast out or even killed?

To read more about Torsten Krol's debut novel "The Dolphin People" click here:

Sanema: Video of Shaman Ritual with Bruce Parry

When British TV adventurer Bruce Parry visited a Sanema village in Venezuela for his BBC documentary series Tribe he found a people living between two worlds: the traditional world of the shamans, ebene snuff and hekura spirits, and the encroaching modern world with its medicines, metal cooking pots and machetes.

The Sanema are one of the four branches of the Yanoama language group, which includes their more famous cousins the Yanomami.

Cast in a subservient position to the dominant Ye'kwana people of the Caura River basin, the Sanema no longer live the nomadic lifestyle of the past and now face shortages of traditional hunting foods as the jungle is depleted of game.

Parry jumps into Sanema life with both feet, becoming an apprentice to a visiting shaman called Sosa who tells him that when shamans are in a trance after taking the hallucinogenic snuff they can see the Sanema spirits called hekura or hekula.
The hekura, Sosa says "are tiny beings, two centimetres or so high, which occupy all animate and inanimate things, from trees and streams to animals and humans."

"A powerful shaman can invite particular hekura to occupy him. The spirits crawl in through your feet or arsehole and up into your chest cavity, then hack away at the foliage which they believe to be there. They then string up a hammock between your ribs and start to sing. This is the song you hear coming out of the mouths of the shaman."

Parry finally tries the hallucinogenic ebene snuff, known as sakona to the Sanema and yopo to the Yanomami. Made from virola bark and other plant extracts, it is a powerful drug.

"At first I felt very light-headed and soon I became dizzy," writes Parry in the book of the series, "Tribe: Adventures in a Changing World" (Michael Joseph Ltd, 2007).

"The other shamans danced around me, chanting, and I began to have crazy visions. the shamans became holograms, as if a 3D image of each had been imposed on top of their existing forms. I could see straight through them and these new auras."

Click here to read Sanema Myth on Origin of Fire

Click here to read Yanomami Myth 2: The Origin of Endo-Cannibalism

Click here to read Yanomami vs. Sanema in Venezuela

To see Bruce Parry's fascinating book of the TV series "Tribe: Adventures in a Changing World" click here:



To get the complete DVD Box Set of the BBC TV series, including Bruce Parry's stay with the Sanema of Venezuela, click here:

Yanomami: The Origin of Eating the Dead

Yanomami Myth 2: The Origin of Eating the Dead

This myth comes from the book "Literaturas Indigenas de Venezuela" (Monte Avila, 1975), an anthology of myths from many Venezuelan indigenous groups collected by Father Cesareo de Armellada. It explains the origin of the Yanomami practice of endocannibalism, consuming the ashes of their dead in a plantain soup. This is a unique practice among tribal peoples today, but endocannibalism was once widespread among Panoan-speakers in South America and was only banned among Aboriginal groups in Australia in the 1960s. The photo comes from a trip I made to La Esmeralda and the Yanomami community of El Cejal.

Poreími was a talented, generous Yanomami with a magnificent intelligence. He is the one who gave the Indians stone axe blades. All the stone axe blades that are found at ancient sites are from Poreími.

At that time, there was a terrible scarcity of food in the world and the Yanomami had to eat meat raw, as they did not possess fire yet.
At that time, Poreími went to the jungle and built a magnificent house to live in with his wife Poreímiyoma.

One day some Indians came to visit them, and as a gift, they left different kinds of plantains, including a very large variety called "pareamu". That is what the one they were presented with is called.

Later, Poreími received another visit from Wayaromi, who as a present left "wabu", a fruit that is eaten when better foods are in short supply. As 'wabu" is poisonous in its natural state, Wayaromiriwa (the spirit of Wayaromi) showed Poreími how it should be prepared, cutting it into small slices with a tortoise shell.

Then Wayaromi turned himself into a bird.

Later, some other Yanomami arrived at Poreími's house. Not with presents this time, but with... empty stomachs.

They brought with them a frightful hunger. Poreími, moved by their plight, gave them abundant food to eat and on saying goodbye gave them several kinds of plantains, urging them to plant many, especially the "pareamu". He also gave them the "wabu".

The vistors then returned to their village. In their gardens they planted many plantains, harvested them in great quantities and since then have not suffered hunger any more.

Grateful for the precious presents they had received they sent a delegation to pass on their thanks to Poreími.

Arriving at his house they found him very upset: his son had died.

At that time the Yanomami used to bury their dead.

Poreími told his guests how he had carried out his son's funeral: he had burnt the body, collected the bones, ground them to ash and eaten the ashes in a soup of "pareamu" plantains.

When he said goodbye, he urged them to do the same with their own dead.

Since then, the Yanomami no longer bury the dead but burn them and consume their ashes mixed with plantain soup.

Translated by Russell Maddicks

Click here to read Yanomami Myth 1: The Origin of Fire

Video of Sanema Shaman Ritual with Bruce Parry

Click here to return to Venezuelan Indian main page

Yanomami-Sanema

The Yanomami

The Yanomami are easily the best-known of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. But not for the best of reasons. A series of National Geographic articles describing them as Stone Age savages or isolated survivors of a prehistoric age have only perpetuated stereotypes about the group. The main person responsible for this depiction of the Yanomami as warlike and primitive is anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, whose book "The Fierce People", perhaps the most succesful anthropological book ever published, focuses on warfare between different groups.
Yanomami groups are found in Venezuela and Brazil and appear under a host of different names in the literature: Yanomami, Yanomame, Yanomam, Yanam, Ninam, Guaika, Waika, Guaharibo, Guajaribo, Sanuma, Tsanuma, Sanema, Samatari, Samatali, Xamatari, Chirichano and Shirishano.

Yanomami vs. Sanema

Some people classify the Sanema and Yanomami in separate linguistic groups, but generally they are lumped together as Yanoama speakers, an independent group not linked to the main Arawak, or Carib language families found in the region.
There are four branches to the Yanoama language family: the Yanomami, who make up over half the population, the Yanomam, who represent about a quarter, the Sanema, who represent just under a quarter, and the Yanam (or Ninam), who are the smallest group.
In Venezuela, the Yanomami are mainly found in the Orinoco basin and the Sanema in the Caura River basin. The Yanomam live mostly in Brazil and the Yanam are divided into communities living on both sides of the border.

Russell Maddicks

Click here to read Sanema Myth on Origin of Fire

Click here to read Yanomami Myth 2: The Origin of Endo-Cannibalism

Video of Sanema Shaman Ritual with Bruce Parry

Yanomami-Sanema: The Origin of Fire

Yanomami Myth 1: The Origin of Fire

This Sanema myth is taken from a report by Daniel de Barandiaran which appeared in the Venezuelan journal Antropologica in January 1968 and was republished in "Mitos de Creacion de la Cuenca del Orinoco" (FUNDEF, 1993).

Long, long ago, Iwarame, the caiman, was a person like all the other animals. All the animals could speak.
There were Sanema-Yanomami Indians as well back then but the people ate their food raw because they did not have the secret of fire.

Iwarame, the caiman, was the only one who had fire. Iwarame, who was also known as Iwa, spent the whole day in the water hunting but he prepared his food in the cave where he slept.
All the other animals knew that Iwarame had fire. They also knew that everything he ate was roasted and when he roasted his food it smelled fantastic.
The other animals thought that Iwarame was the the most powerful of all the animals because he ate his food cooked.
When Iwarame opened his mouth you could see the fire, so the Sanema Indians and many of the animals brought meat to place in front of Iwarame's cave so that when he opened his mouth it would be cooked.
Usually the Indians and the animals could only take away a little of this food as Iwarame would eat a large part of the food that they placed outside his cave and then he would sleep.
When he was asleep he would close his mouth and nobody could see the fire.
When he awoke he would go hunting and would bring back different prey, animals and fish. He would bring it back home and when he wanted to eat it he would open his mouth and that would set light to the wood and over the fire he would roast everything he ate, meat or fish, but only at night and then he would close his mouth so nobody could steal the fire.
One day a young Sanema hunter, who was out hunting with his father, got lost in the jungle and arrived, by chance, at Iwarame's cave. Iwarame was asleep.
As soon as the boy realised he was in the home of the "owner of fire" he was really scared. He looked all over for some cooked food or a burning log but he couldn't find anything except a burnt leaf, which, shaking with fear he took with him as he left the cave.
In the jungle he found his father and he showed him the burnt leaf.
- Father, he said, I found this burnt leaf.
- Where did you find it?
- In the house of Iwarame, the caiman
- Did you find fire?
- No, nor any roast meat. He keeps the fire inside his mouth.
His father thought long and hard about it: How are we going to steal the fire from Iwarame?
His father continued to think of a way to steal the fire from that terrible caiman and one day he organized a big party for all the Sanema and all the animals.
It was going to be a fun party with eating and drinking and it had to be immediately after sunset. Iwarame was invited and he left his house to come to the party.
All the Indians and all the animals had been told they had to make jokes, do tricks and anything else that would make them laugh.
So, they were all falling about laughing. All except Iwarame. He didn't laugh. He kept his big mouth tightly shut.
All the animals showed off their skills, especially the birds, who did swoops and turns in the air.

Jashimo, the purple gallinule (Porphyrio martinica) danced around and jumped from side to side, lifting its tail and shooting out streams of excrement as it cried: Plo, plo, plo.
All the guests fell on the floor laughing and some held their bellies they were laughing so much.
But Iwarame did not even smile. And he did not open his mouth.
Then Hiima, the dog, dancing and doing turns, did a massive shit and threw it at the other animals who were dancing and they all laughed again.
But Iwarame was as serious as before.
Finally, Jiomonikoshwan, the clever green-tailed jacamar, its belly as red as fire, began a very exotic dance and lifted its tail and showed its arse to all the other dancers. When it passed in front of Iwa, it lifted its tail, stuck its arse in his face and then sent a fine stream of shit into his face. This did make Iwa laugh and he let out a thunderous chuckle: ha, ha ha...
The fire then started to leap out of his mouth in bursts of flame, making a "flum, flum" sound.
Immediately, Maipomue, who is a hummingbird with a very long double tail. flew quickly and shot into Iwa's mouth like a bolt of lightning, grabbed the ball of fire in his beak and then flew over the heads of the guests, taking the ball of fire to the heart of the Puloi tree.
Iwa's wife, called Blajeyoma, ran over to the Puloi tree and urinated on the roots of the tree to put out the flame but as it was in the heart of the tree she couldn't.
When the fire came out of the caiman's jaws his tongue shrank and now it's small.
Since then, Iwa the caiman, ashamed by his defeat has left his cave and gone to live in the water. That's where he lives now, sharing his territory with Lalakilpara, the great water snake, who is the true master of the water.
From that time on, the Sanema and the Yanomami go to find fire in the heart of the sacred tree, Puloi, because that is where Maipomue left it.

Translated by Russell Maddicks


Click here to read Yanomami Myth 2: The Origin of Eating the Dead

Video of Sanema Shaman Ritual with Bruce Parry

Click here to return to Venezuelan Indian main page