Culture Sketch
One of the main threats to the cultural survival of the Yanomami people was colonization and genocide. It negatively impacted many cultural traits, such as religion and expressive culture. It is based on the special attitude of the tribe members to death: there are no cemeteries in the Yanomami tribe (Kawaguchi, 2021). When someone dies in a settlement, their body is decorated with drawings and feathers, and chewing tobacco is put in their mouth (Guedes & Guimarães, 2020). When the ashes cool down after burning, the relatives of the deceased choose bones, from which flour is made a week later. It is mixed with plane trees and treated to all the villagers.
Colonization and Genocide
One of the issues that threaten the cultural survival of the Yanomami is colonization and genocide. The indigenous population of the occupied territories was rapidly forcibly destroyed to reduce their numbers (Mueller et al., 2018). If forced extermination was not carried out, then people died due to the appearance of epidemics provoked by imported diseases (Ramos et al., 2006). Yanomami have lost their natural resources and ethnic identity and partially lost their own culture. There was a plundering of almost all types of resources, both natural and human. The laying of the cultural foundations of the colonizers and the reduction of cultural carriers jeopardized the preservation of national religion and customs.
Cultural Survival 92
The cultural change that has happened among the Yanomami due to the threat to cultural survival described above is migration to urban areas. The mass migration of Yanomami to the cities formed by the colonizers contributed to the interaction of cultures and the blurring of national traditions (Vega et al., 2018). In particular, the reasons were interethnic contacts and interethnic mixed marriages (Robortella et al., 2020). With the interaction of cultures, there was a threat of loss of cultural identity for Yanomami, which led to the almost complete disappearance of burial traditions, which are an important part of the cult of death among the people.
References
Guedes, C., & Guimarães, S. (2020). Research ethics and Indigenous Peoples: Repercussions of returning Yanomami blood samples. bioethics, 20(4), 209-215.
Kawaguchi, D. (2021). Lessons from a Yanomami shaman for the construction of a post-anthropocentric identity. The Revista da Abordagem Gestáltica, 27(3), 328-338.
Mueller, N. T., Noya-Alarcon, O., & Contreras, M. (2018). Association of age with blood pressure across the lifespan in isolated Yanomami and Yekwana villages. JAMA Cardiology, 3(12), 1247-1249.
Ramos, A. R., Oliveira, K. A., & Rodrigues, F. S. (2020). Mercury-based mining in Yanomami indigenous lands and accountabilities. sciELO, 29(3), 35-41.
Robortella, D. R., Calvet, A. A., Amaral, L. C., Fantin, R. F., Guimarães, L. F., Dias, M. H., … Brito, C. F. (2020). Prospective assessment of malaria infection in a semi-isolated Amazonian indigenous Yanomami community: Transmission heterogeneity and predominance of submicroscopic infection. PLOS ONE, 19(6), 566-573.
Vega, C. M., Orellana, J. D., Oliveira, M. W., Hacon, S. S., & Basta, P. C. (2018). Human mercury exposure in Yanomami indigenous villages from the Brazilian Amazon. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(10), 1-13.