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Kaxinawa
The Kaxinawá people or Huni Kuin (true people) as they calls themselves, lives in the tropical forest, in lands situated between Brazil and Peru. In Brazil, the territory of the Kaxinawá people is situated in the State of the Acre, in the regions of the Valleys of the Purus and Juruá rivers, while in Peru their territory is located by the river Curanja.
The Kaxinawá communities, in the State of the Acre, are located in 12 aboriginal lands, of which three are shared with the Ashaninka, the Shanenawá and the Madijá; distributed for five cities corresponding to an area of 633.213 ha.
With a population of approximately 5,964 people, a percentage of 42% of the aboriginal population of Acre. Their language belongs to the linguistic family Pano, that they call hatxa-kuin (true language), whose abundance manifest also in their musical diversity.
The Kaxinawá possess a vast material culture that goes since the weaving in cotton, with natural colours, until ceramics made in clay with gotten leached ashes of animals, special trees, where is stamped the Kene (drawings of the snake), a kind of brand that identifies their material culture. The meaning of these sacred patterns is related to spiritual forces from the forest and their qualities as courage, force, power and wisdom…
The Kaxinawá society, traditionally, has a social organization that turns around groups of extensive families, with prominence on two figures: the leadership and pajé (shaman). The leadership because he has a ”political” power of gathering the community around the collective interest, and pajé because he has the spiritual power, of the cure, to do and to undo witchcrafts, the magician-religious power. He is the middleman between this and the other side of reality.
Although pajés (shamans) has been one of the most persecuted figures of the indigenous societies during the process of settling of the Amazon, the Kaxinawá society still keeps them as significant element in its culture. The conquerors knew they should extinguish the
magician-religious and politician power of the aboriginal societies, to weaken their social organization. However, the Kaxinawá had resisted
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