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Yaokwa



Yaokwa is a ceremony performed every year during the drought period to honor the Yakairiti spirits, which ensures cosmic and social harmony among the clans of the Enawene Nawe people.

Enawenê Nawe is an indigenous group of people from Mato Grosso state. They live in a large village near the Iquê River and practice agriculture, fishing, and gathering. They do not hunt animals or eat red meat.

The drought season is the period when the Enauênes-Naues interacted with the beings of the underworld, the Yakairiti. In exchange for the food they receive, the spirits maintain social and cosmic order. Since the creatures hunger for an insatiable amount of food, they need to be fed vegetable salt, fish, corn, and manioc.

In January, the Yaokwa is prepared through cassava harvesting and construction of Matas, a series of fishing traps along with Joaquim Rios, Arimena, Rio Preto, and Nhambiquara rivers. According to clans, fishing villages are separated into nine ritual groups. After removing the identification adornments that mark them as humans, the fishermen split up into groups and began to camp on the banks of medium-sized rivers. In exchange for the fish, an elder offers salt to fishermen (representing the Yakairiti) after they have fished at each dam for two months. Consumption of salt signifies the communal relationship between humans and spirits. The fishermen, once again representing the subterranean realm, face the residents tasked with maintaining the gardens on their way back to the village. They exchange the fish for drinks made with manioc and corn after the ritual chants. Throughout the following months, the food used in the exchanges is consumed at nocturnal feasts accompanied by music, singing, and dancing.

The ritual's connection to biodiversity is based on a complex, symbolic cosmology that binds the different but inseparable domains of society, culture, and the natural world. During the span of seven months, it's integrated into their everyday life when the clans alternate responsibilities. Among the skills included in the ritual are knowledge of agriculture, food processing, handicrafts (costumes, tools, and musical instruments), and the construction of houses and fishing dams.

Local biodiversity, such as Yaokwa and local ecosystems, is extremely delicate and fragile, and its viability depends directly on its preservation. However, both have been seriously threatened by invasive practices and deforestation, including intensive mining, extensive logging, pollution of watersheds, degraded headwaters, unregulated processes of urban settlement, the building of roads, waterways, and dams, dredging and diverting rivers, destroying and burning forests, and illegal fishing and wildlife trade.


References

(https://ich.unesco.org/en/USL/yaokwa-the-enawene-nawe-people-s-ritual-for-the-maintenance-of-social-and-cosmic-order-00521) (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaokwa) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enawene_Nawe)


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