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“Off The Grid” 

'National Geographic Traveler’

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We are Raising funds for this project in our area

Located on the San Juan de Yanayacu River, Peru, The KuKama Tribe granted Chingana, 100 acres of land to construct a Conservation Center.

 

 

The village is 8k downstream. 

 

 

The KuKama Indians administer the new Pacaya Samiria Reserve Extension, which now boarders on the Amazon River at the Confluence of the Yanayacu River and the Amazon, and covers approximately 5,000,000 acres of pristine Rainforest.

 

San Juan de Yanayacu; its leaders and members are the guides in this rainforest zone.

The people and their language: (http://www.unm.edu/~rvallejos/documentationprojectkk.html#people)

 

"The Kukama-Kukamiria people (also known as Kokama-Kokamilla) live in the Peruvian amazon. Based on historical and geographic criteria, two dialects have been reported for this language: Kukamiria (Kokamilla) is spoken basically in the high Huallaga River, and Kukama (Kokama) along the Marañon, Samiria, Ucayali,and Amazon Rivers.  So far only a few phonetic and lexical differences have been found between these two dialects (Vallejos, 2010). The total ethnic population is approximately 20,000. Nevertheless, their heritage language is highly endangered because all of the estimated 1500 remaining speakers are elderly people spread in small villages. Small groups of Kukama have been also reported in Brazil and Colombia; however, at present, the language is no longer spoken in Colombia and very close to extinct in Brazil. In Peru, speakers still use the language to speak amongst themselves, but only in very restricted situations, such as traditional events and intimate meetings. Several historical reasons could explain the current sociolinguistic situation that one finds in the communities, such as a long history of contact with various linguistic groups, the geographic proximity of Kukama-Kukamilla communities to big cities where Spanish is the dominant language, and the early presence of schools with instruction only in Spanish.  Such factors have led them to stop using their language. As a consequence, natural processes of language transmission have been interrupted and the majority of the Kukama-Kukamiria population has shifted to Spanish.

 

Even though the Kukama-Kukamiria people have been interacting with non-indigenous groups for a long time, their cultural practices and their way of life are still traditional in many respects. The old generations preserve vast knowledge of the forest and the aquatic environment, which allows them to survive in this area of the jungle that is flooded with water almost half of the year. However, younger generations have been gradually abandoning some traditional practices, such as certain agricultural and fishing techniques. It is known that when a cultural practice ceases, a great deal of culturally specific knowledge is lost with each generation.

 

A history of migration and contact

 

The Kokama people have a long history of migration and contact. According to Chaumeil (1996), there were various migratory movements from the Central Amazon of Brazil to the Peruvian Amazon which happened during centuries, from about IX to XVI. Stocks (1981) claims that the Tupi came to the Western Amazon looking for better sources of food, escaping from wars among Indians, for religious purposes, and, later, escaping from slavery imposed by Europeans. The Kokama, says Stocks, arrived to the lower Amazon around 200 or 300 years prior to the Spanish conquest. The current location of the Kokama is considered by some scholars one of the best examples of the migratory tendency characterizing the Tupí-Guarani ethnodynamism. In the lower, middle, and upper Amazon river they lived surrounded for several groups, such as the Pawanas, Parianas, Machiparu, Yurimawas, Benorinas, Ibanomas, Ikitos, Mayorunas, Chiberos, Panoan, Arawakan, among others. Early chronicles attest a regular trade network among these groups.

 

The Kokama people were the first Amazonian group contacted by the Spanish explorer Juan Salinas de Loyola in 1557. They were located at the lower Ucayali river and upper Amazon river. The communities he found had each about 200 to 400 houses along 300 Km of the rivers. At the time of the conquest, the population is calculated in 10000 to 12000 (AIDESEP 2000). But the Kokama continue migrating, down the river by the Ucayali, and up the river by the Marañon were they created the town called Nauta. A small group of Kokamas continue migrating towards the Marañon and High Huallaga river creating a town called Lagunas, which marks the origin of the Kokamilla variety. Rivas (2000) mentions that the Kokamilla may have splitted from the Kokamas around 1619.

 

During the time of missionary presence in the Alto Amazonas (1637-1768), Kokama was the lingua franca in the area known as the Province of Maynas (Peru) which included villages along the Ucayali, Huallaga, Pastaza, and Napo rivers. In that period, indigenous populations were forced either to move away from their habitat to escape the subjugations of the whites, to join the large farms or haciendas and live in slavery, or to accept the reductionist system administered by the missionaries. The missionary villages or reducciones concentrated different ethnic groups. It is said that in the reducciones the dominant language was Kokama because, in part, the Spanish missionary work started with the Kokama people, and the Kokama reducciones were the first created in the area. In 1768, the missionaries were expulsed from the area. By then, there were more than 40 reducciones with about 18000 Indians living in there. Later, around 1853, there were additional campaigns and projects for colonization the forest. The system of hacienda was re-established the system of hacienda and the Kokama people were the main laborers."

 

 

References: 
AIDESEP-FORMABIAP. 2000. El Ojo Verde: Cosmovisiones Amazónicas. Lima, Peru. 
Espinosa, Lucas. 1935. Los tupí del oriente peruano. Estudio Lingüístico y etnográfico. Casa Editorial Hernando. 
Rivas, Roxani. 2000. IPURUKARI. Los Cocama-Cocamilla en la Várzea de la Amazonía Peruana. M.A. Thesis, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. Lima, Peru. 
Stocks, Anthony. 1981. Los Nativos Invisibles: Notas sobre la historia y realidad actual de los cocama del río Huallaga, Perú. Serie Antropológica Nº 4, 185 pp. CAAAP, Lima , Perú. 
Vallejos, Rosa. 2010. A Grammar of Kokama-Kokamilla. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon.

Robert Leffew

Robert Leffew

Chingana, Peru 

Fundraising Coorodinator

Chingana, Inc.

 

"The Kukama Indians, population of about 2,000, are indigenous to the Peruvian Amazon. The Kukama language is endangered in that only the community elders are still fluent in the language.

 

Help us save their language.

 

When a language dies the world loses knowledge of its cultural context, underpinnings and history, the community’s inter-generational interactions, socioeconomic, class structures, and, yes, religion; resulting in a loss of mutual respect and communication between cultures all stumbling blocks to true world peace.

 

Of the five to seven thousand languages spoken in the world today the majority of these are the mother-tongues of indigenous groups. Linguists write on the power of language to create grassroots peace and fear that many of these languages will soon vanish.

 

To the indigenous groups who speak them, these languages are more than a means of communication; they confer on their speakers a sense of identity and uniqueness. Language is about who we are. Losing our language means losing our culture, how we see our place in the world and how we connect and communicate with those who came before us and those who follow us.

 

This loss breeds those of a dominant language the opportunities for subjugation: i.e. Orwell’s dystopian “1984”.

 

To bring a true sense of historic and cultural identity and to reinforce social values, ethical fundamentals, and trust in governmental and social institutions, an urgent mission for saving languages is needed so future generations retain their holistic heritage.

How do we save a language?

 

Our project is to document through photography and video the language and lifestyle of the KuKama Indians and their interaction with the wildlife of the Amazon rainforest. We will produce portrait and way of life images captioned in KuKama language with Spanish/English translations. Video interviews of the spoken KuKama language will include Spanish/English subtitling."

KuKama Documentary, Language

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