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Astroaborigen—Carib
Astronomy: “La Fundación de Estudios Indígenas
ofrece este sitio web para divulgar la Astronomía en la Cultura,
el Arte Rupestre, la Mitología Aborigen de Venezuela y el Glosario,
permitiendo ampliar conocimientos sobre nuestras etnias. Este
portal, está basado en el libro La Astronomía de los Caribe
en Venezuela, de Domingo Sánchez Picconne…”—a comprehensive site
on the Venezuelan’ Caribs astronomical knowledge, including an overview,
general features, natural phenomena, calendrical time, petroglyphs, and
mythology.
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Ethnologue:
Venezuela --- Languages of Venezuela. Part of
Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 13th Edition; Barbara F. Grimes, Editor;
Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1996.
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Information
on The Last Cannibals: A South American Oral History by Ellen B
Basso, University of Texas Press, 1995—Synopsis:
“The Kalapalo are a Carib-speaking group of Brazilian Indians who live
in the Alto (Upper) Xingu region around the headwaters of the Xingu River,
a tributary of the Amazon. In this major discourse-centered study of their
culture, Ellen Basso transcribes and analyzes nine traditional Kalapalo
stories to offer important insights into Kalapalo historical knowledge
and the performance of historical narratives within their nonliterate society.
The stories focus on the biographies of exceptionally powerful warrior
bowmen. Basso uses these stories to explore how the Kalapalo remember and
understand their history and what specific linguistic, psychological, and
ideological materials they employ to construct their narratives. This inquiry
represents the first comprehensive study of Amazonian Indian ethnohistory
using indigenous oral documents and the first attempt to understand, though
indigenous discourse, the emergence of Upper Xingu society. It will be
important reading in anthropology, linguistics, and South American studies.”
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Information
on Orinoco-Parima: Indian Societies in Venezuela: The Cisneros Collection,
by Luiz Boglar, Hatje Cantz, 2000—Synopsis: “Since
the discovery of the ‘New World’, Indian societies have been fighting the
process of cultural alienation. Some have managed to preserve their identity
while others have successfully come to terms with what is new. Representative
of these cultures are the societies living between the Upper Orinoco in
Venezuela and Parima Mountain Range. This is the region of the legendary
Lake Parima where ‘El Dorado’ -- the golden man -- was said to have lived.
In the 1950s, Edgardo Gonzalez Nino lived among the Amazon Indians and
gathered artifacts from these cultures. On the Upper Orinoco, he collected
over a thousand objects which, a few years ago, were acquired by the Fundacion
Cisneros in Caracas. This book presents this stunning collection, containing
masks, ritual objects, ornaments, feather decorations, cooking utensils,
and weapons. Essays by acknowledged experts provide excellent insights
into the relationships between the material and spiritual culture of these
groups of Indians.”
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Poblaciones
Indígenas de Venezuela: includes, Epocas
indígenas en Venezuela, Las etnias indígenas en la actualidad,
Clasificación de las etnias indígenas en Venezuela, Situación
actual de los principales grupos indígenas, Mapa de Distribución
de las Etnias Indígenas, Areas de desarrollo cultural prehispánico
de Venezuela
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SALIVA
INDIANS --- The principal of a small group
of tribes constituting a distinct linguistic stock (the Salivan), centring
in the eighteenth century, about and below the junction of the Meta and
Orinoco, in Venezuela, but believed to have come from farther up the Orinoco,
about the confluence of the Guaviare in Columbian territory.
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Team
Expansion Online--Update from Venezuela, by Chris and Eric Barry: “Our
Chacaito congregation supports a missionary to the Warao Indian tribe with
10 percent of our offerings….We also took a 2-hour drive and a 30-minute
hike into the Venezuelan interior to visit the indigenous Warao Indian
tribe. It was saddening. The men were laid out drunk on the floors of their
grass huts. There are no walls on the grass huts, the only furniture are
hammocks and perhaps a table made with sticks. The men had been drinking
going on 30 days straight. They sell tropical birds to people in Carupano
and use the cash to buy liquor. They were oblivious to us - sprawled out
in their own urine. The women were cooking in a nearby hut….”
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Venezuela
History --- Venezuela is the most northerly South
American nation with the Caribbean Sea directly to the north. Christopher
Columbus encounterd Venezuela, the homeland of the Carib and Arawak Indians,
on his third voyage to the New World in 1498....
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At
the Yanomami's/Pawlikowska --- November,
1997 Venezuela, the Amazon - We are going up the Orinoco river to meet
one of the last "wild tribes" - the Yanomami Indians. Even though they
were discovered over 45 years ago, not many people get here.
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The
Warao Indians: a simple page of introductory information,
photographs, and related links on the Warao of Venezuela—“ Warao (Waroa,
Guarauno, Guarao, Warrau):18,000 in Venezuela (1993 UBS). A few elderly
speakers on both sides of the Guyana-Surinam border. On the delta of the
Orinoco River, Delta Amacuro, Sucre, Monagas…”
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Health
Problems among the Warao of the Orinoco Delta:
this page features some details and a personal testimony—“ My name is Robert
Yanez, I am 9 year old Warao Indian living in the Orinoco river delta in
Venezuela….We are a family of 12 and we have one thing in common, we all
have Tuberculosis…. Robert died on June 15th/2001”.
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Los
Warao pierden el país de agua: “El universo
de la etnia era el moriche, la pesca, el conuco, la madera tallada. Pero
el cierre de caño Mánamo, la exploración petrolera,
la explotación de manaca y la imposición de costumbres hirió
a esa cultura. El Censo Indígena de 1992 contó a 23.957 waraos;
decenas de ellos han sido empujados a la mendicidad en ciudades como Caracas
y Valencia…. apenas el 17% de la población indígena de Venezuela
posee algún título de propiedad sobre sus tierras, y sólo
el 1% posee títulos definidos, producto de la falta de expedición
de títulos de propiedad colectivos definitivos a las comunidades
indígenas, el otorgamiento indiscriminado e irracional de concesiones
a empresas de explotación petrolera, minera y maderera que involucran
capital privado nacional y extranjero, la venta de terrenos en áreas
de resguardo que involucran capital privado nacional y extranjero, la venta
de terrenos en áreas de resguardo indígena a ganaderos y
hacendados, y la falta de cedulación”
IN CONNECTION WITH DOMINGO SANCHEZ'S
ARTICLE IN ISSUES IN CARIBBEAN
AMERINDIAN STUDIES, "A
NEW REALITY FOR VENEZUELA'S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES":
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The
1961 Constitution to which Domingo Sanchez refers to in his article
as embodying an indigenista reframing of the indigenous peoples as peasants,
is available in its entirety online.
Indigenous Participation in the
1999 Constitution
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Some
have called 2001, “The Year of Indigenous Venezuelans”. Andrés Cañizález
of the InterPress Service (IPS), wrote: “The year 2001 is turning out
to be the year of Venezuela’s indigenous peoples with the launching of
a number of new laws and development projects that vindicate the rights
and cultures of 28 native communities, which represent 1.3 percent of the
national population of 22.3 million people. Last December, Congress ratified
the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and
Tribal Peoples, and expedited the Law on Demarcation and Guarantee of Habitat
of Indigenous Peoples, while this month debate on the Bilingual Inter-Cultural
Education Law began, indigenous congressman Guillermo Guevara told Tierramérica.
All of this legislative action will reach its high point in November, when
the bill on the Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples is slated for presentation
before the National Assembly (Congress). In addition, several official
entities have announced the implementation of development plans that respect
the unique qualities of Venezuela's native communities while confronting
the poverty and exclusion of the country's 315,000 indigenous peoples….”
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Read
more about indigenous participation in the drafting of the new Constitution
in this piece on one of Venezuela’s leading indigenous activists and her
participation in the National Constituent Assembly: VENEZUELA: A Lifelong
Struggle for Indigenous Rights, By Luis Córdova: “CARACAS, Feb 29
[2000] (IPS) - Nohel Pocaterra's most recent battle took place before the
entire Venezuelan public when, in the middle of televised debates on the
nation's new constitution, she stood up in full traditional dress to defend
indigenous people's rights to their ancestral territory and to denounce
racism.”
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The
National Indigenous Confederation of Venezuela (CONIVE), issued a press
release (02 November 1999), detailing some of the right wing resistance
to the adoption of the articles of Chapter VIII of the new Constitution,
on the rights of indigenous peoples. This same item is also available at
NativeWeb
Pre-1999: Domestic and International
Exploitation of Indigenous Lands
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Before the drafting of the new Constitution,
laws were passed permitting international mining and logging on indigenous
lands without any form of regard for the inhabitants. Indigenous people
had been suffering from alarmingly high levels of mercury and cyanide poisoning
caused by various mining projects. Past governments only seemed to facilitate
such negative intrusion of transnational corporations onto indigenous lands.
For example, in April 1997, the former Venezuelan President signed a new
decree, 1850, opening up 40 percent of the Imataca Forest Reserve (formerly
a protected area) to large-scale logging and mining concessions. This initiated
a period of sustained indigenous protest. In February, after the election
of President Hugo Chavez, development to open up lands to a controversial
electrification project was suspended while the Senate Environmental Commission
reviewed issues related to consultation and environmental impact assessment
process. To learn more of examples from the recent past, leading up to
the Constitution of 1999, see “Venezuela's
Indigenous Peoples Defend Land Against Electrical Transmission Line”, an
Action Alert posted by Amazon Watch.
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More
information on this powerline project is provided in an article by the
World Rainforest Movement, “Venezuela: ‘Stop it, Mr. President’ say indigenous
Pemon leaders”: “The Pemon indigenous people continue to fight against
the construction of a high-voltage power line in the south-eastern Gran
Sabana region, that will cross the Brazilian border. Four indigenous leaders
have recently asked President Chávez to stop the works. ‘They understand
the world as something that can be divided into small boxes. For us the
world is a round place, where the gods, sacred sites, great rocks, large
rivers, mountains, plants and animals coexist; where the sun impregnates
the earth so that she can give birth. And as part of nature there is the
indigenous people’. Silviano Castro, from San Rafael de Kamoirán;
Melchor Flores, from Mapaurí; Cleto Javier Ramírez, from
Agua Fría; and Darío Castro, from San Juan de Kamoirán
addressed the Venezuelan President with this cosmologic view of the world
as perceived by the Penan people….”
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“Warao
Defend Orinoco River Delta”, InterPress Service, April 2, 1997: “Indigenous
Warao communities in the Orinoco River Delta of Venezuela are demanding
an immediate end to oil exploration by transnational companies in three
areas of their homelands. The government recently awarded concessions to
British Petroleum to reactivate the abandoned Pedernales oil field, located
on the Orinoco a short distance before it enters the Atlantic, and to the
US-based Amoco, and a US-Canadian consortium to work two other fields in
the region. The Orinoco Delta, which comprises 40,000 square kilometers
of waterways and sedimentary islands, is considered the last of the world's
great river deltas that is still unspoiled. It is the home of the Warao
people. There are approximately 25,000 surviving Warao living around the
Orinoco River”.
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A collection of articles focused on
the environmental destruction of indigenous lands in Venezuela is presented
online by the
World
Rainforest Movement.
About Venezuela: BBC Mundo
Some
data on Venezuela: the total population in 1998 was 22,803,409; of
that, 86% live in urban areas, while 14% live in rural areas. 1.5% of the
total population is aboriginal. For more information, see BBC Mundo’s “Venezuela:
El país de los cambios”.
Researchers, Colonial History,
and Indigenous Rights
Apart from the links posted above,
there is also an interesting article on how Venezuelan researchers, including
one cited by Domingo Sanchez in his article (Filadelfo Morales), found
a deed by King Charles III of Spain (1716-1788, and ruling from 1759),
granting the Karina a land title for an area alongside the Aguasay river
on October 13, 1783. See: “RIGHTS-VENEZUELA:
Indigenous Group's Colonial Deed Holds Good”, By Jose Zambrano, 19 November
1998.
BOOKS:
TOURS OF INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES:
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The
Orinoco Delta: a tourism page featuring this region and its Warao inhabitants—“
The Warao Indians – literally the ‘Canoe People’- are the native inhabitants
of the delta. With a population of 24,000, the Warao constitute the second
largest indigenous tribe in the country. Family groups reside in palafitos
(wooden houses raised on stilts) along the banks of the river, and spend
most of their daily lives in canoes fishing the nearby caños and
hunting and gathering in the surrounding forests. Skilled craftspeople,
the Warao build their palafitos and canoes from forest wood using traditional
techniques, and, owing to increased contact with tourists, have also begun
to carve figurines from balsa wood and to make necklaces, baskets and hammocks
from the leaves and seeds of the ubiquitous moriche palm. The moriche palm,
however, supplies more than just the basis for artesania. Otherwise known
as the ‘tree of life’, the moriche provides the Indians with fruit, juices
and a sweet pulp that can be made into a type of bread. Moreover, the trunk
of the palm is used to cultivate a thumb-sized beetle grub, the moriche
worm, a nutritious dietary supplement”.
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The
Orinoco, from Rainforest to Delta, by Geodyssey:
“….The history of the Warao dates back perhaps 6,000 years and maybe much
longer. Once more widely scattered, they have remained secluded in the
labyrinth of the Delta for centuries, weathering Arawak and Carib conquests
of the West Indies, and the arrival of the Europeans….”
This page was last updated:
Tuesday,
30 Deecember, 2003
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