Kuikuro
The Kuikuro are part of the sub-system formed by the Carib speaking Upper Xingu groups. The headwater region of the Xingu River, a major southern tributary of the Amazon, is known as the ‘Upper Xingu’ and constitutes an ecological, cultural and political unit. Since 1968 it has been part of the Indian Reservation named the ‘Xingu Indigenous Land’, in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso, covering an area of about 22.000 square kilometres.
Brazil, the State of Mato Grosso and the Xingu Indigenous Land.
The territory of the Carib speaking groups of the Upper Xingu (Instituto Socioambiental)
The Upper Xingu is a “large tongue of forested land protruding into the savannah, transitional between the equatorial Amazon lowland forest and the tropical central Brazilian forest” (Heckenberger, 1996). It can be generally characterized as a peneplain surrounded to the south, east and west by topographic highs. The Xingu River is formed by the meeting of the rivers Steinen, Ronuro, Batovi, Culiseu and Culuene, from west to east. These rivers are subject to a period of flooding during the rainy season (from October to May) and have wide meanders within their floodplains. The Kuikuro and the other Upper Xingu Carib grops live along the Culuene and Culiseu Rivers.
Aerial photos of the Culuene River with its meanders and floodplains (Bruna Franchetto, 2001)
The Upper Xingu basin is characterized by a mosaic of distinct ecological zones where the bio-diversity is remarkable, matching that found throughout other Amazonian regions.
Recent archaeological studies in the Kuikuro territory have provided important new data showing that “the Amazon forest is not in a stage of natural equilibrium, disrupted by human intervention, but instead the product of a dynamic interaction between large, settled human (native) populations and nature” (Heckenberger et al., 2003). This interaction began at latest at the end of the first millennium. Nowadays, the indigenous reservation, called “Terra Indígena do Xingu”, is surrounded in all directions and along its entire perimeter by farm land and extensive deforestation.
Deforestation on the way to the Culuene River, south-east of the border of the Xingu Indigenous Land. (Bruna Franchetto, 2003)
References
Heckenberger, M. J.
1996 War and Peace in the Shadow of the Empire: Sociopolitical Change in the Upper Xingu of Southeastern, c.a. A.D. 1400 – 2000. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, Pitsburgh, University Microfilma, Ann Arbor.
Heckenberger M. J., Ahukaka Kuikuro, Urissapá Tabata Kuikuro, J. C. Russel, M. Schmidt, C. Fausto, B. Franchetto.
2003 Amazonia 1492: Pristine Forest or Cultural Parkland? Science 301: 1710-1714.