Effect of Globalization on the Awa

            For many indigenous groups, globalization is a helpful implementation into their daily lives being that it can make life easier through new and different technologies. Since the 1950s globalization has had a profound effect on the people of the Awa tribe. At that time, ranchers and loggers began to actively move through their land with no regard for what was in their paths and have not stopped since. For this reason, many consider the Awa to be "the most threatened tribe". Often times, a whole tribe of Awa will be massacred by the imposing loggers merely so that they can strip their land of all of its resources. The Awa faced another threat when iron ore was found in nearby Carajás. Expansion began on this land causing the Awa to continue to spread out and move more than they already had, in fact many of members of the tribe died during the development of their land. Around the mid 1980’s, human rights organizations such as FUNAI began to see the effect that this had on the Awa tribe and began to call for justice. This justice did not take place until 2005 when the area occupied by the tribe was demarcated.  Though the area occupied by the Awa has been officially demarcated, their still land faces threats by illegal loggers and ranchers as it has been estimated that the intruders still outnumber the tribe by 10 to 1. As a matter of fact, in 2010, about one-third of the area that the Awa tribe occupies had already been destroyed by loggers, ranchers, and settlers.

IB Times Staff Reporter 2012, World’s Most Threatened Awá Tribe Outnumbered 10:1 by Invaders. Electronic Document. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/342567/20120518/world-threatened-aw-tribe-outnumbered-10-1.htm, accessed November 5, 2013. 

The Awa Tribe and Ritual

The Awá are located between the equatorial forests of Amazonia to the west and the eastern savannahs. This part of the world experiences a two seasonal weather pattern that alternates between 'wet' (rainy) and 'dry' (sunny) season. TheAwá year is divided similarly; they refer to their seasons as ‘sun’ and ‘rain’. They believe that spiritual entities called ‘maira’ control and monitor the rain. During their full moon ritual, men leave Earth behind as they travel to the iwa, the domain of the earth spirits. It is at the Iwa that they are able to communicate with the ‘maira’. The ritual begins with the men placing white king vulture feathers on their heads and through chanting they become entranced and are able to connect with the spirits. This ritual is sacred and lasts until dawn.

Eede, Jonna 2013, The silent years: Karapiru’s story of life on the run. Survival International. Electronic Document. http://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3249-Karapiru, accessed November 4, 2013.

Davies, Lewis 2013, Tribal Festivals: Scared Ritual of the Awa. National Geographic. Electronic Document. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/14/tribal-festivals/c_braz-awa-ld2-2011-1776/, accessed November 4, 2013.

The Awa Tribe Gender

Gender refers to the social identities, expectations, and privileges different cultures construct for members of the different biological sexes. In the Awa tribe the men are granted higher status in the symbolic plane. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case in everyday interactions. In this kind of society the task that have to be carried out don’t seem to be universally considered to be distinctly male or female task. The men in the Awa tribe are the hunters and fishers who create their own bows and arrows, but the women do play a very active and important role and do help the men in hunting sometimes by clapping and shouting to scare howling monkeys, and also to track game or even just wait for them to return to a meeting point. Even in some of the Awa groups it can be quite common for young women to go hunting on their own. In addition, the entire family, including the men, women and children perform the task of gathering fruits and nuts, which is usually thought to be the female’s job.

Furthermore, due to the reduction of the Awa’s land from the Western civilization the reduction of their mobility seems to be having a greater impact on the traditional females activities rather than the males. For example, the Awa men and women now both wash and mend their own clothes. Within the community the males can be seeing doing more and more work such as their traditional jobs in addition to new agricultural ones, while the women are doing less and less. The females mostly spend their time sitting in the hammocks, caring for their young, and periodically fishing or hunting small birds near their homes with their children.

The tribe may seem to have a female dominance with some of the women’s views playing an important role in decision-making internally. On the other hand, males are mostly the ones making the decisions on outside threats. In any case, the tribe is quite lenient on if some of the males choose to actively contribute to the community or avoid responsibility, likewise with the women taking part in male activities. On the contrary, it is believed that in the past the females in the tribe would have had a much great workload and were probably complimentary to the activities carried out by the males within the tribe. The females of the Awa tribe are also permitted to change husbands as often as she wishes and enjoys a great deal of freedom when it comes to choosing sexual partners to complement their relationship with their husbands, Furthermore, women may have two husbands at the same time if there are fewer women then men within the community. The females are also very open with abortion, and fee completely free to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Their fathers or even their brothers can give the young females around the age of 6 or 7 away in marriage to adult men, in which she will wait until she hits puberty to become this males wife.

In addition, the Awa women take care of small baby animals by breast feeding and taking care of them until they are old enough to return back to the forest. They usually have baby monkeys clinging to them wrapping their tails around the Awa women's necks, which is a very traditional act for the Awa and “enhances” the culturally valued image of the fertile female. In addition to this traditional act, the men have exclusively male ritual called the Karawara in which they perform during the full moon. The men are decorated by the females in King vulture feathers and one by one the men enter a takaya, which is a circular structure built with large palm leaves in which they chant until they go into a state of trance and can travel to another realm to meet their ancestral spirits.

Survival International 2013, Earth's Most Threatened Tribe. Electronic Document. http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa, accessed November 5, 2013.

Pappas, Stephanie 2013, The Awa: Faces of a Threatened Tribe. Electronic Document. http://www.livescience.com/19873-awa-tribe-brazil.html, accessed November 5, 2013

Lim, Adrian 2010, Awa (Guaja) Indeginous Culture. Electronic Document. http://prezi.com/o0bpxonyov8p/awa-guaja-indeginous-culture/, accessed November 5, 2013.

Hernando, Almudena 2011, Gender, Power, And Mobility Among Theawá-Guajá (Maranhão, Brazil).Electronic Document. http://www.academia.edu/1076736/Gender_Power_and_Mobility_among_the_Awa-Guaja_Maranhao_Brasil_._Journal_of_Anthropological_Research_67_2_189-211._2011, accessed November 5 2013. 

The Awa Tribe Political Systems

Most people in are governed or ruled by some kind of political system.  Monarchy and Democracy are two examples. Some indigenous tribes even have rituals that can be viewed as a political system. The Awa tribe, however, does not have any formal way of governing their people. The father of each Awa family is the authoritative force. The father enforces rules and governs his family based on how he was raised by his father.

As mentioned before, the Awa do not have a formal political system. They do have “norms” that are accepted by the tribe as a whole. A norm is defined as a standard, a model, or a pattern. If a member of the tribe commits adultery, steals, or violates some other norm, it is publicized in front of the whole Awa tribe. Usually they have a social gathering where everyone joins in the general meeting place of the village. This, in a sense, is their unofficial political system.

Awa Kwaiker- Sociopolitical Organization. Electronic Document. http://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Aw-Kwaiker-Sociopolitical-Organization.html, accessed November 4, 2013.

The Awa Tribe and Kinship

The Awa tribe live in extended family groups in which they include all relatives of the family. They would all go on gathering trips together where everyone helps gather nuts and berries. The Awa people, both the men and women are allowed to have many marriages. The gender differences are related to the tasks they perform. The Awa men typically hunt bigger game and the Awa women gather and hunt small prey. The Awa women are also responsible for the child bearing and breasting feeding their own babies as well as being surrogate mothers for baby monkeys. The Awa tribe chief is an elder woman in the tribe. She lives in a central hut in the middle of the settlement.  Her duties vary from arranging marriages in the tribe to delivering new born babies. The Awa tribe demonstrate a Dravidian type of kinship. However, because the tribe is very much un-contacted and almost extinct it is hard to trace back the former kinship of the original populations.

Arona, Lauren 2013, Indigenous Group: Awa. Electronic Document. http://prezi.com/w_250yiv-lio/indigenous-group-awa/, accessed November 3, 2013.

The Awa Tribe Language and History

The awa are a group of indigenous people in the Eastern amazon forest of Brazil. They are a group of about 350 members who established in 1800 as a nomadic tribe trying to escape the European colonists. There language is part of Tupi-Guarani. This language is broken down into over 50 sub languages spoken all over South America. Throughout the early 19th century they faced countless attacks from European settlers who were clearing out the forests in the area. Because of these raids it reduced there numbers to about 300 but only about 60 were still living the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But from the mid 1980’s the Awa moved to a government established settlement so they were able to live undisturbed with little outside contact allowing their population to make a comeback. But even the little contact they had with the outside wasn’t good. They were under constant pressure by the loggers who killed countless members of the tribe. It wasn’t until March of 2003 when the government finally acted and made there land off limits. Even today the Awa people still face the threat of illegal logging but its not as bad as it was back then.

http://www.crystalinks.com/AwaPeople.html

http://pib.socioambiental.org/en/povo/guaja