Kuntanawa

The Kuntanawa, a tribe of the Pano linguistic branch in Brazil's Acre state, were thought extinct by the early 1900s due to rubber production. By the 2000s, descendants of a Kuntanawa woman, previously identified as mestizo rubber tappers, began a process of ethnic self-recognition and territorial struggle. Ritualized ayahuasca use is central to this cultural reinvention, acting as a subjectivity operator and ethnic identifier in interethnic relations. The text offers ethnographic and theoretical reflections on ethnicity and culture.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The Kuntanawa are a tribe that belongs to the Pano linguistic branch, who, by the early decades of the twentieth century, were assumed to have been exterminated owing to the expansion of rubber production in the upper reaches of Amazonian tributaries, and in particular in the state of Acre in Brazil. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, descendants of a Kuntanawa woman, who had until then been identified as mestizo rubber tappers, began a process of ethnic auto-recognition as well as a struggle for territorial rights. The ritualized use of ayahuasca plays an important role as part of this process of cultural reinvention, acting as a Kuntanawa subjectivity operator, as well as working as an ethnic identifier in the larger field of interethnic relations. This double movement is the subject of ethnographic and theoretical reflections on the issue of “ethnicity” and “culture.”