Infanticide

The Yanomami people have practiced in the acts of infanticide which is when the parents, usually the mothers, will kill their babies or abandon them to die. There isn't any specific pattern as to why they do this besides that the families prefer a male over a female or the child has physical or mental handicaps. This dips into the idea of gender roles obviously showing how the Yanomami people look to the men more than they do to the women.

Most young mothers, usually in their early twenties, are pressured to kill a newborn girl if they already have a lot of female children. The mothers don't have much control over the decision making, and it is ultimately up to the husband whether a newborn should be killed or not.

How they actually practice infanticide depends. Often they'll kill the baby at the birthing site by choking them, but they also leave the babies in the woods to die, and one case in the 50's according to John F. Peters, missionaries had found a baby had been thrown into the river.

Since the Yanomami believe that the males are more important than the females, if a mother had twins they'd choose the male, and if both were male, they'd choose the stronger of two.

Peters, John F. Life Among the Yanomami: The Story of Change Among the Xilixana on the Mucajai River in Brazil. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Housing and Labor of the Yanomami

The Yanomami share a communal house, called yano, that can accommodate as many as 400 Yanomami. While the center of the yano are kept for rituals and community gatherings, each family has their own division where the women stay and tend to the house during the day while the men hunt.

Labor is divided into sexes, the men are the hunters who supply meat for their families and neighbors. Although meat is extremely valued, it shared amongst members of each family. Equality is maintained in the Yanomami community by the offerings of meat. In sharing ones supply of meat with others, hunting men hope to be rewarded with another type of meat to bring back for to his family. The wives and daughters work at home in the gardens. Production of crops serves as 80 % of Yanomami food, so this task is important for the women.

Facts about the Yanomami

The Yanomami people live in the rain-forests and mountains of northern Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomami in Brazil occupy more than 9.6 million hectares of land while the Yanomami in Venezuela occupy 8.2 million hectares of land in the Alto-Orcinco - Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve. Their population stands at 32,000 and continue to be one of the largest isolated tribes in South America.

They migrated across the Bering Straits between Asia and America about 15,000 years ago and settled in South America.

The language of the Yanomami people predates that of the Caribs and Arawaks. They have no form of written language so they possess a large vocabulary and oral literature. They are a diglottic people, which means they use a special form of bilingualism.They have a formal and informal dialect. Wayamo which is the formal dialect is spoken by male tribesmen at social ritualistic events and the informal dialect is spoken in general.

The Yanomami are mainly horticulturalists whose diets consists of produce from local gardens and meat from hunting. Although fish is abundant at certain times of the year their diet doesn't not rely heavily on it and one of their main staple is plantain.

Yanomami kinship is based on the Iroquois System of Kinship Terminology. The father and father's brother  and the mother and her sister are referred to by a single term. However the father's sister and mother's brother are given separate terms. Ancestory is traced through the lineage of the male thus the male is considered more important than the female.

"Culture ." Yanomami: Shabono to Suburbia?. www1.broward.edu/~hsorkin/Lib-
Arts/Projects/Fall2002/Hottinger/culture.html (accessed November 9, 2012).

"The Yanomami." Survival for tribal peoples. www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami (accessed
November 9, 2012).

Family and Marriage Traditions of the Yanomami People

The Yanomami people establish marriages at early ages.  Through their daughters, marriage exchanges occur where a man promises a young woman, usually around the age of ten, marriage. Theses marriage exchanges are an important tool for tribes men to establish alliances with one another. Fathers easily give up their daughters at such an early age to marriage because the Yanomami believe that women should get married and have children as quickly as possible. Due to their short life span and unattended prenatal health, Yanomami women spend most of their lives having children and do not live past twenty-five.Yanomami males tend to have many wives and children due to their polygamist lifestyle and are respected more than women because of their influence in political issues in the community.

Yanomami people do not have wedding ceremonies, instead, once the village people find out about a marriage exchange between two men, the daughter of one man leaves her home to move in with her spouse. While at her new home, the married woman is now expected to complete the same chores she once did with her mother, but now by herself. Until the woman has a daughter of her own, she must tend to the house and prepare a meal for when her husband returns home.

"Yanomamo Wedding and Marriage Traditions." http://ginamicheli.tripod.com/ (accessed November 8, 2012).

Violation of The Yanomami Rights

Napolean Chagnon was a prominent anthropologist during the 1960's and has remained relatively well known. However his extensive work with the Yanomami people have been marred with accusations of misconduct and portrayal the Yanomami people in a negative light. In his writings he portrayed the Yanomami people as violent and savages. In 1968 Chagnon and James Neel took blood samples from the Yanomami people in an effort procure genealogical data. Despite their intentions, their actions violated the rights of the Yanomami people and showed gross misconduct in the field.

This video shows the Yanomami people and representatives of them requesting to have the blood samples returned to them and how the collection of the samples was disrespectful.

" Yanomamo." Leanna Wolfe. http://drleannawolfe.com/yanamamo.html (accessed November 7, 2012).

"Napepe - Yanomami ask their blood back - YouTube." YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7608Vu-D_9U (accessed November 7, 2012).

Intruders on Yanomami Land

The Yanomami people first came into contact with people during the 1940's due to the intervention of the government. After that an influx of people sought to come in contact with them such as religious missionaries and the Indian Protection Service. However noble their intentions might have been, their presence there disrupted the Yanomami peoples way of life and introduced many foreign diseases to them.

In the 1970's a road was built through the Amazon northern territory wiping out 2 villages as disease ravaged them. Cattle ranchers and colonists also helped  introduced alcohol and additional diseases that were never present in Yanomami villages.

During the 1980's gold miners rushed the territory of the Yanomami people in hopes of finding gold. They instigated violence and exposed the Yanomami to many diseases that they had no immunity to. The gradual decrease in Yanomami population due to gold miners lead the Brazilian government to ban miners from the Yanomami territory but illegal miners continue to disrupt the Yanamoni's way of life as they cause riots and introduce new diseases that deplete their population.


"Intruders." Survival International. www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami/intruders#main 

(accessed November 7, 2012).

Where the Yanomami are located: Amazon Rainforest

The Yanomami are located in the Amazon Rainforest specifically between Venezuela and Brazil. Until the mid 1950's the Yanomami people had gone undiscovered and were virtually untouched by the modern and outside world. 

"File:Yanomami location.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yanomami_location.png (accessed November 20, 2012). 

What We're Doing

Mission: The iCross-Cultural Citizen Project is a cultural anthropology course-based project meant to raise critical consciousness about the rich cultural diversity in our indigenous world (in our planet). Being totally aware of the limitations of being outsiders, we are a group of multidisciplinary undergraduate students who believe in cross-cultural sensitivity and participatory agency aimed at disseminating information about indigenous realities as accurately as possible.

Vision: The iCross-Cultural Citizen Project’s vision is to create an online cross-cultural space for students, professionals, and youth to learn and exchange cross-culturally sensitive information about contemporary indigenous experiences. From that outsider student’s perspective, we will try to theoretically explore possible collaborative solutions to problems that affect the indigenous populations of our planet. Finally, we hope for the future creation of a space where indigenous youth can share their experiences and their realities with us for real mutual collaboration to take place.

Values:

• We value the maximization of benefits to indigenous peoples and vulnerable populations in the world.
•  We value the respect for persons all over the world.
•  We value the equal treatment of people, and we are against the exploitation of vulnerable groups around the world.
•  We value collaborative cross-cultural learning and critical thinking.