Ikpeng

The Ikpeng are a Karib speaking people that occupied the region of the rivers that feed the Xingu at the beginning of the 20th century, when they lived in a state of war with their Upper Xingu neighbors. Contact with the white world was very recent, at the beginning of the 1960s, and caused a disastrous reduction in population to less than half through disease and death by firearms. They were then transferred to the limits of the Xingu Indigenous Park and “pacified” by the actions of the Villas-Boas brothers.

Today the Ikpeng population is around 450 individuals, distributed between a village and two FUNAI administration posts inside the park, maintaining peaceful relations with their neighbors, with whom they forged alliances. However, they do maintain war in the center of their vision of the world and relations with the dead as the principal reproductive engine of social life.

The ceremonial center of the Ikpeng village model is the “moon” or ritual plaza, comprising an ellipse with two fires. There is also a hut with a double sloping roof and no walls, the mungnie, which is not a men’s house, as in the Upper Xingu model, for women are allowed access. This is where the main artifacts of their material culture are produced, ceremonies are rehearsed, and friends get together to drink, eat, and make otxilat, the feathered headdress that identifies warriors.

Most Ikpeng individuals have a long list of names (between six and fifteen, with twelve being the average). The chain of names of each one is recited in a ritual (orengo eganoptovo: “recitation of names”) related to the ceremony of returning from a successful war expedition. Or it might be recited on very formal occasions during which a “great man” (who is not called “chief”, for the term is not adequate) expresses the speech of the group, through special forms.

Among the peoples that live in the park, the Ikpeng are the ones who have valued school education the most. In 1994, with the help of linguists, Ikpeng teachers developed a form of writing. This Ikpeng writing has been used extensively by the students, who also learn Portuguese, spoken fluently by most Ikpeng. The Ikpeng school has taken on a central role in the park, responsible for the acquisition of school materials and distributing them to other villages in the middle Xingu.