Wajãpi

The Wajãpi, a tupi-guarani speaking people, live on both sides of the border between Brazil and French Guyana; the indigenous land on the Brazilian side, in the northeast of Amapá state, was legally ratified in 2006 and today is home to one thousand individuals, living in 49 villages. Some families live in the North of Pará, with the Wayana and Aparai peoples.

The Wajãpi in Amapá decorate their bodies and artifacts with a variety of designs. They make use of red paint made from urucum, green jenipapo juice and perfumed resins. Their graphic language, known as kusiwa, is not merely decorative: it includes knowledge of plants, animals, and the things that surround them; thus jaguars, pythons, anacondas, fish, butterflies and even such industrialized products as iron files are to be found in their repertoire. Different patterns can be combined in different compositions.

In 2002, at the request of the Wajãpi, the Brazilian heritage preservation organization Iphan registered their graphic art in the Register of Cultural Expressions. In the following year, Unesco recognized their graphic and oral expressions as Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Since 2005, Wajãpi researchers have been recording the traditional knowledge of their communities with a view to both external dissemination and valuing their heritage in their own villages.

Wajãpi stools are produced by men. Carved from one block of wood, mainly red cedar, they come in several sizes and forms and have various uses. Those for children and women are square while men’s are concave and oval. Some have a smooth wood finish; others are decorated with natural resin-based dyes. The most distinctive are those that represent the two-headed vulture, which alludes to the mythical figure, urubu akã mokoi.