Ye'kuana

The Ye’kuana are a people of the Karib language family. Most of the population live in Venezuela, where they total around 5 thousand individuals; in Brazil, the population is approximately 500 people, who live in three communities located in the frontier area, in the northwest of Roraima state and in Amazonas state.

Although they are neighbors of the Yanomami, they are linguistically and culturally different. However, the two ethnic groups maintain an intense network of exchanges composed of different communities, located on both sides of the frontier.

The name “Ye’kuana” can be translated as “canoe people” or “people of the branch in the water”. When referring to themselves, they use the word So’to, which means “people,” ”person.” They are also known in Brazil as Maiongong.

Their villages are organized in zones composed of concentric circles, with the communal house—the maloca—in the center, which has a rounded base and cone-shaped ceiling. Able to hold about sixty people, the maloca is also divided internally into circular sections. The central section is where communal meals are taken, visits received, and festivities held; at night this area is the sleeping room for young single men. The space around this central area is divided into compartments with dividing walls that do not reach the ceiling; each compartment houses a family.

In recent decades, the Ye´kuana have inserted themselves into urban centers, as can be seen in Boa Vista, but even so, they maintain their dietary traditions, mainly composed of fish soup, pepper, and beiju, and the way of producing their food. They are agriculturalists, gatherers, and they also hunt and fish, a well as keeping domestic animals, especially dogs and birds.

As with other peoples in the same region, basketwork is important to the traditional material culture of the Ye’kuana. The act of plaiting straw is for them a metaphor for weaving life. The older men plait straw, accompanied by traditional songs, forming geometric designs where front and back symbolize the relation between reality and illusion.

Ye'kuana stools are also made by men, always representing animals. They are distinct from other indigenous stools by the characteristic shape of the base, corresponding to the semi-folded limbs of the animal represented by the stool.