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This paper uses the themes of language rights, language choice, and language risk to consider linguistic insecurity in the Northwest Amazon (Upper Negro river) region of Brazil. Because the region is home to a large number of languages (c. two dozen), the idea of preserving this diversity is a popular theme in discourses about language in the Upper Negro river. I argue that the ideologies underlying the goal of preserving 'diversity' as a concept are not, in fact, the same ones that have sustained the presence of these languages thus far, especially as concerns the Tukanoan languages of the Uaupés basin (Jackson, J. E. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Paradoxically, the reification of 'diversity' as a characteristic of the Northwest Amazonian Indigenous population has tended to promote homogenisation among groups that have historically valued differentiation from one another. In examining ideologies and practices surrounding each of the three themes of this issue, I suggest that discourses of 'diversity', applied at the local level, can create complex outcomes for the languages they are used to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relation between different kinds of indigenous speech and music and various iconographic forms such as petroglyphs, house painting, basketry designs and also features of landscape that are understood in graphic terms. It examines how Northwest Amazonian myth-history is structured and memorized, how it can appear in both verbal and non-verbal forms, and how contemporary books, maps and diagrams produced by indigenous organizations as part of programmes of research and education show continuity with these traditional forms. Rather than making firm distinctions between peoples with and without writing, I argue that it is more profitable to focus on how various mnemonic systems—“writing”—work in tandem with different narrative forms—“myth”. When “writing” and “myth” are understood in indigenous terms, contemporary written documents appear in a new light. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including social condition of the Tukanoan women after their forced migration, indigenous urbanization in Amazonia, and the relationship between indigenous peoples and cities.

This paper presents a reconstruction of Proto-Tukanoan consonants and the classification of the family based on shared phonological innovations. The proposed reconstruction contrasts with previous comparative studies of the family by proposing a series of laryngealized stops (instead of voiced stops) and a different set of sounds for the alveolar and palatal points of articulation. Methodologically, it considers lexicostatistical methods to play a secondary role in the classification of languages in the Tukanoan family. It offers a detailed discussion of contact vs. inherited linguistic traits in the Tukanoan family and in the Vaupes region, well known for its multilingualism and system of linguistic exogamy, and concludes with an interpretation of the evolution of the Tukanoan family in historical terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have traditionally used participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) projects to inject indigenous voices into the political sphere as they work for various legal rights. Due to their participatory nature, however, these projects can also have complex effects on the emotional and affective well-being of participating communities. This article examines how the authors' participatory research with the Maijuna people of the Peruvian Amazon resulted in many positive, affective, and emotional results outside of the final map product. Although the project was initiated as an attempt to produce a map that the Maijuna could use in pursuit of land rights, methodological choices made by the authors also produced positive emotions in participants, political bonding, and community-wide education. While their importance to the political momentum of marginalized communities cannot be overstated, geographers have yet to fully problematize the relationship between these affective and emotional results and their own methodological choices. This article argues that researchers should begin engaging in more affective and emotional thinking when constructing their research methodologies, to both improve the results of their project and to mitigate potential problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a previous experiment to apply Strathern's discussions of Melanesian gift exchange to ethnography relating to Tukanoan societies in Northwest Amazonia, this essay asks why other authors should repeatedly affirm that the gift has no relevance in the Amazonian context. Two answers are proposed. Firstly, the authors concerned tend to assume that a particular type of social formation is characteristic of Amazonia as a whole. The Tukanoans, who engage in ceremonial exchange of food and goods, do not fit this rubric. Secondly, despite their differences, these authors assume that Amazonian societies are bride-service societies where, axiomatically, there can be no gift. The Tukanoans are not bride-service societies and, if anything, tend towards the bride-wealth alternative. This Tukanoan exception serves to re-emphasize the diversity of Amazonian social formations, one that would have been even greater in the archaeological past. It also warns against the dangers of over-hasty theoretical closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers of Wanano, an Eastern Tukanoan language, strategically combine the rhetorical dialogic device of reported speech, one type of 'voicing,' with choice of a grammatical evidential to indicate a speaker's relationship to the information conveyed, in order to expand available repertoires of knowledge, agency, and responsibility. By complicating the messaging through these means, the young women whose song is cited here demonstrate the nuanced and powerful mechanisms with which speakers may claim, deny, and otherwise orchestrate, their relationship to speech production. The example allows us to consider rhetorical choice, grammar, and speaker values within the larger schema of epistemological positioning to which the Wanano adhere, providing us with a Wanano ethnologic on speaking and knowledge. The paper takes up several themes suggested in the pioneering work of Jane Hill in her explorations of voicing, evidence, and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tukanoans of northwestern Amazonia cultivate high-cyanogenic potential cassava, which provides 80% of their dietary energy. In an effort to understand why the Tukanoans cultivate primarily high- rather than low-cyanogenic potential cassava, which requires far less processing before consumption, this paper seeks to determine whether the Tukanoans discern a difference in levels of predation on high- and low-cyanogenic potential cassava. Given the potential protection afforded by high-cyanogenic potential, it was hypothesized that the Tukanoans would report higher predation upon low-cyanogenic potential cassava in comparison to high-cyanogenic potential cassava. Both unstructured interviews and pile-sort exercises were conducted to address this question. The unstructured interviews provide some support for the hypothesis, while the pile-sort interviews did not support the hypothesis. These data demonstrate that while the Tukanoans are cognizant of differences in predation on different cassava cultivars, resistance to predation may not be a characteristic of paramount concern in cultivar selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on inter-ethnic relations and the models of spatial occupation of the Maku and Tukanoan indigenous groups that live in the Uaupés Basin in Colombia and Brazil. This paper also addressed the elements for a possible analysis of the concept of territoriality used by the Indians that inhabit the place. Descriptions of both groups, including their life cycle, revolving around activities developed along the river and their territory, the Maku groups live within the forest and Tukanoan groups build their villages and communities on the banks of big rivers, are discussed. The author also detailed the six phases related to the occupation of the region to provide an overview of the myths of creation of these peoples.

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Through the comparison of Arawakan-, Tukanoan-, and Makuan-speaking groups from the Northwest Amazon, the article shows that these peoples are organized in a regional system of political-religious hierarchies. This regional multiethnic system is characterized by extensive multilingualism, exogamy, and vaned modalities of interethnic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about a group of hunter-gatherer Indians, known as Nukak, who were temporarily resettled for two months in two communities in the Vaupés region of southeastern Colombia. In order to understand the painful experiences the Nukak underwent during this time, it is necessary to examine the traditional patterns of interaction between Tukanoans and Makú, the two indigenous groups inhabiting the Vaupés, and the ways in which ethnic identity in the region is currently being negotiated and transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes features of traditional Tukanoan culture in the Vaupes region of the Central Northwest Amazon of southeast Colombia and the outside influences that have affected local notions of that culture. Tukanoans' incorporation of change into their notion of culture; Implications for current Colombian indigenist and Indianist politics.