The race to save an Indigenous Brazilian language from extinction [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

As elders from an Indigenous tribe die of COVID-19, younger members must fight to stop their language dying with them.



A member of the Yawalapiti tribe plays an Urua flute as part of a ritual of 'good energies', at the tribal village in Alto Xingu in the lower Amazon, May 12, 2002 [Gregg Newton GN/HB/Reuters]

By
Charlotte Peet
23 Dec 2020

Deep in the state of Mato Grosso, in the heart of Brazil’s vast Xingu National park, the inhabitants of the Indigenous village of Typa Typa can be heard day and night.

From their palm-thatched huts, perched on the southern banks of the Tuatuari river, some five kilometres (three miles) from the Leonardo Villas-Boas Post in the Upper Xingu, the Yawalapiti people of the circular village are mourning the death of their ancestral leader.



Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, 71, led his ethnic group for five decades and fiercely defended its traditions, lands and culture. For his family and Xingu supporters, he was a “living library” of the Yawalapiti people, one of the first tribes from the Arawak family lineage to have arrived in the region around 1100 AD.

A noble warrior, Aritana had never lost a Huka-Huka wrestling match, but COVID-19 is an opponent like no other. Even as the disease began to take its grip, marching down his windpipe and striking his lungs, he showed the strength to calm his family’s suffering.

But this would be his final fight.

More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/23/race-to-save-brazil-indigenous-language-from-extinction