Fishing with the Enawene Nawe
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The Enawene Nawe live in an area of savannah and tropical rainforest in Mato Grosso state, western Brazil. Although most of their land was officially recognised in 1996, a crucial area called the Rio Preto, where the Indians gather each year to trap and smoke fish, was left out.
The area is being heavily invaded by ranchers, and in a further blow the Mato Grosso state government has announced it will build a vast complex of hydroelectric dams upriver of the Enawene Nawe’s land.
The Enawene Nawe are a small Amazonian tribe who live by fishing and gathering in Mato Grosso state, Brazil.
They are a relatively isolated people who were first contacted in 1974. Today they number over 450, living in large communal houses or malocas which radiate out from a central square where ritual and communal activities are performed.
The Enawene Nawe are famed for their fishing techniques. During the fishing season, the men build large dams across rivers and spend several months camped in the forest, catching and smoking the fish which is then transported by canoe to their village. Fish is an essential part of their diet and plays a vital part in rituals such as Yãkwa, a four-month exchange of food between humans and spirits.
The Enawene Nawe grow manioc and corn in gardens and gather forest products. Honey gathering is celebrated in keteoko, or the honey feast, when men collect large amounts of wild honey in the forest and hide it on their return to the village, only revealing it when the women start to dance. Unusually for an Amazonian tribe, they do not hunt or eat red meat.
For decades the Enawene Nawe have faced invasion of their lands by rubber tappers, diamond prospectors, cattle ranchers and more recently soya planters. Maggi, the largest soya company in Brazil, illegally built a road on their land in 1997. This was subsequently closed by a federal prosecutor.
Although their territory was officially recognised and ratified by the government in 1996, a key area known as the Rio Preto was left out.
This area is tremendously important to the Enawene Nawe both economically and spiritually – this is where they build their fishing camps and dams, and where many important spirits live. The Enawene Nawe are urgently pressing for this area to be protected as it is being increasingly invaded by loggers and soya planters, who are fast destroying the forest and polluting the land and rivers.
Survival is lobbying the Brazilian government to recognise the Rio Preto region as Enawene Nawe land as a matter of urgency. Survival supports a land protection project run by the Enawene Nawe and the Brazilian non-governmental organisation OPAN.
