Mythologies of the Kuntanawa Tribe

“I came to this planet to take my people out of prison and to go
back a hundred years to draw and sprout our roots back again,
Light the flames that had faded away …
and today my people rose from the deep sleep that slept in our hearts. 

The Kuntanawa tribe, or as they call themselves the ‘Coconut people’, have always used plants to connect with the beings and the spirits of the forest, thereby they learned how to cure their tribe with their own traditional medicines, and until today they maintain their practices. The tribe lives along the River Tejo in a reserve of the Acre region in Brazil. There are only about 400 tribe members left (Pantoja 2008), and they are still struggling to regain a demarcated territory, which the Brazilian Government keeps on delaying. The Kuntanawa people have always defended their spirituality as their principle of existence. The Rapé of the Kuntanawa has a very unique vibration. It has a strong spiritual connection that brings the attention inwards and calms the mind down, allowing the healing and understanding to enter from the spirit of the medicine. Sometimes, they add plants with cosmologic powers, which bring luck, tranquility, and other benefits, like protection and blessing for people and hunters. The Kuntanawá say, Rapé helps them to gain strength, clarity, and power to have the right attitude and to take correct decisions. Interestingly, their Rapé stimulates the chest and the heart region more than the head. It is typically mild, burns less in the nose and in the brain, and many people consider it heart opening – as it contains ashes of the Tsunu tree (Platycyamus regnellii). In addition, their Rapé usually contains tabaco and a.o. Samauma, Nissural, Jarina, and Sanssara.

Located in the Brazilian Amazon, the people of Kuntanawa are one of the twelve known indigenous tribes that live in the state of Acre. During the beginning the 20th century the people almost became extinct by the arrival of the rubber tapper.  For almost a century the people stayed off the map from the Brazilian government. The descendants were thought to be wiped out, from the genocide of the Kuntanawa people. At the turn of the 21st century, the Kuntanawa leaders, elders Milton and Mariana, their children and their grandchildren resorted to the government in search of their rights as the protectors of the Kuntanawa land. This started a new page in history and in the life of the forest; this brought hope to resurrect the knowledge and traditions of their people. Kuntanawa is currently in a phase of reconstruction of their people, spirit, culture, history, and language.  There is a focus to heal from the discrimination of their ancestral heritage. The Kuntanawa nation currently has a modest population spread throughout three villages.  There are a total of 100 people, although approximately 400 Kuntanawa can be found in different cities and communities along the riverside. The challenge of the people of Kuntanawa is survival techniques and self-sustainability that were traditionally taught by their ancestors.  These challenges have resulted in the motivation of Kuntanawa to rediscover their traditional ways.

The Kuntanawa are a tribe that belongs to the Pano linguistic branch, who, by the early decades of the twentieth century, were assumed to have been exterminated owing to the expansion of rubber production in the upper reaches of Amazonian tributaries, and in particular in the state of Acre in Brazil. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, descendants of a Kuntanawa woman, who had until then been identified as mestizo rubber tappers, began a process of ethnic auto-recognition as well as a struggle for territorial rights. The ritualized use of ayahuasca plays an important role as part of this process of cultural reinvention, acting as a Kuntanawa subjectivity operator, as well as working as an ethnic identifier in the larger field of interethnic relations. This double movement is the subject of ethnographic and theoretical reflections on the issue of “ethnicity” and “culture.”

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