Mythologies of the Karajá Tribe
The Karajá , also known as Iny, are an indigenous tribe located in Brazil . Karajá people live in a 180-mile-long area in central Brazil, in the states of Goiás , Mato Grosso , Pará , and Tocantins . They currently reside in 29 villages in the Araguaia River valley, near lakes and tributaries to the Araguaia and Javaés Rivers, and the Ilha do Bananal . Earlier in the 20th century, there were 45,000 Karajá. In 1999, there were 2500–3000 Karajá. Today, they number around 3200-3700 people, all living in 20 different villages (Instituto Socioambiental, 2016; Museu do Índio 2016). They speak the Karajá language , which is part of the Macro-Jê language family. It was suggest as being a part of this family as early as 1886 but remained as an unclassified language for the majority of the 20th century until around 1967 (Ribeiro, 2012, p. 268). The language has four dialects: Northern Karajá, S...