Waorani people

"Aucas" redirects here. For the football club, see Sociedad Deportiva Aucas.

Huaorani/Waodani

Regions with significant populations
Waodani settlements: approx. 4,000, Nomadic "uncontacted" Tagaeri, Taromenane, Huiñatare, and Oñamenane: approx. 250,
Languages
Wao Tiriro, many also speak Spanish.
Religion
Animist, Christian
Related ethnic groups
Kichwa, Shuar, Achuar, Siona people, Secoya people, Shiwiar, Záparo, Cofán

The Huaorani, Waorani or Waodani, also known as the Waos, are native Amerindians from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador (Napo and Pastaza Provinces) with some marked differences from the other ethnic groups from Ecuador. (The alternate name Auca is pejorative, given by the neighboring Quechua Indians and commonly used by Spanish-speakers as well. Auca – awqa in Quechua – means "enemy".) They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Huaorani language, a linguistic isolate i.e. unrelated to any other language. Their ancestral lands are located between the Curaray and Napo rivers, about 50 miles (80 km) south of El Coca. These homelands – approximately 120 miles (190 km) wide and 75 to 100 miles (120 to 160 km) from north to south – are threatened by oil exploration and illegal logging practices. In the past, Huaorani were able to aggressively protect their culture and lands from both indigenous enemies and settlers, missionaries, etc.

In the last 40 years, they have become a largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements. As many as 5 communities – the Tagaeri, the Taromenane and three others – have rejected all contact with the outside world and continue to move into more isolated areas.

Name

The word orangemo (plural of oran "person") means "humans" or "men" in oran Tiriro. Before the mid 20th century, it included only those kin associated with the speaker. Others in the ethnic group were called orangemo, while outsiders were and are known by the derogatory term toilets. This structure duplicates the in-group/out-group naming conventions used by many peoples, and reflects a period of traumatic conflict with outsiders during the 1st and early 2nd century rubber boom/oil exploration.

The name Waodani (or the alternative English spelling Waorani) represents a transliteration by English-speaking missionary linguists. The phonetic equivalent used by Spanish-speakers is Huaorani (reflecting the absence of w in Spanish spelling.) The sounds represented by the English and Spanish letters d, r and n are allophones in Wao Tededo.

Subdivision

The Waodani are subdivided into the Huamuno Dayuno, Quehueruno, Garzacocha (Yasuní River), Quemperi (Cononaco River) Mima, and Caruhue.

Culture

Worldview

In traditional animist Waodani worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. The Waodani once believed that the entire world was a forest (and used the same word, ömë, for both) and the Oriente’s rainforest remains the essential basis of their physical and cultural survival. For them, the forest is home, while the outside world is considered unsafe: living in the forest offered protection from the witchcraft and attacks of neighboring peoples. In short, as one Huaorani put it, “The rivers and trees are our life.” In all its specificities, the forest is woven into each Huaorani’s life and conceptions of the world. They have remarkably detailed knowledge of its geography and ecology.

The Waodani believe the animals of their forest have a spiritual as well as physical existence. They believe that a person who dies walks a trail to the afterlife which has a large python lying in wait. Those among the dead who cannot escape the python fail to enter the domain of dead spirits and return to Earth to become animals, often termites. This underlies a peculiar mix of practices that recognize and respect animals, but do not shield them from harm for human use. Huaroani who become Christians believe that God sent his son to experience death, walk the trail, and encounter the python for them.

Hunting supplies a major part of the Waodani diet and is of cultural significance. Traditionally, the creatures hunted were limited to monkeys, birds, and wild peccaries. Neither land-based predators nor birds of prey are hunted. Traditionally there was also an extensive collection of hunting and eating taboos. They refused to eat deer, on the grounds that deer eyes look similar to human eyes. While a joyful activity, hunting (even permitted animals) has ethical ramifications: “The Huaorani must kill animals to live, but they believed dead animal spirits live on and must be placated or else do harm in angry retribution.” To counterbalance the offense of hunting, a shaman demonstrated respect through the ritual preparation of the poison, curare, used in blow darts. Hunting with such darts is not even considered killing, but retrieving, another kind of harvesting from the trees. Spearing wild peccaries on the other hand, is killing and is practiced with violence and rage.

While never hunted, two other animals, the snake and the jaguar, have special significance for the Huaorani. Snakes are considered "the most evil force in the Huaorani cosmology" , particularly the imposing (though nonvenemous) anaconda, or obe. A giant obe stands in the way of the forest trail that the dead follow to an afterlife with the creator in the sky. Here on earth, snakes are a very bad omen and traditionally killing them is considered taboo.

The Waodani identify themselves deeply with the jaguar, an important and majestic predator in the Oriente. According to myth, the Huaorani were the descendants of a mating between a jaguar and an eagle. Elders became shamans by metaphorically adopting “jaguar sons” whose spirits communicate medical and spiritual knowledge. In the Huaorani belief system, jaguar shamans are able “to become a jaguar, and so to travel great distances telepathically and communicate with other Huaorani.”

Plants, especially trees, continue to hold a complex and important interest for the Huaorani, whose store of botanical knowledge is extensive and ranges from knowledge of materials to poisons to hallucinogens to medicines. They also relate plants to their own experiences, particularly that of growing. Among trees, certain kinds are auspicious. Canopy trees, with their distinctly colored young leaves and striking transformation as they mature to towering giants, are “admired for their solitary character … as well as for their profuse entanglement” with other plants. Other significant trees are the pioneer species of the peach palm (used for making spears and blowguns, as well as for fruit), and fast-growing balsa wood, used for ceremonial purposes. Peach palm trees are associated with past settlements and the ancestors who live there.

As with many peoples, the Waos maintain a strong in-group/out-group distinction, between Waodani (people who are kin), Waodoni (others in their culture who are unrelated) and Cowodi. The use of Waodani as a term for their entire culture emerged in the last fifty years in a process of ethnogenesis, which was greatly accelerated by the creation of ONHAE, a radio service and a soccer league.

The Waodani notion of time is particularly oriented to the present, with few obligations extending backwards or forwards in time. Their one word for future times, baane, also means "tomorrow".

Weapons

A Waodani blowgun

Spears are the main weapons of the Waodani culture used in person to person conflict.

Their main hunting weapon is the blowgun. These weapons are typically from 3 to 4 metres long, and the arrows that are in them have curare poison, which paralyzes the muscles of the animal that is hit with it, so that it cannot breathe. With the introduction of Western technology in the 20th century, many Waodani have come to use rifles for hunting.

Marriage

Waodani families practiced endogamy, especially cross-cousin marriages — a woman may marry her cousin(s) from one or more sisters on her father's side, or from brother(s) on her mother's side (and necessarily vice-versa with regard to females and their marriage choices). The men may also have multiple wives. Sometimes, a man would kill another man to gain another wife; this was traditionally common if a man had no available cousin to marry.

Huaorani women remove all their body hair by first rubbing ash in the areas where they do not want hair – supposedly to reduce the pain – then pull out the hair.

Recent history

Around the time of World War II, there was a great increase of inter-clan killings: at this time it was estimated that up to 60% of all Huaorani deaths were due to murder. Some of the Huaorani trace the beginning of the killing to the breakdown of clan relationships around ten generations prior to this time. Prior to this period, large gatherings frequently brought distant clans together from time to time to celebrate and arrange marriages, among other activities. These were organized by informal tribal leaders (although the Huaorani had no chiefs or formal leadership in general). When these gatherings became less common, clans became estranged from and offended by one another and conflicts began to escalate until the Huaorani became one of the most violent cultures ever documented .

In 1956, a group of five American missionaries, led by Jim Elliot and pilot Nate Saint, made contact with the Huaorani in what was known as Operation Auca. Two days after friendly contact with three Huaorani, all five of the missionaries were killed in a spearing attack by a larger group from the same Huaorani clan. Nate Saint's sister, Rachel Saint, prior to these killings, had befriended a Huaorani woman named Katrina. Saint, Dayuma, and Jim Elliot's wife Elisabeth converted several of the Huaorani to Christianity. Reliance upon missionaries for dealing with the outside world did, however, eventually allow increased oil scouting in the area over the years. With the discovery by Texaco of large petroleum reserves in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest in 1968, potential for conflict was again renewed. Eventually a deal was brokered in which many of the Huaorani were subsequently concentrated into a protectorate under the responsibility of SIL International. This story was narrativized in the film End of the Spear.

Huaorani schools were set up to teach the Bible and beliefs of Christianity. Teachers were mainly of the neighboring Quichua. New systems of government were also introduced.

Currently (2008), the Huaorani have about 6,800 km² of land, about one third of their original land. Some work with tourism companies, and others obtain education until university level. Half of the small children attend schools in Spanish, but others still spend their days hunting and gathering.

Indigenous political reorganization

Prior to 1989, the Huaorani were very divided and politically unorganized. Of the more than two dozen settlements, the two permanent ones were Rachel Saint's (the Toñampare) and Dayuno, which was also under missionary influence. There were also a number of traditional clans and the Tagaeri. Though the Huaorani were surviving and healthy, their society in the two largest settlements was controlled almost entirely by missionaries, and there was no clear voice to communicate to the outside world.

Land rights

In 1990, the Waodani won the rights to an indigenous reserve covering some 6,125.60 square kilometers. The protected status of Yasuní National Park, which overlaps with the Huaorani reserve, provides some measure of environmental protection. Additionally, the government has created a protected zone to avoid contact with the Tagaeri.

See also

• Beyond the Gates of Splendor (2005). [Documentary].
• List of Huaorani people
• Operation Auca
• Steve Saint

External links

• A film about the missionaries who were killed by the orangemo.