Zach+-+CD+-+SP13

My name is Bakotawa. I am from the Yanamamo of the Brazilian Amazon. In my culture we speak Nheengatu and a little portuguese. My people believe in trading. If I give you food they expect you to repay them with food or normally something better. If I give you a piece of fruit when I return I will expect something like a machete. If you don’t want to give up a machete a banana is the customary return. My people are not very trusting of the other people living in the Amazons. However they act very courteous to guests. It is a weird unspoken law. They will greet you and talk to you for hours and then as soon you fall asleep they kill you. If the different tribes know you they will accept you and not kill you. Tribes make frequent trips to visit other tribes. These people would make good embassadors because they know how to be friendly to guests and they treat people with respect. They are very interested in learning new things. The weapons and tools the tribes use are made with items found easily in the Amazons and are constructed with simple methods. The people of the Yanamamo like to do drugs. Some drugs are so powerful that the user is immediately forced to cough, snort, or dry-heave. People have grown to like it so much that they have done a lot of work in making sure the seeds of this drug won’t run out. The people in these tribes may be less educated than other people and they might not have the same clothes that most people wear. This may be undesirable to most but it’s just how they are and you can’t segregate against them. The people believe that if they eat the bodies of their deceased tribesman their spirits will live on.

Chagnon, Napoleon A. //Yanomamo//. Fort Worth(Tx): Harcourt College Publ., 1997. Print.

"Yanomami." //Wikipedia//. Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Jan. 2013. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

"Yanamamo People." //Yanamamo People//. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.