Mundurucu People
Cultural Universals Presentation
By: Shanoon, Shariqa, Vivian, Loreen
Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Communication/Verbal Language
 Classification of Gender and
Age
 Marriage/Relationships
 Family Settings
 Sexual Division of Labour
 Concept of Privacy
 Rules to Regulate Sexual
Behaviour
 Body Ornamentation
 Jokes and Activities
 Arts
 Leadership Roles and Community
Decisions
2016/3/23

Video
Introduction
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•
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Also known as the Munduruku,
Maytapu, and Cara Preta
An indigenous group that reside by
the Amazon River basin.
They refer to themselves as
Wuyjuyu which literally means ‘us’
They got the name Munduruku
from the Parintintin people which
means "red ants"
– that name was given to them based
on the historical tactic they
once used, attacking their
enemies en masse
•
Munduruku were once fierce
warriors, executing/beheading
their enemies but they now live
peacefully among the Brazilians.
Communication
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•
•
Mundurucu
language
family
branches from the Tupi-Guarani
language family
Were originally Monolingual but
many have adapted and learned to
speak Portuguese as well
The
Munduruku
also
have
a
different numeracy system from
the modern Western world today
– The
Mundurucu
only
have
number words up to five
– They
use
the
logarithmic
scale
to
approx.
measure
distance, which is a strategy
all humans have been shown to
use
before
more
complex
numeracy was discovered.
Classification of Gender and
Age
• The Mundurucu
use bifurcatemerging kin
terms on the
parental level
• Elders are most
respected by the
younger tribe
members
Marriage/Relationships
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Usually men or women have been married 2 or 3 times by the
time they reach their 40s or 50s
Monogamy is the norm in Mundurucu society
Men journey to opposite moiety and choose a wife
• each clan is grouped into either the "red" moiety or the
"white" moiety
Their version of bride service involves a man bringing fish
or game to the woman's household
Despite getting married, men will often times live apart
from their wives and children, in a separate house with
other males of the village
Exceptions are sons of headmen, who bring their wives to
their father's villages
The divorce rate is High
Family Settings
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•
•
•
•
Patrilinial descent,
virilocal residence
patterns
Children belong
officially to the clan or
moiety of the father.
If a child is fatherless,
he is socially alienated
and does not belong to
the group
When a new child is born,
sibling rivalry can
result. This is usually
due to the fact that
Mundurucú women often
have multiple children
consecutively
Young children often try
to hurt younger siblings.
– They have much freedom,
they wander around the
village, and come and go
as they please
• Pretty large, families are
composed of the father
(husband) the mother, and any
of the mother’s related
elders, children, and
unmarried brothers and sisters
• Currently, it is common for
one household to have about
20-25 residents (including the
attached males whom live in
the men's house)
Sexual Division of Labour
• Hunting/clearing
plots for houses/
building houses
are male
responsibilities
• Basket weaving is
also strictly a
male activity as
well
• Processing manioc
flour/washing clothes are
female responsibilities.
The planting of manioc is
done mostly by women.
• They take care of hearth
responsibilities; women
bring water up from the
stream.
• Women do most or all of
the planting, and also
clear land for garden
use.
• Women also do the
butchering when the men
bring back some game.
Concept of Privacy
•
•
•
•
Men whether they are
married and single, often
live in a large male house.
eksa = the men’s house,
houses all males above the
age of 13
They often visit the
families of their wives,
where the children, elders,
and unmarried brothers
also dwell
There are no walls in the
men's house, unlike the
residential households of
the families at times
Rules to Regulate Sexual Behaviour
• Women are more likely to
be submissive to the
sexual will of their
husbands or other males.
• A woman may also be gang
raped if she initiates too
much sex, which may
include about 20 or so of
the village males dragging
her out to the middle of
the village plaza and
violating her.
• Also, if a woman is
to view or play a
karokó (sacred
flutes historically
made of fish bones),
she may be punished
through gang rape.
• Women are not
supposed to be the
aggressors of sexual
acts; those that do
initiate sex are
viewed as
promiscuous or
delinquent
Good and Bad Behaviour
• Women are expected to be
submissive, almost humouring the
men into them thinking they have
power
– if she were to challenge any
man of his power, see/touch the
karoko or show any promiscuity,
she can face serious
consequences such as gang rape
in the village plaza
• This is meant to shame the
‘offender’ and scare/stop any
other female from challenging
their power
• besides these exceptions, and
their old traditions, violence
and fighting are looked down
upon.
Body Ornamentation
• The Mundurucú, were once
perhaps the most decorated and
heavily tattooed of all
indigenous groups living in
South America at the time
• They continue to live in
Brazil today, but their
tattooing traditions have long
since gone extinct some time
in the 40s.
• Traditionally, tattooing began
at the age of 6 or 7 and
terminated about 10 years
later, which after indicated
they’ve reached manhood for
boys and womanhood for girls.
Jokes and Activities
•
“Talk among the women
continues whenever they are
together. They gossip about
the men and one another. The
women exchange notes about
the sexual escapades of
others, or their laziness. A
woman who has loose sexual
morals becomes a butt of
gossip, partly because she
breaches the moral
solidarity of the females as
a group and invites the
intervention of the men who
may stage a gang rape which
is an assault on the women
as a whole, however a woman
who engages only in
occasional dalliance and
protests seduction suffers
only female gossip”
• Both women and men
socialized amongst the
same gender group but
found that women seemed
to be more sociable with
one another.
• Both groups find sex an
important part of humour
• Men joke with one another
about sexual endeavors;
women are more likely to
be submissive to sexual
advances of men, and do
not usually bring it up
in conversations with
other women unless men
are not around
Arts
Male Activities
Basket weaving (which is a
male activity) is a common
practice among the
Mundurucú, who use them as
backpacks
Mundurucu men also make
necklaces of figures carved
from Brazil-nut shells, and,
infrequently, make bows and
arrows.
They also make figurines
include recognizable
representations of turtles,
alligators, fish, and
various game animals.
 These are worn or sold to
FUNAI agents or
missionaries for resale in
Brazilian cities.
Female Activities
Ceramics (a
traditionally female
activity) has nearly
disappeared except in
villages of Kaburuá
and Kató.
Women also sew
clothes from purchased
cloth, make small
fishing nets, and,
very rarely, weave
hammocks and make clay
pots.
Leadership Roles and Community
Decisions
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•
•
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Each village has a headman; they
hold the most influence and have
integrated into the village by
marriage.
The headman's sons and sons in laws
often carry power and prestige in
the community as well.
However, the headman does not have
authority over others in the
village
They do not have a central form of
government. They have no concept of
individual or group wealth other
than differences between men and
women pertaining to the sexual
divisions of labour
Video
References
 Long, Brittany. n.d. Walker-Questionnaire, Mundurucu. Retrieved from
http://dice.missouri.edu/docs/tupi/Mundurucu.pdf
 (n.d.). In Mundurucu - Kinship. Retrieved from
http://libguides.gwumc.edu/c.php?g=27779&p=170342
 Krutak, Lars. (2006) The Mundurucú: Tattooed Warriors of the Amazon
Jungle. Retrieved from
http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattooed_warriors_of_the_amazon_jungle.
htm
 Munduruku people. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 19, 2014,
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munduruku_people
3/23/2016