The manufacture of budare among the Tanimuka tribe (Amazonia, Colombia)

Abstract

The Tanimuka tribe, who call themselves Ufaina, currently consists of about 180 people living along the lower Apaporis, Guacayá, Popeyacá, and Mirití-Paraná rivers. Most of these indigenous people still live in malocas with conical roofs and circular bases, surrounded by chagras (rióa) or fields cultivated mainly with cassava (Manihot esculenta) and other species, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of tropical rainforest and crossed by numerous rivers. Daily activities and rituals are carried out by both sexes according to a clear demarcation. The men build the maloca, hunt and fish (although sometimes the women also hunt), make all the basketry, cut down the forest, and manufacture objects associated with rituals and shamanistic practices. The women, on the other hand, take care of the children, cook, wash, make pottery, sow seeds, and tend the chagras. Women are credited with the act of cooking, of “transforming” through a process related to nature, while men “transform” through intellectual, shamanistic processes called yifufajoakonri (according to them, the equivalent in English would be: thought, dream, being awake, knowing).