wari yar jani pahnjo milan kon thendo sindhi poetry

The reports available on the Txapakura peoples are fragmentary and vague: travelers record their presence and describe their relations with Whites, occasionally noting certain aspects of their material culture. A few people calling themselves Cujubim also exist, scattered between Sagarana village, the Sotério IP and the town of Guajará-Mirim they only speak a few words of their language, but enough for us to know that it belongs to the same family. No more than a dozen adults and a few children survive, now living in the village at the São Luis Indigenous Post (IP) on the upper Pacaas Novos.

The latter were encountered in 1963 in the region formed by the headwaters of the Pacaas Novos river, and were almost exterminated in two attacks made by Whites. Today only four Txapakura groups exist: the Wari’, the Torá, the Moré or Itenes – who live on the left bank of the Guaporé river, a little above its confluence with the Mamoré, in Bolivia – and finally the OroWin. The Wari’ comprise one of the few remaining peoples of the Txapakura linguistic family, as most of those speaking languages belonging to this family had already become extinct by the start of the 20th century.

Today they live in villages built around seven Funai ('Fundação Nacional do Índio' - National Indian Foundation, governmental agency) Posts administrated by the Guajará-Mirim Support Team in Rondônia, as well as within the Sagarana Indigenous Territory, at the confluence of the Mamoré and Guaporé rivers, administrated by the Diocese of Guajará-Mirim.

But they prefer to be called Wari’, a word meaning ‘people’ or ‘us’ in their language: this is how they are known to the ‘civilized people’ (as they refer to Whites in Portuguese) who live in closest proximity to them. The Wari’ are often referred to as Pakaa Nova, as they were first sighted on the river of the same name, an affluent of the right bank of the Mamoré river in Rondônia state.

Wari yar jani pahnjo milan kon thendo sindhi poetry