User:Emi-Ireland
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About My Work
Currently I am a Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and also work in the technology sector. I studied anthropology at Columbia as an undergraduate, and did my graduate work in anthropology at Yale, where I received an M. Phil. I did summer fieldwork among the Shuar of Ecuador, and then lived for several years among the Wauja of Central Brazil, residing in the house of the chief at that time, Walakuyawatumpa, and later the house of his successor, Yawalatumpa. This was in 1981-83. The Wauja spoke almost no Portuguese in those days, so I had no choice but to learn their indigenous language, which they taught me with utmost patience, good humor and generosity. Ultimately, I learned to speak about as well as a 9-year-old – not well enough to orate in public, but well enough to understand what people are talking about in my presence, to participate in conversations, and finally, to understand the wonderful stories that my teachers shared with me.
Over the past 30 years, I have returned to the Wauja community as often as possible. These days, I try to get back every year. In recent years, I launched a Wauja-English Wiktionary site, and then helped the community to launch a Wauja-Portuguese site. Ultimately, they hope to build a Wauja-Wauja incubator site with a Wauja interface.
In 2016 and 2017, Wauja elders and young scholars (Kupatopenu Waura, Kuratu Waura, Atapucha Waura, Tukupe Waura, and Piratá Waura) visited the Smithsonian to exhaustively document a collection made of their material culture a generation ago. Over a period of six weeks, they produced 350 short videos in their own language, describing each of these objects: how it came to be in the world, according to oral literature; what category of person makes it (by gender, age, ritual status, chiefly rank, etc.); what category of person typically acquires it; examples of how it might be given as a gift or directly exchanged; how it is used; how it is made (process and technique) and what it's made of; where such materials are found; whether it is still made, and why or why not; associations with specific rituals and ceremonies; spontaneous comments on artistic merit and skill of the maker, personal recollections, and related historical narratives. In 2019, I plan to produce a second set of such videos, drawing on the complementary expertise of female Wauja elders and young female scholars. In time, we hope to add all these objects as entries to the Wauja-English and Wauja-Portuguese Wiktionary sites.
Concurrently, we have begun work on a project to launch a Wauja Virtual Museum online. One-by-one, the videos will be transcribed, translated, subtitled, and posted online, along with photographs of the objects. The virtual museum will be available to Wauja schoolchildren in their rainforest villages and to everyone else, as well. The community will have final approval on all posted material. Transcribing and translating this large quantity of recorded material will require active collaboration by many young scholars and elders, as well as funding to pay for their time and labor.
I am committed to doing this work on a globally-accessible, open source platform that allows participation by people from anywhere in the world, and that is not under the control of any private for-profit entity.
About the Wauja
They speak Wauja, an Arawak language, and today they number about 400. Their population has rebounded successfully from a low of less than a hundred survivors of the terrible measles epidemic of 1956, as well as other epidemics of introduced disease before that. Today they have four villages in the Xingu Indigenous Territory, located in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The newest village started as a Vigilance Post, set up to guard the southwestern boundary of their territory from poachers and illegal loggers. In addition, there are now Wauja living in some of the small border towns, such as Canarana and Feliz Natal, located outside their rainforest territory.
- You can see the main village, called Piyulaga, in Google Earth: https://www.google.com/maps/@-12.248768,-53.58242,446m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
- (If you see a blank pale green screen in Google, switch to Earth view.) Many orators, ceremonial leaders, and storytellers live here, including the storyteller and renowned shaman Itsautaku. This community, like the other two, also has young university-educated Wauja working as teachers in the local village school. In 2015, this community hosted a gathering of Wauja from all villages to discuss standardizing their orthography.
- Here is a smaller village, called Piyulewene, located on the Rio von den Steinen: https://www.google.com/maps/@-12.06574,-53.84835,1783m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en. Several important storytellers live here, as well as Pere, one of the three female elders who are apai yeketsu ("song masters" or ceremonial leaders).
- About seven hours upriver by motorboat is the third village, Ulupuene: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=-12.899413,-53.897681&msa=0&spn=0.031165,0.055747&mid=zn95x6f7FO3Q.k01qdO2Bz0yw. Here live the descendants of the late storyteller Arutatumpa, as well as another female ceremonial leader.
- The newest community, CTL Batovi, started as a Vigilance Post to guard against illegal loggers and poachers entering the reserve: https://www.google.com/maps/@-12.9927469,-53.9777079,538m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Images of the Wauja and their Communities
To see images of the Wauja, you can visit a website describing a cultural repatriation project I did in 2012, Return of the Captured Spirits: http://returnofthecapturedspirits.com/
You can see the Wauja performing a traditional ceremony, kagapa, in this YouTube video, an excerpt from a BBC documentary filmed in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81e2hLvsURs
Recent Projects
- Wikcionário Wauja-Português Wauja-Portuguese Wiktionary
- Welcoming the Wauja. Recovering Voices Program, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, EUA, November 1, 2016.
- Índios do Alto Xingu viajam 6 mil quilômetros até os EUA em busca de memórias de família. O Estado de São Paulo: Aliás, 16 outubro 2016.
- Passado com nome: depois de périplo Xingu-EUA-São Paulo, índio Wauja encontra foto da mãe. O Estado de São Paulo: Aliás, 22 outubro 2016.