Ingarikó

The Ingarikó are the Brazilian branch of the Kapon peoples, whose broader family — including the Akawaio and Patamona of Guyana — surrounds Mount Roraima at the triple border of Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela. In Brazil they live in a handful of upland villages along the upper Cotingo river, in the highest and most remote corner of the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Territory. Their Carib-family language shows strong vitality, spoken by all generations.

Villages are formed by clusters of related families with uxorilocal residence: a newly married man moves to his wife's community. Leadership rests with senior men whose knowledge of kinship holds villages together. Subsistence combines slash-and-burn gardens, hunting, fishing, and gathering, with women producing the manioc bread and fermented drinks central to daily and ceremonial life. The Hallelujah religion, a prophetic tradition blending Indigenous cosmology with Christian elements, remains their most important ritual practice, alongside harvest festivals such as the Parixara.

The Ingarikó share in the collective rights secured by the ratification of Raposa Serra do Sol, while maintaining regular movement and family ties across the borders with their Kapon relatives.