Wapishana

The Wapishana live in the savanna country between the Branco and Rupununi rivers, straddling the Brazil–Guyana border. In Brazil they are concentrated in the Serra da Lua region of eastern Roraima; in Guyana they inhabit the southern Rupununi valley. They speak the only surviving Arawakan language of the circum-Roraima area, holding their own linguistically amid Carib-speaking neighbors such as the Macushi, with whom they share many territories and frequent intermarriage.

Their economy combines slash-and-burn farming of bitter manioc with hunting, fishing, gathering of palm products, and collective cattle raising coordinated by village leaders known as tuxaua. Residence patterns lean matrilocal, with daughters settling near their mothers' households, and villages typically number in the low hundreds.

Wapishana lands in Brazil were demarcated as a patchwork of smaller territories rather than a continuous tract, a fragmentation their organizations have long contested; many communities also live within the Raposa Serra do Sol and São Marcos territories. On the Guyanese side, Wapichan communities continue to press for legal recognition of their traditional lands in the South Rupununi.