Yukuna

The Yukuna — whose core group calls itself Kamejeya — are an Arawakan-speaking people of the Mirití-Paraná, a tributary of the Caquetá River in Colombia's Amazonas department, with communities also around La Pedrera on the lower Caquetá. Theirs is one of the few Arawakan languages of the region to remain vigorous, and it has also been adopted by the closely allied Matapí people, with whom the Yukuna have long intermarried. Society is divided into patrilineal segments that marry outside their own group, and ritual life centers on great circular malocas, which hold the drums, masks and feather ornaments of the public ceremonial cycles; the region's restricted ceremonial complex is named here and not described.

Subsistence follows the Amazonian pattern of slash-and-burn gardens of manioc, pineapple, yams, peach palm, and plantains, together with hunting, fishing with harpoons and traps, and gathering of wild fruits and insects. Men are the basket-makers; women make pottery and hammocks.

Yukuna territory lies within large resguardos of the Mirití-Paraná, an area also recognized for its intangible heritage: the traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí, shared by the Yukuna and neighboring peoples, was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Communities today manage schooling and health programs through their own associations while sustaining ritual exchange along the river.