Yeꞌkuana

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The Yeꞌkuana (also written Yeꞌkwana, Yekuana, and other variants) are a Cariban-speaking rainforest people who live along the Caura and Orinoco rivers in Venezuela (Bolivar and Amazonas states) and in the northeast of Brazil’s Roraima state. They call themselves Soꞌto, meaning “people,” while Yeꞌkuana can be understood as “canoe people” or “people of the river.” They often live in circular communal houses called atta or ëttë, with cone-shaped palm-leaf roofs; building these houses is a sacred activity connected to the Creator.

They practice animism and number about 6,250 in Venezuela and around 430 in Brazil (based on a 2001 census). In Venezuela they live near the Sanumá (Yanomami) people. The first known reference to the Yeꞌkuana was in 1744, when Jesuit priest Manuel Román described them while exploring the Casiquiare canal.

In 1993 Venezuela established the Alto Orinoco-Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve to protect the traditional lands and way of life of the Yeꞌkuana and related peoples. The ethnographer Jean Liedloff met the Yeꞌkuana in the 1950s and wrote The Continuum Concept, highlighting their child-rearing practices, notably that infants are carried in arms by mothers and other caregivers most of the time.