Boy's Birth Brings Hope to Nearly Extinct All-Female Amazon Tribe

The poet Carl Sandburg once said: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on." That, perhaps, is quite true for the son born to a woman of an Amazon tribe on the verge of extinction.  

Prior to his birth, only three Akuntsu tribespeople remained. All of them were female. One was a mother. The others were her middle-aged daughters. Babawru is the younger daughter. She's in her 40s. Her precise age is unknown. In December, she gave birth to a boy. She named him Akyp.

“This child is not only a symbol of the resistance of the Akuntsu people, but also a source of hope for Indigenous peoples,” Joenia Wapichana, president of Funai, Brazil’s tribal protection agency, told The Associated Press (AP). The AP featured Akyp’s birth in a recent article.

The Akuntsu people live in the state of Rondônia. It's in western Brazil. Their history is a tragic tale common to many of the region's Indigenous peoples. Dispersion and destruction through violence, deforestation, and encroachment by large landowners has wiped out at least a third of the region's known tribes since 1900. In 1995, Funai first made contact with the Akuntsu. It found only seven living members. Two were men. Three were women. And two were girls. Babawru’s sister, Aiga, and mother, Pugapia were among them. The last Akuntsu male died in 2017.

In 2006, Funai formed the Rio Omere Indigenous Land. It established protections for the Akuntsu and Kanoê, two tribes with different cultures and languages that were once enemies. The two groups began interacting with each other, sharing hunting, harvesting, and spiritual rituals. Akyp’s father is a Kanoê man. 

“The future can surprise everyone," Linguist Carolina Aragon, who’s worked with both tribes, told the AP. “A baby boy was born.” 

Thought Question: What traditions, languages, or customs from your family or community would you want future generations to continue?

Photo of Rondônia in western Brazil from Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Wilson Dias.