The Yawanawá (People of the Queixada) are a people who inhabit the Rio Gregório indigenous area, in the municipality of Tarauacá, in the west of the state of Acre, with an estimated population of approximately 700 members. The indigenous land of the Gregório River was demarcated in the 1980s. In 1993, the tribe entered into a commercial agreement with the American company Aveda for the supply of annatto to be used in the manufacture of cosmetics. Thanks to the agreement, the tribe was able to recover its traditional culture, which was being lost. The ethnic background of the Yawanawá people includes other peoples of the Pano linguistic family (also generically called “Náwa”). They are: Rununáwa (Serpent People), Shawãdawa (Arara People), Saináwa (People of Scream, Word or Song), Uxunáwa (People of White Heron), Escunáwa (People of Japan) and Katukina, among them denominated Camãnawa ( People of the Jaguar or the Dog). The main productive activities are hunting, fishing and subsistence agriculture with the planting of maize, cassava, rice and bananas mainly. The Yawanawá have also dedicated themselves to the production of annatto, intended for the manufacture of cosmetics, the production of native oils such as andiroba and the artisanal production of furniture from dead tree woods. They deepened the knowledge in their shamanic system, bringing together the elders who held the ancestral knowledge. The Yawanawá shamans begin their study journey within indigenous spirituality, marked by intense initiation processes. Among the sacred medicines of the people, is the Dume / Rume (snuff), which has centrality while being one of its main preparations of power, being an ancestral heritage of healing that has existed since its immemorial times, expanding its spiritual culture.
