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The Jivaroan peoples are the indigenous peoples in the headwaters of the Marañon River and its tributaries, in northern Peru and eastern Ecuador. The tribes speak the Chicham languages.
Their traditional way of life relies on gardening, and on hunting with and darts poisoned with curare. Complex spiritual beliefs are built around both of these activities. Jivaroan culture also features headhunting raids and ayahuasca ceremonies.
In the 16th century, Jivaroan warriors stopped the expansion of the Inca Empire into the Amazon basin, and destroyed settlements of Spanish .
Some have also named the following:
Additionally, the Shiwiar are a group of Achuar speakers living along the Corrientes River, next to Quechua speakers; many Shiwiar also speak this other, unrelated, language.
"A person is not born with an arutam soul. Such a soul must be acquired, and in certain traditional ways. The acquisition of this type of soul is considered to be so important to an adult male’s survival that a boy’s parents do not expect him to live past puberty without one. By repeatedly killing, one can continually accumulate power through the replacement of old arutam souls with new ones. This “trade-in” mechanism is an important feature because, when a person has had the same arutam soul for four or five years, it tends to leave its sleeping possessor to wander nightly through the forest. Sooner or later, while it is thus drifting through the trees, another Jivaro will “steal” it. Accordingly, it is highly desirable to obtain a new soul before the old one begins nocturnal wanderings. This felt need encourages the individual to participate in a killing expedition every few years."
Killing becomes a vital part of the Jivaro culture. Men are only marriageable after becoming hunters within their communities. The more one kills, the more power one has, granting one immunity of death. Violence is a huge part of Jivaroan culture in respect to this type of soul belief. Harner talks about the main systems of belief within the Jivaroan communities:
“Jivaro souls beliefs constitute one of four major autonomous systems of verbalized thought so far noted in their culture. The other three are the systems of crop fairy ( nungui) beliefs, and kinship system. Since belief in one system is not explicitly based upon belief in another, an adequate understanding of Jivaro soul beliefs can be achieved without recourse to the beliefs regarding nunui, witchcraft, or kinship."
Despite the reliable, elaborate system of horticulture the Jivaro have developed, they still believe the act to be “…as fraught with uncertainty as hunting” as Michael Brown stated in a paper titled, “Aguaruna Jivaro Gardening Magic in Alto Rio Mayo, Peru.” He then went on to say that in order, “To encourage the growth of their cultivated plants they sing magical gardening songs, perform a set of ritual acts when planting a new garden, and observe certain taboos connected with garden work.” Much like similar beliefs and rituals associated with hunting, the Jivaro believe that spirits reside in the plants and they need to be encouraged to grow by various songs, chants, and dances.
Owing to the belief of spirits residing in the plants, the garden is regarded as a place of great spiritual significance. Like the inside of a temple, the garden is a place where one receives sanctuary.
"It is one of the few places where a woman can go alone without attracting curiosity and suspicion. It offers privacy from prying eyes and ears and is therefore the site of a certain amount of intra- and extra-marital sexual activity"
"During Healing Ceremony, only shaman and patient drink Natem and will participate in the singing and chanting while the shaman will perform different actions to the patients body thought to heal the spirit."
The shaman goes about relieving the patient of any harmful spirits that may be attacking his or her body. The Jivaro also believe in an act of what may be considered telling the future or telling time. Bennett makes another note of the Jivaro and their ayahuasca ceremonies, where a Jivaro will hire a shaman to tell of far away friends and family.
"The Jivaro shamans, Under the influence of ayahuasca, often believe that they are seeing distant relatives or sweethearts. These distant persons apparently have to be individuals with whom the shaman is already acquainted, so that he can "know whom to look for". Also it is normally necessary for the shaman to be already acquainted with the distant locale and the route to get there, and preferably he should know the appearance and location of the house of the person being sought."
The Jivaro have been practicing these ceremonies for hundreds of years, keeping them held close to their roots. The ceremonies of the ayahuasca brew continue to be practiced.
The second reason has to do with social organization. Prior to Ecuadorian or Peruvian colonization and Christian missionization in the 20th century, the principal unit of Jivaroan social organization was the polygynous matrilocal household or cluster of matrilocally-organized households. Notably, although Jivaroans shared the same language and culture, each household or cluster of matrilocally organized households were politically and economically autonomous. Thus, in 1938 Matthew Stirling commented that:
He also said that:
Prior to colonization and the presence of Christian missionaries, Jivaroan speakers were not organized into any stable and clearly bounded polities or ethnic groups.
In response to European colonization and missionization, Jivaroan speakers have formed nucleated settlements that are organized into political federations: the Federación Interprovincial de Centros Shuar and the Nacionalidad Achuar de Ecuador in Ecuador, and the Organización Central de Comunidades Aguarunas del Alto Marañon and the Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa in Peru.
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