‘We Yanomami have presented scientists with a great discovery’
Tough, shiny and unknown to conventional science, the përɨsɨ fungus, used as an adornment in traditional basketry, is the star of a book published by the Associação de Mulheres Yanomami Kumirãyõma (Kumirãyõma Association of Yanomami Women)
By Roberto Almeida, ISA journalist
Translation: Tony Gross
Ukukaɨ, ukukaɨ ukukaɨ
Kumirãyõma pëni përɨsɨ a
Ukukaɨ ukukaɨ ukukaɨPull, pull, pull,
Kumirãyõma together pull the përɨsɨ
Pull, pull, pullWork song of the Kumirãyõma women
Seen from space, the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve, on the outskirts of Manaus (Amazonas), appears as an enormous green square about to be swallowed up by the urban area. Managed by the National Amazonian Research Institute (INPA), the field research area of the Biodiversity Research Programme, the size of ten thousand soccer pitches, is a large open-air laboratory that has already resulted in dozens of masters and doctoral theses.
Two women, Floriza da Cruz Pinto Yanomami and Maria de Jesus Lima Yanomami, respectively president and board member of the Associação de Mulheres Yanomami Kumirãyõma, visited the great green square in early 2017. They walked and looked and looked, but couldn’t find what they could always find in the forest near where they lived: a black thread that only has a name in the Yanomami language: përɨsɨ.
All they could find, Floriza recalls, was the “sister-in-law (natohipë) of the përɨsɨ”, a fungus of a similar format. This helped ethno-mycologist Noemia Kazue Ishikawa and botany post-doc Jadson Oliveira, both from INPA and the hosts of the two Yanomami, to realise that this kinship between the species demonstrated that, in reality, the përɨsɨ was a rhizomorph. That is to say, a fungal structure resembling a root.
“This was how two universes, those of the Yanomami and academia, met up”, recalls Marina Vieira, a researcher at the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), who brokered the contact between the Yanomami and INPA.
Up to that point, the only thing known was that Yanomami women used a black thread, interwoven with light-coloured vines and parts coloured with urucum (achiote, annatto) to create the unique patterns of their basketry. In their book Urihi A: A terra-floresta Yanomami(2009), Bruce Albert and William Milliken make a passing reference to përɨsɨ as a rhizomorph, but with no further details.
Ironically, rather than attracting the attention of buyers, the thread is often taken to be plastic, by both indigenous and non-indigenous observers. To be able to describe it scientifically therefore became essential for the women of the association.
“I myself thought it was plastic”, said Noemia Ishikawa, smiling with pleasure, in a Manaus restaurant. One of Brazil’s leading fungi researchers, she laughs out loud remembering how she hadn’t realised. “I’ve had a basket for years that has never lost its shine. I used to think, this can’t possibly be natural. But it was. And it’s then that I understood that an innovation had been made by the Yanomami women.”
According to their own accounts the use, by Yanomami women of the Maturacá region, of përɨsɨ in basket work, unheard of among indigenous peoples, dates back to the 1970s, and not to times immemorial as might be thought. In other words, the use of a dark fungus, up to a metre in length, tough and shiny may be a recent innovative solution that, in the last analysis, changes the whole production chain of local handicrafts.
Shortly after the expedition to the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve in Manaus, the Associação de Mulheres Yanomami Kumirãyõma invited Noemia and Jadson to visit the places where they collected përɨsɨ along the Igarapé (creek) Batatal, near the Maturacá community in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, where they live. And they mailed samples of përɨsɨ to be studied.
“Through this letter, we are seeking your collaboration in the identification of the samples collected during the research. We also ask that the samples be returned to our association once the process of identification is concluded”, they wrote.
The Yanomami women could not have imagined that, in 2019, the description of this new species of fungus would become a book: Përɨsɨ — o fungo que as mulheres yanomami usam na cestaria (Përɨsɨ — the fungus that Yanomami women use in their basketry), in a bilingual Portuguese-Yanomami edition.
Or that, represented by Floriza and Luiza Góes de Lima Yanomami, they would be celebrated as the authors of a scientific discovery at an event in the Museum of Amazonia in Manaus, proud of their research and their baskets, in the presence of scientists and the press.
Beauty, health and joy
It is impossible to speak of the Maturacá region, in the western part of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, where Floriza, Luiza, Maria de Jesus and so many other Yanomami women live, without mentioning the Pico da Neblina National Park (click here to see the map). The peak, called Yaripo by the Yanomami, is the highest point in Brazil, with an altitude of 2,995 metres. The dream of climbers the world over, it lies a few miles north of Maturacá.
Visitation, which had always occurred informally, and often illegally, is now closed. The forecast for a first formal expedition is 2020. The itinerary designed by the Yaripo — Ecoturismo Yanomami project has been worked out and the visitation plan has been approved by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the park’s management authority. The guides will be the Yanomami themselves and there is a long waiting list (learn more here).
One of the areas where the përɨsɨ is collected, the Igarapé Batatal, is only a few hours’ flight to the south of the community, descending the Rio Cauaburi, a tributary of the Rio Negro.
In other words, a border region where almost 2,000 Yanomami live, that has suffered from illegal gold mining and been through tough times with uncontrolled tourism, bringing destruction and epidemics, is beginning to pick itself up through valuing the traditional knowledge of the Yanomami. These can improve their situation both by working as guides on expeditions to Yaripo or through basket work using përɨsɨ.
“People who come to Yaripo will buy more in the town [São Gabriel da Cachoeira, departure point for the visitors]. The stores will sell more, the economy will grow. And ours as well, because the guides will work and get paid, and the women will be able to sell the baskets to those that find out about them”, says Francisco Xavier Yanomami, president of the Yanomami Association of Rio Cauaburi and Tributaries (Ayrca), which manages the Yaripo project.
The Yanomami women of Maturacá say that for a long time they would take their baskets to sell in São Gabriel da Cachoeira without success. Undervalued, the best they could achieve was to exchange them for a little food or an article of clothing. “People would say ‘Oh, naka (sister, in Yanomami), lower the price, it’s very expensive,’” recalls Floriza, dejected.
The key change came in 2015 with the founding of the Kumirãyõma Yanomami Women’s Association, directly linked to the Women’s Department of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (Foirn), the main indigenous organization in the region. Among other things, the department organized a workshop to improve the finishing of the baskets and buys part of the production through its Wariró store in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, managed by Foirn.
The progress the Yanomami women have achieved in only four years of work moves Almerinda Ramos de Lima, executive director of the federation. “The indigenous woman is a farmer, artisan, has children and works in the association to represent everyone, without earning anything for this”, she summarizes. “It is the spirit of collective struggle.”
The foreword to the book Përɨsɨ says: “Kumirãyõma is a feminine spirit that brings beauty, health and joy to women”. It continues: “The motivation for the development of this research [on the fungus] was to rekindle younger women’s interest in traditional knowledge related to basket making”.
Woven with care
On 22 June, the second Women’s Kumirãyõma Elective Assembly heads into its second day at the Padre Antonio Góes High School of the Salesian Mission, alongside the Ariabu community, Yanomami Indigenous Land.
Surrounded by women, Elidiane Góes Yanomami records and organizes the baskets brought in by women from the communities of Nazaré, Maturacá and Ariabu to be taken to GaleriAmazonica, an important outlet in the historical centre of Manaus, and then sold to the general public.
“Francisca, one Xotó with përɨsɨ and two Wɨɨ with përɨsɨe vines and urucum”, states one entry in the control ledger, gradually filling up with products brought by the women from their homes.
Yanomami women traditionally make the Wɨɨ baskets, taller and used to carry cassava, and the Xotó, lower and open for storing food at home. There are also variations learned from other indigenous peoples of the Upper Rio Negro and from non-Indians, such as the basket with a lid, called Motorohima.
All the baskets are part of the Origens Brasil® initiative, which promotes ethical and transparent business relationships (find out more). Any of them may include përɨsɨ. The fungus shows up woven as single, double, or triple strands, horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Some designs make reference to patterns of snake skins, such as the jiboia (boa) and the sucuri (anaconda). But there is no stylistic rigidity. There is room for innovation.
Elidiane, whenever she receives a different design, gets up proudly and asks the ISA reporter: “And how about this one, huh?” It is a version of a Xotó with handles, painted with urucum and adorned with përɨsɨ. Or again a Wɨɨ totally red with annatto and patterns in përɨsɨ.
Luiza Góes de Lima Yanomami, one of the main përɨsɨ researchers, hands over to Elidiane two Motorohima, baskets with lids, which she produced for sale in Manaus. Woven with precision, firm and sturdy, the quality of the workmanship is the result of her artisan’s ability to combine vine and përɨsɨ.
The money obtained from the sale of basketry helps supplement the income of Yanomami families in the region. Some save the money until they accumulate enough to go to the nearest town, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, to buy utensils, clothes and pots that will make their daily lives easier.
In one of the high points of the day at the assembly, Luiza, Elidiane and the other researchers who worked on the initiative are summoned by the president of Kumirãyõma to receive first hand the result of their work over recent years: the book Përɨsɨ — o fungo que as mulheres yanomami usam na cestaria (Përɨsɨ — the fungus that Yanomami women use for basketry).
It is a defining moment and confirms that they are the owners of their knowledge.
To knowledge-holders, the leading role
Conventional science has so far managed to describe about 140,000 species of fungus. A tiny amount given the potential of up to 3.8 million species estimated by scientists. In the case of përɨsɨ, for a long time the fungus was in front of the eyes of mycologists, anthropologists, biologists, and others, before it was actually discovered and catalogued. And this would probably not have happened had it not been for the initiative of the Yanomami women.
After an extensive process of identification and cataloguing, the fungus was given its scientific name. “Together with the scientists, we have concluded that përɨsɨ is a species of Marasmius [a genus of fungi] new to science, and we have decided to baptize it with the name Yanomami, so its Latin name will be Marasmius yanomami. It is a name that values Yanomami knowledge of the forest”, the women of the association say in the book.
For Inpa ethno-mycologist Noemia Kazue Ishikawa, who followed the process from the start, the science studied by academic researchers has proved useful for recording indigenous knowledge. And this record, in turn, contributes to the commercialization chain of the baskets and to income generation by Yanomami women.
“It is important to emphasize the role of the Yanomami in the recording of their knowledge”, she points out. “As well as that, it is a new species of fungus described and launched in a ‘popular’ book rather than in a scientific paper, which is a step beyond the initial expectations of any researcher.”
Noemia, an enthusiast of intercultural research with indigenous peoples (and hence the prefix ‘ethno’ before ‘mycologist’), has already participated in work on mushrooms with the Sanöma, a Yanomami subgroup of the Auaris region, which became an award-winning book (Ana Amopö: Yanomami mushrooms) as well as a recognized food product: the Yanomami mushroom.
The experience has, she says, led to an understanding.
“There is knowledge where we don’t even know there are holders of this knowledge. This is knowledge that is not in books, articles or on the internet”, the scientist argues. “But it is knowledge that is being maintained or being generated in the interior of the Amazon by peoples who live and generate knowledge far from conventional academic science.”
Information:
The publication Përɨsɨ — o fungo que as mulheres yanomami usam na cestaria is available through the Associação de Mulheres Yanomami Kumirãyõma.
It can be bought at the GaleriAmazônica, in Manaus.
To obtain a copy, write to: galeria@waimiriatroari.org.br
Phone: +55 92 3302 3633
Follow GaleriAmazônica on Instagram: @galeriamazonica
Yanomami baskets can be found at:
MANAUS (Amazonas):
GALERIAMAZÔNICA
Rua Costa Azevedo 272, Largo São Sebastião, Manaus (AM)
Tel. +55 92 3302 3633, galeria@waimiriatroari.org.br
www.facebook.com/GaleriAmazonica
MUSA — MUSEU DA AMAZÔNIA (MUSA Jardim Botânico)
Av. Margarita 6.305, Jorge Teixeira, Manaus (AM)
Tel. +55 92 3582 3188
www.museudaamazonia.org.br
SÃO GABRIEL DA CACHOEIRA (Amazonas)
WARIRÓ — Casa de Produtos Indígenas do Rio Negro
Tel.: +55 97 3471 1450
https://www.facebook.com/CasaDeProdutosIndigenasWariro/
BOA VISTA (Roraima):
RORAIMA ADVENTURES
Rua Coronel Pinto, 97, Centro, Boa Vista (RR)
https://roraimaadventures.com.br/
SÃO PAULO (São Paulo):
INSTITUTO SOCIOAMBIENTAL
www.socioambiental.org
MERCADO DE PINHEIROS — BOX AMAZÔNIA/MATA ATLÂNTICA
Rua Pedro Cristi 89 , Pinheiros , São Paulo (SP)
www.mercadomunicipaldepinheiros.com
www.institutoata.org.br/pt-br/biomas.php
LIVRARIA DA TRAVESSA (IMS PAULISTA)
www.travessa.com.br
AMOA KONOYA ARTE INDÍGENA
Rua João Moura 1002, Jardim América, São Paulo (SP)
Tel: +55 11 3061 0639, amoakonoya@amoakonoya.com.br
FUCHIC
Online and 2 stores
https://www.fuchic.com.br/
PARATY (Rio de Janeiro):
C.A.N.O.A ARTE INDÍGENA
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ONLINE:
TUCUM
www.tucumbrasil.com
DA FLORESTA DELBORGO
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