Yanomamo People

It has been more important to discuss about cultures of minority groups in order to understand what they believe in so that we can respect their cultures and avoid misunderstandings. Unfortunately, minority groups have been suffering with losing their places. One reason is that many countries, especially in developed countries, officers have been expanding cities in order to achieve more urbanization and ultimately economic development. Most cases minority groups are the one affected the most as a result of expansion. They often have to sacrifice their places and move to other locations. This is occurred in all over the countries and often brings much confusion and conflicts. In order to avoid these conflicts, cultural understanding should be the first step to make a good relationship between majority groups and minorities. One of the most important examples of minority groups still exist in present is Yanomamo people living in the Amazon regions of Brazil and Venezuela.

The number of Yanomamo people today is approximately 26,000, and they live in 200 - 250 villages. Like any other minority groups, traditionally they are isolated from other societies. Because of the location they live, it is often described a lifestyle brought by heat and humidity. Due to this kind of climate Yanomamo people don't need clothes to wear in. Until today they have been preserving their cultures and the way of living. For example they are often called "hunters - gatherers" because they get every food by agriculture, hunting and fishing by themselves. They have a close relationship to environment like forest and animals in order to live.

The village is contained two or more small different families and the number of people in each village is between 40 and 350 people; however many villages separate before they reach 125 people in order to avoid conflicts and violence.

Most Yanomamo people use basically either the Carib or Arawak languages. They don't have any developed written languages. Although number of vocabularies in Yanomamo is fewer than English, actual vocabularies used by Yanomamo are considered as larger than most English speaker. Because of the fact that Yanomamo is lack of the written language, they remember most of the language in their head. They also use different kinds of way in order to preserve their history and to entertain themselves such as, plays on words, chanting, storytelling, rhetoric and animated eloquence. Yanomamo also use both formal and informal languages depends on the situations; while informal languages are spoken by everyone, formal languages are spoken only by male tribesman or at the special events.

According to the article written byWashabaugh, Napoleon Chagnon once said about Yanomamo, "Daily activities do not vary much from season to season. Much of the variation that does occur is a function of one's age