Wai-wai people
Carib-speaking ethnic group of Guyana and northern Brazil
The Wai-wai (also written Waiwai or Wai Wai) are a Carib-speaking Indigenous people of Guyana and northern Brazil. Their society consists of different lowland forest peoples who have maintained much of their cultural identity with the exception of Christianity which was introduced to them in the late 1950s. They are composed of six smaller ethnic groups, being the Shereo, Parukoto, Mawayana, Tunayana, Katwena, and Taruma.
The Umana Yana in Georgetown, Guyana, takes its name from the Wai-Wai for "meeting place".
Early contact
The explorer, Sir Robert Schomburgk, may have been the first western to have contact with the Wai-Wai in December 1837. He found one village on a tributary of the Essequebo river, along with two others on the Mapuera River in Brazil. Schomburgk describes the Wai-Wai as follows:
"Of medium height, their skin lighter than that of Tarumas, in their general appearance and language they resemble the Makuskis a good deal. The Woyawais are great hunters and celebrated for their dogs. In appearance they are generally dirty."
During the early 20th century, some of the Wai-Wai in Brazil moved further north. It is speculated that this is because of the influenza epidemic that nearly exterminated the Taruma tribe.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wai-wai people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.