 Pemon boy, Venezuela | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| c. 31,440 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Venezuela | 30,148 (2011) [1] |
 Brazil | 792 (2014) [2] |
 Guyana | c. 500 [3] |
| Languages | |
| Pemon, Spanish | |
| Religion | |
| traditional tribal religion, Roman Catholicism [4] | |
The Pemon or Pemón (Pemong) are indigenous people living in areas of Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana. [5] The Pemon people are divided into many dialects and traditions, which are Arekuna, Kamarakoto, and Taurepang. [4]
The Pemon are part of the larger Cariban language family, and include six groups including the Arekuna, Ingarikó, Kamarakoto, Tualipang, Mapoyo and Macushi/Makushi (Macuxi or Makuxi in Brazil). While ethnographic data on these groups are scant, Iris Myers produced one of the most detailed accounts of the Makushi [6] in the 1940s, and her work is heavily relied upon for comparisons between historical and contemporary Makushi life. [7]
The Pemon were first encountered by westerners in the 18th century and converted by missionaries to Christianity. [5] Their society is based on trade and considered egalitarian and decentralized, and in Venezuela, funding from petrodollars have helped fund community projects, and ecotourism opportunities are also being developed. [5] In Venezuela, Pemon live in the Gran Sabana grassland plateau dotted with tabletop mountains where the Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, plunges from Auyantepui in Canaima National Park. [5]
In Brazil, Pemon live among other indigenous people near the borders of Venezuela and Guyana in villages within the Terras Indígenas São Marcos and Raposa Serra do Sol. There are 792 Pemon according to a 2014 estimate. [8]
The Makuxi, who are also Pemon speakers, are found in Brazil and Guyana in areas close to the Venezuelan border.
The Pemon language and people have been extremely affected by tourism and historical events like the establishment of the Canaima camp founded by the Boulton family nearby the Canaima town, where the demographic concentration of Pemon people is established. Many Pemon people work in hotels and tourism. This deeply affected the tradition of the Pemon people, as they turned out to be a Catholic majority population, and left behind their ancestral language and belief, still, many Pemon people, known as "Chamanes" still practice the ancestral religion, mostly for healthcare.
Pemon (in Spanish: Pemón), is a Cariban language spoken mainly in Venezuela, specifically in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. According to the 2001 census there were 15,094 Pemon speakers in Venezuela. It is divided into three principal dialects, which are; Arekuna, Kamarakoto, and Taurepang. [4]
The Pemon have a very rich mythic tradition which is merged into their present Christian faiths. Pemon mythology includes gods residing in the grassland area's table-top mountains called tepui . [5] The mountains are off-limits to the living, as they are also home to ancestor spirits called mawari. [5] The first non-native person to seriously study Pemon myths and language was the German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg, who visited Roraima in 1912.
Important myths describe the origins of the sun and moon, the creation of the tepui mountains – which dramatically rise from the savannahs of the Gran Sabana — and the activities of the creator hero Makunaíma. Makunaíma is described as an individual or a group of brothers, sons of the sun Wei and a woman made of clay. He goes searching for his father who had been captive of malevolent spirits. After finding his father, Makunaíma finds the "tree of the world", which he cuts down and the resulting stump becomes Mount Roraima. The falling of the tree caused a great cataclysm, with floods and fire, and humans were recreated by Makunaíma. Makunaíma also turned people and animals into stone that are a part of Pemon description of the natural world. [9]
Missionary work among Amerindians has impacted Pemon belief; and Jechikrai is the Pemon adaptation of Jesus Christ. [9]
In 1999, Wolfgang Kraker von Schwarzenfeld arranged the transport of a red stone boulder, weighing about 35 metric tons, from Venezuela's Canaima National Park to Berlin Tiergarten for his "global stone" project. Since that time, a dispute had been ongoing of the Pemon trying to get the stone back, involving German and Venezuelan authorities and embassies. [10] [11] [12]
On 16 April 2020, the Kueka stone was finally returned to Venezuela. [13]
The Guiana Shield is one of the three cratons of the South American Plate. It is a 1.7 billion-year-old Precambrian geological formation in northeast South America that forms a portion of the northern coast. The higher elevations on the shield are called the Guiana Highlands, which is where the table-like mountains called tepuis are found. The Guiana Highlands are also the source of some of the world's most well-known waterfalls such as Angel Falls, Kaieteur Falls and Cuquenan Falls.
A tepui, or tepuy, is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana.
Bolívar is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital city is Ciudad Bolívar and the largest city is Ciudad Guayana. Bolívar State covers a total surface area of 242,801 km2 (93,746 sq mi) and as of the 2011 census, had a population of 1,410,964. The state contains Angel Falls.
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to north-eastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pockets of central Brazil. The languages of the Cariban family are relatively closely related. There are about three dozen, but most are spoken only by a few hundred people. Macushi is the only language among them with numerous speakers, estimated at 30,000. The Cariban family is well known among linguists partly because one language in the family—Hixkaryana—has a default word order of object–verb–subject. Prior to their discovery of this, linguists believed that this order did not exist in any spoken natural language.
Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pacaraima chain of tepuis or plateaux in South America. It is located at the junction of Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. A characteristic large flat-topped mountain surrounded by cliffs 400–1,000 m (1,300–3,300 ft) high. The highest point of Mount Roraima is located on the southern edge of the cliff at an altitude of 2,810 m (9,220 ft) in Venezuela, and another protrusion at an altitude of 2,772 m (9,094 ft) at the junction of the three countries in the north of the plateau is the highest point in Guyana. The name Mount Roraima came from the native Pemon people. Roroi in the Pemon language means "blue-green", and ma means "great".
Canaima National Park is a 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi) park in south-eastern Venezuela that roughly occupies the same area as the Gran Sabana region. It is located in Bolívar State, reaching the borders with Brazil and Guyana. The park was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Terra indígena Raposa/Serra do Sol is an indigenous territory in Brazil, intended to be home to the Macuxi people. It is located in the northern half of the Brazilian state of Roraima and is the largest in that country and one of the world's largest, with an area of 1,743,089 hectares and a perimeter of about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi).
La Gran Sabana is a region in southeastern Venezuela, part of the Guianan savanna ecoregion.
The Pacaraima or Pakaraima Mountains are a mountain range primarily in southwestern Guyana, and into northern Brazil and eastern Venezuela.
The Macushi are an indigenous people living in the borderlands of southern Guyana, northern Brazil in the state of Roraima, and in an eastern part of Venezuela.
The Wapishana or Wapichan are an indigenous group found in the Roraima area of northern Brazil and southern Guyana.
Santa Elena de Uairén is a small Venezuelan city in the state of Bolívar near the border with Brazil and Guyana. It was founded by Lucas Fernández Peña in 1923. The city's name originates from his first daughter, Elena, and Uairén, the river that crosses the city.
The Guayana Region is an administrative region of eastern Venezuela.
Theodor Koch-Grünberg was a German ethnologist and explorer who made a valuable contribution to the study of the Indigenous peoples in South America, in particular the Pemon of Venezuela and other indigenous peoples in the Amazon region extending South-Western Brazil and a large part of the Vaupés region in Colombia. The 2015 film El abrazo de la serpiente fictionalizes his illness and final days based on his journals. He was played by actor Jan Bijvoet.
The Pemon language, is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.
Ptari-tepui, also spelled Pu-tari and sometimes called Cerro Budare or Cerro del Budare, is a tepui in Bolívar state, Venezuela. Lying near the centre of the Sierra de Lema, it has a maximum elevation of around 2,400 metres (7,900 ft) above sea level. Its mostly bare summit plateau has an area of 1.25 km2 (0.48 sq mi). Though generally flat, distinctive erosional rock formations are found on the more dissected eastern edge of the summit.
The Ilú–Tramen Massif is a tepui massif in Bolívar state, Venezuela. It is the northernmost member of the Eastern Tepuis chain and comprises two major plateaus: the larger Ilú-tepui to the south and Tramen-tepui to the north, all close to the border with neighboring Guyana. With a maximum elevation of around 2,700 metres (8,900 ft), Ilú-tepui is the taller of the two peaks. Both tepuis have open, rocky summit plateaus, with a combined summit area of 5.63 km2 (2.17 sq mi). They lie just north of Karaurín-tepui.
Macushi is an indigenous language of the Carib family spoken in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. It is also referred to as Makushi, Makusi, Macuxi, Macusi,Macussi,Teweya or Teueia. It is the most populous of the Cariban languages. According to Instituto Socioambiental, the Macushi population is at an estimated 43,192, with 33,603 in Brazil, 9,500 in Guyana and 89 in Venezuela. In Brazil, the Macushi populations are located around northeastern Roraima, Rio Branco, Contingo, Quino, Pium and Mau rivers. Macuxi speakers in Brazil, however, are only estimated at 15,000.
The Guianan savanna (NT0707) is an ecoregion in the south of Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname and the north of Brazil. It is in the Amazon biome. The savanna covers an area of rolling upland plains on the Guiana Shield between the Amazon and Orinoco basins. It includes forested areas, but these are shrinking steadily due to the effect of frequent fires, either accidental or deliberate. The ecoregion includes the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela.
The Pemon conflict is an ongoing conflict which is a part of the wider Crisis in Venezuela. The conflict is centered around mining disputes between the Maduro government, the Pemon nation and armed irregular groups. The Pemon nation is divided by the border between Venezuela and Brazil, resulting in Pemon refugees regularly crossing the border into Brazil for safety and medical care. The conflict is centred on disputes over mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc, a 112,000 km2 area of the Amazon Rainforest rich in gold, diamonds, coltan, and uranium, which are also home to the Pemon people.
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