The Maxakali are an ethnic group of indigenous people in

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Geography and ethnology

The Maxakali live in the districts of Santa Helena de Minas, Bertópolis, Ladainha and

Teófilo Otoni Teófilo Otoni is a municipality in northeast Minas Gerais, Brazil. The population of the municipality was 140,937 in 2020 and the area is 3,242.818 km2. Origin of the name The city is named after (Vila do Príncipe, 27 January 1807 - Rio d ...

in the federal state

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...

. The 400 members of the group live in isolation and poverty. They speak the

Maxakalí language Maxakalí (', ) is a Maxakalían, Maxakalían language spoken in four villages in Minas Gerais, Brazil, by more than 2,000 people.It is the primary language of the Maxakalí people. There is no known dialectal variation within Maxakalí. The lang ...

, which is one of the

Maxakalían languages The Maxakalían languages (also Mashakalían) are a group of related indigenous languages of Brazil, named after Maxakalí, the one surviving language in the group. Many of the other, extinct, languages are poorly attested and linguists differ ...

. This language is notable for having neither nasal nor fricative consonants contrastively. There are mixed marriages these days.

Mythology

In the Maxakali

creation story A creation myth or cosmogonic myth is a type of cosmogony, a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Crea ...

the creator Topa gave them a tame

otter Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which includes weasels, badgers, mink, and wolverines, among ...

for

otter fishing Otter fishing is a fishing technique which uses trained otters to fish in rivers. This method has been practised since the 6th century in various parts of the world, and is still practiced in southern Bangladesh. History Otter fishing has been ...

. This would help them to get always something to eat, as long as they do not forget, to give him the three largest fishes that he caught. When the husband of the grand daughter of the otter keeper neglected this rule, the community was punished by a heavy flooding.Jonathan W. Warren
''Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil''
Durham .C. Duke University Press, 2001, .

References

Minas Gerais Indigenous peoples of Eastern Brazil {{Brazil-ethno-group-stub