Nukak

Nukak

A Nukak mother and child.
Total population
(approx. 450-550)
Regions with significant populations
San José del Guaviare settlements: 210-250, Nukak Reservation: estimated at 200-300,
Languages
Nukak Spanish speakers rare.
Religion
Animist
Related ethnic groups
Cacua or Bara Makú Other Makú peoples like Hupdu

The Nukak [nɨkâk] people (also Nukak-Makú) live between the Guaviare and Inírida rivers, in the depths of the tropical humid forest, on the fringe of the Amazon basin, in Guaviare Department, Republic of Colombia. They are nomadic hunter-gatherers with seasonal nomadic patterns and in addition they practice a shifting horticulture in small scale. An "uncontacted people" until 1981, they have since lost half of their population, primarily to disease. Part of their territory has been used by coca growers, ranchers and other settlers and occupied by guerrillas, army and paramilitaries. Responses to this crisis include protests, requests for assimilation, and the suicide of leader Maw-be'. Some 210–250 are estimated to live in provisional settlements at San José del Guaviare, while about as many live nomadically in the Nukak Reservation (Resguardo).

Nukak are expert hunters. The men hunt using blowguns, with darts coated with curare "manyi", a poison made from different plants (curares). They specially hunt several species of monkeys (Alouatta spp., Cebus spp., Saimiri sp., Lagothrix spp., Ateles sp., Saguinus spp., Callicebus torquatus), and birds (Muscovy duck, chachalacas, guans, curassows, grey-winged trumpeter and toucans). Also they use javelins of Socratea exorrhiza palm wood to hunt two species of peccaries (Tayassu pecari and T. tajacu) and spectacled caimans, whose eggs they consume too. Nukak neither hunt nor eat brocket deer, Odocoileus virginianus and tapirs (Tapirus terrestris); these animals are considered by them as part of the same group of origin as human beings.