Nukini Tribe
The Nukini are an indigenous people of the Amazon, part of the Pano linguistic family. These people live in the Juruá Valley region, in the state of Acre, Brazil. They share a very similar lifestyle and worldview. Throughout history, they have suffered expropriation, exploitation, violence, and the plundering of their habitat’s resources by rubber companies since the mid-19th century.
Today, after a long struggle that united all of Brazil’s Amazonian Indigenous peoples in the mid-1970s, the Nukini Indigenous Land is part of Brazil’s protected areas. It is located near the Serra do Divisor National Park, of which the Nukini claim part of the territory as their own.
This Indigenous land is included in a “mosaic” of 25 federal lands in the upper Juruá, which comprise a broad region of socio-environmental importance for Indigenous and regional populations. National and international interests converge there. Among the lands belonging to the federal government are a National Park, three Extractive Reserves, and 21 Indigenous Lands, according to 2005 data.
One of the main challenges facing this community is ensuring their physical and cultural survival, as well as protecting the forest, which is constantly threatened by loggers, hunters, and traffickers.
Nukini Language
The peoples who share the Pano ethno-linguistic family, located in the western Amazon, have great territorial, linguistic, and cultural similarities, but this does not mean we should forget their internal diversity.
The Pano language is part of the Pano-Tucano language family, which includes several languages spoken by indigenous communities in the Amazon basin, primarily in Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia.
Regarding their name, the Nukini had other self-designations in the past. For example, some historical texts also refer to the Nukini as Inucuini, Nucuiny, Nukuini, Nucuini, Inocú-inins, and Remo.
Today, few Nukini still speak their native language. Unfortunately, the rubber tappers ridiculed and discriminated against them for speaking their language, so they stopped passing it on to their descendants, choosing to educate new clan members in Portuguese.
