Yanomamo and the Chukchi People

Indians from South America called Yanomamo speak the Xiriana language. Along the basins of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, they are situated in Venezuela. Around 35,000 individuals are thought to live there (Chagnon 87)). Their land spans over 9.6 million hectares in both Venezuela and Brazil. The Chukchi people are one of the small, prehistoric Paleo-Siberian ethnic groups living in Russia's northern Siberia. These people are also known as Lygoraveltlat or Chukchee. They have a native kind of shamanism as their religion and speak the Chukchi language. The total population of the Chukchi people is estimated to be 15 000 (Bogoras 74).
When focusing on culture, the two tribes differed in terms of their clothing patterns. The Chukchi had their women wearing a reindeer of a seal hide known as Kerker (Vukyukai 311-313). Besides, women put on a dress that looked like a robe that was beautifully decorated with fur trimmings, beads, and embroidery. Men wear loose trousers and shirts made of the same material. Children had fur coverall and a flap between their legs. However, with civilization, the modern day Chukchi people wear western clothes. Yanomami tribe wear different types of clothes depending on their social rankings. The people with higher ranks wore less clothing and more decorations headdress and paints. Members of the lower ranks wore weaved clothes while children stayed without anything to cover their bodies.
Education culture between the two tribes also differed before the introduction of the modern schooling system. The elderly among the Chukchi were responsible for teaching the young one about their political, economic and social affairs. In Yanamano tribe, the education was purely done to understand the ways of the forest, how to hunt and fish. Survival tips would also be given because of the many dangers in their immediate environment. The elders who had knowledge in the field of traditional herbal medicine would teach their children about different traditional treatments of diseases. The knowledge of the palatable forest foods would also be passed down orally.
The two communities had different rituals and rules that guided the rights of passage. The Chukchi people are now performing less of these rituals as a result of the effects of modernization. Pregnant women in Chukchi tradition had to wake up early and surround their shelters according to the direction that the sun was moving. Men could not visit a woman who had just given birth because it was believed to be an activity associated with bad luck. Death was also accompanied by specific ceremonies with the dead being placed in a chamber for a few days for the possibilities of resurrecting. Failure to resurrect saw the corpse disposed of in the tundra. Yanomami, on the other hand, had a keen observance for the dead. They would not hunt monkeys, otters or eagles because they believed they were their reincarnated tribe members. As a result of these attachments to wild animals, they hunted very cautiously to prevent a woman or a child dying in their tribe as a mode of punishment.
The Chukchi religious practices and beliefs are considered to be guided by shamanism. Among the objects considered to have spirits were animals, forests, rivers, heavenly bodies and even natural phenomena. When performing their rituals, they would fall into trances as they communicated spirits to cast various types of spells. Yanomami held the belief that anything in nature had a soul, unlike the Chukchi who selected a number of objects. Beside this animism, they believed that the world was endangered through phenomena smoke polluting the air (Boellstorff 882). Yanomami also believed in the presences of a supreme being whom they referred to as Omame and a Hutucara spirit that controlled the sky. Women were not allowed to participate in religious functions.
In Yanomami, women who failed to perform their roles properly were beaten up by their husbands, a culture that was acceptable in the patriarchal society. Men who did not perform their roles well were considered as unattractive. Gender and cultural roles were learned from parents, at a tender age. Women's major roles were to prepare meals and raise children and were considered as men's property to be cared for. In Chukchi tradition, women were are subordinate to men. They were supposed to be passive and passive to their husbands as they carried out household chore and cared for the children.
In Yanomamo tradition, marital partners were strictly cross cousins with women getting married in their teenage years as men married in their twenties. Despite marriages being patrilocal, husbands were made to live with their parents-in-law before giving the bride price. Polygamy was allowed with men marry as many women as they would provide for. In contrast, the Chukchi people appeared to have lesser rules guiding the marriage life. For example, sexual activity was not prohibited before marriage. Besides, there were no critics or shame in unwed motherhood. Just like in Yanomamo, women in Chukchi were made inferior to men and had relatively lesser rights as they cooled for their husbands and cared for the children.
From an analysis of these two traditional communities, it is clear that they had the same traditional way of living and perceiving reality. They had an organized system to ensure that the cultural values are passed down to the future generation and ensured a political stability through a consensus form of governance. Their number in the world is relatively low and therefore ought to be protected even if it does not entail making contact with them. Valuable lessons can also be learned from their ways of lives like the use of traditional medicine that can be analyzed to find its importance in the modern western medicine.
Just as the two communities have proven, different communities have different cultures, although there are a few factors of resemblance. The differences in culture are primarily driven by the varying environment needs of the community or tribe being focused on. People live in the mountains or in the desert will tend to have a similar culture although not all elements will be similar. The differences in culture are further determined by the effectiveness of the socialization institution and the chances of interacting with an outside community. Socialization agents like the family and the form of education in a given context determine the efficiency and the effectiveness of the cultural values passed down hence maintaining the uniqueness of a given group of people. The more a community make contact with the outsiders, the higher the chances of dropping the undesired values and picking positive aspects of the new culture.







Works Cited
Boellstorff, Tom. "Visual Anthropology." American Anthropologist 108.4 (2006): 881-882.
Bogoras, Waldemar. New problems of ethnographical research in polar countries. Human Relations Area Files, 1924.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. "Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances." Ehrafworldcultures.Yale.Edu, 2017.
Vukvukai, Nadezhda. "Chukchi traditional clothing as historical source of cultural transformation." Études/Inuit/Studies 31.1-2 (2007): 311-315.