Show of unity Imported replica cave brings sacred joy to Wauja people

It is not yet dawn in Ulupuwene, an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon, but the Wauja people have already risen to prepare for the festive day ahead.

- Constance Malleret

The sound of clarinetlike instruments floats across the village on the banks of the Batovi River as women sweep the earthen floor between the thatched oca, or traditional houses.

Men paint their bodies with charcoal and bright-red achiote seeds. As the sun rises over the rainforest, men, women and children all meet in the village centre to sing and dance.

The Wauja people will perform ritual dances all day to mark a unique occasion: the inauguration of a lifesize replica of a sacred cave called Kamukuwaká, which is being housed in the first Indigenous museum in the Xingu region.

It is an act of resistance as much as of celebration. The Wauja people hope this unique resource will help to preserve their cultural heritage and keep their traditions alive for future generations - as well as draw attention to the threats their land faces from the climate crisis and local extractive industries.

"This here is an instrument that will show our strength, our struggle and our unity with other Xingu people," the cacique (chief) of Ulupuwene, Elewoká Waurá, tells Wauja relatives, who have travelled from other villages to take part in the ceremony.

The original cave is the home of myths that form the basis of Indigenous people's culture and customs in the Upper Xingu, a tract of rainforest surrounded by soya plantations in central Brazil.

Today, it lies on private land outside the protected Indigenous territory, and was partly destroyed in 2018 when ancient engravings were deliberately hacked off. Those responsible have never been found.

"That is where our songs, our rituals, our paintings come from," says Akari Waurá, a singer and cacique of Tepepeweke village (all Wauja people share the same surname, a non-Indigenous misspelling of their ethnic group).