Caraja

The Karajá, who call themselves Iny, have long inhabited the Araguaia River and the waters around Bananal Island in central Brazil. Fishing, hunting and cultivation in swidden fields connect village life with the river's seasonal floods and the resources of its lakes and banks. Canoes allow people to move through this river country.

From the seventeenth century, missionaries and colonial expeditions entered the wider Araguaia region. Eighteenth-century expeditions led by Antônio Pires de Campos were among the encounters marked by violence. In 1776 the governor of Goiás founded Nova Beira on Bananal Island; Karajá, Javaé and Xambioá visited the settlement to exchange goods.