Kinja

Kinja, “true people,” is the name the Waimiri Atroari give themselves. Their forest country lies east of the lower Rio Negro, in the basins of the Jauaperi and Camanaú and their tributaries. Village life draws on hunting, fishing, gardens and the gathering of wild fruits. Contact with outsiders in this region reaches back to the seventeenth century, as the expanding colonial presence came into a landscape already occupied by the Kinja.