WOUNAAN

One of the smallest indigenous groups in Panama, the majority of the 6,800 Wounaan live in the Darien. Panama's largest and wildest province. In the Darien province most Wounaan live in small communities, located within and outside the two Embera-Wounaan comarcas, which are indigenous reservations with special indigenous, democratic administrations. They also live in and around Panama City and other increasingly urban neighborhoods along the Pan American Highway.

Traditionally, the Wounaan are semi-nomadic forest dwellers who live in elevated thatch houses in small clearings close to meandering forest rivers. They live in small groups of extended families, and carve special trees into river canoes that they use to navigate through the green mazes of rainforest rivers and mangrove channels.

Their villages are often located at the edge of the tidal reach between mangrove forests and semi-deciduous tropical forests. They used traps, bows and arrows, spears, and blowguns with frog poison-tipped darts to hunt rainforest animals and birds, while maintaining diverse gardens around their houses, gathering wild fruits and medicines, and planting bananas, plantains, corn and root crops in small forest clearings.

They wear little clothing but paint themselves with intricate designs using inks derived from jungle fruits. As gifted artisans they use various palm and other plant fibers to fabricate baskets of many kinds, for many varied purposes and carve balsa wood to create intricate animal forms.

They maintained extensive knowledge of the forests and their inhabitants, learning their natural patterns and rhythms and incorporating them into their stories, dances and cosmological beliefs. They often practiced several kinds of shamanism and ritually beat a sacred canoe to resolve local problems and maintain a state of peace and harmony in the world. The Wounaan keep many of these traditions alive today.

further reading at: nativefuture.org