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When Portuguese navigators had arrived on this land, which today we call Brazil, in 1500, there were here about 5 million of indians. Today, 502 years later, they are not more than 325 thousand people. Illnesses, the whites trying to enslave them and the wars because of their lands had made the tribes diminished. Despite this so sad situation, indians are trying to continue living. Let´s know a little bit more about children indians life? Indian children plays in many ways. Most common toys are made of straw, woodwork or adobe. Adults also uses to make for its children straw foldings that represents animals of the forest, or other things of its day-by-day, as, for example, the airplanes, that fly over the villages. Today also is common that aboriginal children asks for parents to bring dolls and balls of plastic when they go to the cities. Babies, until learning to walk, live close mother, brought on a bag of cotton, made especially to load them. Small children, 3 or 4 years old, plays with other children. They always continue being close to their mothers, therefore they uses to breastfeed until this age. It is common, also, that a older, adolescent sister, takes account of the other children, while the mother prepares family foods.
A little later, children go learning which are the rules for its tricks and also which are tasks that are of girls and of boys. For example: when are 4 years old, approximately, a girl of Wayana or Apalaí tribes gains of its father a small hamper, confectioned with fine straps of a shrub. It´s done specially for her. It´s her first tressed hamper, of many that will receive throughout its life. The women and Wayana girls use hampers and several other types of braids for the accomplishment of the domestic tasks. With its hamper, the Wayana little girl will go to play while she follows the mother, the aunt or her grandmother to plantations. Imitating them, playing to pull out potatoes and carrying them to the village in its little bag, little girls go learning the feminine work. They learn, for example, to make beiju, a cassava biscuit that indians like very much. On the other hand, Wayana boys, when they are close 4 years old, receives its first red cloth. They also gain of the father a small arc and diverse arrows, with which they go to play. Around 7 or 8 years old, the little boys already are well independent of its mother. They can start to follow the hunted father or the brother oldest. They start then to learn the masculine tasks. The girls basically learn to plant, the spoon and to take care of the plantations, to transport firewood and preparation of foods, wiring of the cotton, confection of nets, ceramics and the education of the children. Boys learns to prepare the land for the plantation, to hunt, to make arc and arrows, to do ornaments and to construct the houses. Later, when they are youngers, both masculine and feminine young indians already must know well to do these things. They prepare themselves to marry and to be part of the life of the village. On all this process, one of most cool sides of the aboriginal culture is that the education and the integration of the children in the tribe are considered task of all. All people must help the child to develop the responsibility sense and to respect the social rules of its community. |
