Arawak-speaking 'people of the Kuwai sacred flutes,' makers of the Içana and Ayari rivers whose initiation chants and basketry bound the upper Rio Negro to the Orinoco trade.
Pressed by Portuguese slavers, then the 19th-century rubber boom's 'reign of terror,' and later swept by a 20th-century evangelical revival, the Baniwa held their rapids-strewn rivers and remain across the Brazil-Colombia-Venezuela tri-border, around 17,000 strong.
The atlas holds 3 border frames for Baniwa (Wakuénai) — the shape you scrub through changes in 550 BC · 1540 · 1851.
Wright's study of Baniwa religion, the Kuwai sacred-flute cult of the Içana and upper Rio Negro.
The Northwest Amazonian initiation-and-flute complex that links Baniwa to their Tukanoan neighbours (broad regional context).