ABSTRACT

This paper presents a description of kinship terminology in Katwena-Tunayana, a Cariban language of northern Amazonia, based on an ongoing doctoral research project in the Trombetas River Basin, a left tributary to the Amazon River in the northwest of the Brazilian state of Pará. More specifically, the research focuses on the villages distributed along the upper course of the Trombetas, on the Mapuera and Turuni Rivers, both left tributaries to the Trombetas. The terminology is discussed in conjunction with the kinship attitudes and related to data on Waiwai kinship practiced in the same region, which were obtained in the field and through publications from authors who researched the Waiwai in other contexts. The objective is to provide an initial panorama of Katwena-Tunayana kinship by exploring its relations to ethnonymy and its contrasts to Waiwai kinship.