Data collected by UNICEF

Data on Sabanê

Alternative names: sabanes

Dialects and variants: As with other Nambiquara langauges, there were most likely several groups of Sabanê speakers. But, due to the scarcity of speakers, it is no longer possible to identify dialectal variants of Sabanê.

Classification: Nambiquara language family

This small language family is generally considered to be composed of three dialect groups: Northern Nambiquara, Southern Nambiquara and Sabanê. To date, no relation between these languages and any other language family has been proven.

This language family is sometimes considered to be a single language isolate made up of numerous dialects. Here we follow the classifications proposed by Fabre (2005) and Ivan Lowe (1999).

Geographic area: Brazil. Mato Grasso State. The last speakers of Sabanê reside in Pyreneus de Souza Indigenous Territory with Mamaindê (Northern Nambiquara) groups.

Number of speakers: There is no concensus on the number of Sabanê speakers. The ethnic population may be around 60 individuals, but the number of Sabanê living with the Mamaindê is difficult to specify.

According to UNESCO there are no more than 3 remaining speakers of Sabanê. Araujo (2004), the only linguist to have really worked with the language, mentions 5 speakers.

Language status: No official status

According to Linguamón: “Portuguese is Brazil’s only official language. The country’s only linguistic legislation concerning other tongues refers to schooling and is restricted to bilingual and intercultural primary education (exclusively in indigenous communities), although there are actually few trained bilingual teachers.”

Vitality and transmission: Sabanê is clearly a language on the brink of extinction. Despite an unprecedented revitalisation effort, Sabanê may well become extinct in the coming years.

Sabanê groups have suffered enormously from epidemics and conflicts with settlers. The language is no longer passed on and the last speakers of Sabanê are trilingual (Northern Nambiquara and Portuguese).

Historical details

The Nambiquara live where two ecosystems meet: between the savannahs of Cerrado and primeval Amazon rainforest. They are best known for having been studied by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who spent time with them in 1938.

The first contact with the Nambiquara probably did not take place until the mid-18th Century, when gold prospectors first arrived in the region. At the time they were given the name “Cabixi”, a term which has since fallen into disuse.

Gold digging in territory occupied by the Nambiquara gave way to numerous armed conflicts between the land’s indigenous inhabitants and those living in the small villages which sprung up around the mines. These conflicts lasted until the mines were abandoned, exhausted, at the end of the 19th Century.

Once the gold miners had left, rubber tappers took their place. The conflicts turned out yet more violent for the Nambiquara who saw entire villages destroyed, men massacred or forced into slavery and women kidnapped by settlers.

The territories which were thereafter allocated to the Nambiquara by the government have long been fragmented, arid and under constant pressure from the ongoing exploitation of the forests and lands of their ancestors. In the 1960s, for example, the most fertile land of the Guaporé Valley was sold to government-financed agricultural companies. In the 1980s the World Bank financed the construction of a road linking Cuiabá to Porto Velho, cutting in half the Guaporé Valley, the heart of the Nambiquara territory.

Despite conflict, damage to the environment, land occupied by farms, and, of course, epidemics contracted as a result of contact with colonial society, the Nambiquara have managed to avoid being completely decimated. Lévi-Strauss estimated that at the beginning of the 20th Century the total Nambiquara population reached 10 000 people and that in 1938, when he spent time with them, it stood their total population at 2000 – 3000 people. In 1969 a census by Price put the number of Nambiquara at 500. The Sabanê groups suffered most, and were all but completely decimated: the number of survivors may stand at just 60.

For more information about the Nambiquara, as well as the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, see the pages dedicated to them on the indispensable ISA website, Povos Indígenas no Brasil.

Sources

Castro Alvès, Flavia de (2010) Brazil Amzónico. In « Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina », UNICEF. Tome 1, Pp 245- 264

Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Available online [18/08/2011]

Online sources

Pages dedicated to the Nambiquara on the Povos Indígenas no Brasil website (in English/Portuguese) [18/08/2011]

Page dedicated to the Nambiquara on the Linguamón website [18/08/2011]

Further bibliography

Araujo, Gabriel Antunes de. 2004. A Grammar of Sabanê. A Nambikwaran language. Ph.D. diss. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit/ Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series, 94.

Araujo, Gabriel Antunes de. 2007. « Stress in Sabanê ». In Leo Wetzels (ed.), Language endangerment and endangered languages. Linguistic and anthropological studies with special emphasis on the languages and cultures of the Andean Amazonian border area: 267-283. Indigenous Languages of Latin America (ILLA), 5. Leiden: CNWS Publications.

Cook, Cecil E. – David Price 1969. « The present situation of the Nambiquara ». AA 71/4: 688-693.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1948. « La vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambiquara ». JSAP 37: 1-32.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. « Nambikwara ». In Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques: 287-377. París.

Lowe, Ivan . 1999. « Nambiquara ». In R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y.Aikhenvald, (eds) The Amazonian languages, Cambridge University Press.

Price, David 1972. Nambiquara society. Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Anthropology. University of Chicago.

Voort, Hein van der 1996. « Linguistic fieldwork among the Indians in the South of Rondônia, Brazil ». Yumtzilob 8/4: 359-386. Rotterdam.

See the Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina and Fabre (2005) for a more complete bibliography.