Data collected by the UNICEF

Data on the Sirionó language

Alternative names: Mbia, Chori

“Mbia” is the auto-ethnonym. “Chori” is a pejorative term widely used by urban populations to talk about the people living in the forest.

Main dialects:

There currently are no Sirionó dialects per se. It is possible that the Jorá (or Hora) language, which appeared in the sixties, could in fact have been a Sirionó dialect.

Classification: Tupi family, Tupi-guarani languages, group II

Geographical area: Bolivia, Department of Beni, provinces of Cercado, Mamoré, Moxos and Itenez and the border of the department of Santa Cruz.

Number of speakers: 187 speakers on a total population of 268 people, according to Crevels (2010). The global population could even rise to 400 by counting children under 15.

Status of the language: According to the supreme decree 25894 of September 11th, passed in the year 2000, Sirionó is one of the “native languages recognized as official” in Bolivia.

Teaching: Sirionó is used in the local education which is bilingual during the two first years of primary school, before it slowly become monolingual in Spanish.

Vitality and Transmission: The UNESCO considered Sirionó as an endangered language.

According to Crevels, the cross-generational transmittal of the language isn’t good and “the children, when they reach secondary school, loose their language even more.” Still according to Crevels, Sirionó is “seriously endangered”.

Historical and ethnographic observations

Two theories are opposed regarding the origin of Sirionós. According to one of them, current Sirionós would descent from Guarani populations who moved from the coastal forests of South Brazil to current Bolivia before the 16th century. Another theory says that they came from Paraguay, the same way Chiriguanos did, during the 16th century. They are close to the Jorá and the Yuquis from which they would have parted 300 years ago.

According to anthropologist Stearman, and unlike the Chiriguanos, the Sirionós have increased their nomadism faced with the colonial pressure and Spanish conquistadors. They have therefore avoided any contact with the colonial society for a long time.

In the forties, anthropologist Allan Homberg stayed with the Sirionós. This anthropological work is considered as a classic of anthropological literature. He showed that under the looks of a nomad population of hunters-gatherers, the Sirionó society has a complex and developed relationship to the natural environment they live in.

Half-nomad hunters-gatherers by tradition, the Sirionós live in a mostly forested environment, in the Bolivian part of the Amazon forest. Hunting, a prestigious activity, fishing and gathering are progressively loosing their importance because their environment is deteriorating. It is more threatened everyday by deforestation, farm estates and animal farming, and the road running from Trinidad to Santa Cruz.

They also do slash-and-burn farming at a small scale and beekeeping, honey being a major trade resource for Sirionó communities.

The Sirionós People Council is a member of the Center of Indigenous Peoples of Beni, which plays an important role in the indigenous movements of protest in Bolivia. In 1990, they got a collective property title over a territory of over 60 000 hectares.

Although they say they are mostly “evangelists”, they really combine several practices and beliefs from they ancestral mythology.

For more information on the Sirionó people, see the pages dedicated to them on the website Amazonia.bo (in Spanish).

Sources

Crevels, Mily (2010) Bolivia Amazónica In « Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina », UNICEF. Tome 1, pp 281-300.

Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Available online [04/05/2011]

Online sources

Data collected by the UNICEF on Sirionó [04/05/2011]

Additional bibliography

Holmberg, Allan R. 1948. The Sirionó. HSAI 3: 455-463.

Holmberg, Allan R. 1950. Nomads of the long bow. The Sirionó of Eastern Bolivia. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.

Molina, Ramiro y Xavier Albó. 2006. Gama étnica y lingüística de la población boliviana. La Paz: Sistema de las Naciones Unidas en Bolivia.

PROEIB Andes. 2000. Estudios sociolingüísticos y socioeducativos con pueblos originarios de tierras bajas de Bolivia. Informe final. Cochabamba (Mimeo).

Stearman, Allyn. 1987. No longer nomads: the sirionó revisited. Hamilton Press, I 66p.

Teijeiro, José. 2007. Regionalización y diversidad étnica cultural en las tierras bajas y sectores del subandino amazónico y platense de Bolivia. La Paz: Plural Editores.

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