Bored during Covid, an indigenous Brazilian girl started sharing her culture on TikTok, where she is Cunhaporanga_oficial.
Maybe I don’t follow all the right news outlets, but I hear about way more TikTok stories that are positive than negative. Today we learn that a 22-year-old from an indigenous tribe in the Amazon is teaching the world about her culture through playful TikTok posts [Cunhaporanga_oficial].
Terrence McCoy reported at the Washington Post, “In the middle of the Amazon forest, along the banks of the Rio Negro, a young woman in face paint was bored. The coronavirus pandemic had cut off the flow of visitors, further isolating this Indigenous village, accessible only by boat. So Cunhaporanga Tatuyo, 22, was passing her days, phone in hand, trying to learn the ways of TikTok.
“She danced to songs, dubbed videos, wildly distorted her appearance — the full TikTok experience. None of it found much of an audience.
“Then she held up a wriggly, thick beetle larva to the camera.
‘People ask, “Cunhaporanga, is it true that you really eat larva?” ‘
“ ‘Of course we eat them! Do you want to see?’
“The bug met its end (‘Mmmhhh,’ Cunhaporanga said), and a new viral star was born — streaming from the most remote of locations. Cunhaporanga’s home is a cluster of thatched-roof huts along the river’s edge, surrounded by nothing but Amazon jungle. The dozens of residents who live here are fellow members of the Tatuyo people. They paint their faces in bright red, wear elaborate feathered headdresses, live alongside squawking macaws that Cunhaporanga warns should not be mistaken for pets, and survive off whatever they can grow or catch.
“All of it is now a vivid backdrop for what has become one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing social media presences in Brazil. In little more than 18 months, Cunhaporanga has collected over 6 million TikTok followers, simply by showing scenes from her everyday life. To her, the activities she posted were unremarkable. But for her growing audience,they brought into sudden intimacy a world that could not have seemed more distant.
“Cunhaporanga offering a bowl of larvae to her family to eat: 6.7 million views. Cunhaporanga brandishing a tool used to make cassava flour: 16.1 million views. Cunhaporanga dancing on the pristine banks of the river — it’s still TikTok, after all — to a viral pop song: 4.1 million views.
“As social media reaches into the Amazon rainforest, one of digital media’s final frontiers, it is opening an unprecedented window into Indigenous life, clearing away the barriers once imposed by geography. For the first time, some of the planet’s most isolated peoples are in daily communication with the outside world without the traditional filters of journalists, academics or advocates.
“ ‘This is an important opportunity,’ said Beto Marubo, a member of the Marubo people, whose village just got the Internet and is already going viral. ‘The Brazilian people don’t know Indigenous people, and from this lack of information has come all sorts of terrible stereotypes like Indigenous people are lazy or indolent or unhappy.’
“The digitalization of Indigenous life is now colliding with some of Brazil’s most powerful political currents. President Jair Bolsonaro rose to power lamenting the size of Indigenous territories and advocating that they be opened up to business interests. … ‘Indians don’t speak our language, don’t have money, don’t have culture,’ Bolsonaro said in 2015 as he publicly plotted a run for the presidency. … ‘How did they come to have 13 percent of the national territory?’
“On one slice of that Indigenous land last month, Cunhaporanga — who speaks flawless Portuguese and considers herself to be fully Brazilian — was walking in the sun, TikTok on her mind. She wanted to continue to show her people’s culture but didn’t know how long she’d be able to. …
“ ‘It’s really expensive,’ she said, still unsure about how to earn much on a platform that’s often difficult to monetize. Some followers have donated a few bucks here and there, but not much. …
“She knows larvae are viral gold. Nearly every video of the squirmy little critters, which are harvested from an Amazonian palm tree and allegedly taste like coconut, brings in millions of views. But when she published that first video, they were, to her, just everyday food — as basic as flour or fish.
“She was stunned by the response: Within hours of the video’s posting, more than a million people had watched.”
More at the Post, here.
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