Kunaferi
Baniwa · numen · Baniwa traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kunaferi, glossed as 'Grandfather Fish-Poison', is a primordial being associated with the fish-stunning vine used across the Içana and Guainía rivers, and his name is bound up with the collective self-designation Wakuénai carried by the northern Arawak. As owner of the poison he stands behind one of the principal techniques of Baniwa subsistence fishing, a figure of the deep ancestral past whose grant of fish-poison sustains the living.
Domains
- fishing
Powers
- owns and dispenses the fish-stunning poison
Sources
- Kunaferi, 'Grandfather Fish-Poison', is a primordial figure connected to fish-poison and to the collective self-designation Wakuénai of the northern Arawak.: Robin M. Wright, The Kuwai Religions of Northern Arawak-Speaking Peoples (Boletín de Antropología, Universidad de Antioquia, 2017). (secondary)