Ipi

Ipi is the younger of the two hero-brothers, born from Ngutapa's left knee, and stands throughout Tikuna narrative as the emblem of disorder against his brother Yoi's ordering wisdom. Rash, disobedient and given to transgression, he seduced the woman bound to Yoi and, in another strand of the tradition, lay with a sister, acts through which the original human immortality is said to have begun to decay. Set by Yoi to grate huito as punishment, he grated his own flesh; the scrapings thrown into the water became the fish from which the Tikuna and neighbouring peoples were drawn. Because Tikuna girls are painted black with huito at their puberty seclusion, that rite is remembered as a commemoration of Ipi's self-grating in the first times. In the separation of the brothers Ipi was tricked into departing westward while Yoi went east, a parting that fixed the moiety division of Tikuna society.

Parentage

• parent: Ngutapaborn from the left kneeInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)

Domains

• fertility
• transformation

Powers

• begets offspring by seduction and transgression
• grates his own body while scraping huito, seeding the origin of peoples

Epithets

• el travieso — the trickster / the mischievous oneAutoridades Tradicionales Indigenas de Colombia (Gobierno Mayor), 'Tikuna Yoi', gobiernomayor.org.co. (secondary)

Relations

• parent: Ngutapaborn from the left kneeInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
• twin: Yoihis prudent counterpartInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
• sibling: MowatchaInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
• sibling: AicünaInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
• lover: Daughter of the Umarihe impregnated the woman born of the umari fruitPortal de lenguas y literaturas de Colombia (Instituto Caro y Cuervo), 'Mito de origen de los ticunas', lenguasyliteraturasnativas.caroycuervo.gov.co. (secondary)

Sources

• Ipi is the younger culture hero, a disobedient trickster whose transgressions and self-grating of huito lie at the origin of the peoples and of the puberty festival's black body-paint.: Curt Nimuendaju, The Tukuna, ed. Robert H. Lowie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952). (primary); Instituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna e a festa da moca nova', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)