One of the last people to grow up speaking the Puruborá language died in Brazil earlier this year. His death at the age of 92 weakened the fragile hold his people have on their language.
Indigenous languages in Brazil have been threatened since the European arrived. Only 181 or so of the 1500 languages that once existed are still spoken – each mostly by fewer than a thousand people. Some indigenous groups, especially those with larger populations, such as the Guarani Mbya, have managed to maintain their mother tongue. But the languages of smaller groups, such as Puruborá, who now number only 220, are on the verge of dying out.
For the Puruborá, preserving their language and culture has been a long struggle. More than a century ago, Portuguese was the only language allowed to be spoken. “Everything to do with our culture was forbidden,” says Hozana Puruborá, who became the leader of the Puruborá after her mother Emília died. Emília and her cousin, Eliézer, when they were children and both orphans, whispered to each other in Puruborá language when no one else could hear. “They kept it alive in hiding.”
In 1949, Indian Protection Services declared there were no more indigenous people in the region because they'd been “mixed” and “civilized”. The Puruborá refused to disappear, however. They established Aperoi, the last Puruborá village and began working with Ana Galucio, a linguist from the Paraense Museum, which houses permanent archives of 80 indigenous languages from the Brazilian Amazon.
Galucio brought nine Puruborá elders together to talk. They wore headsets and spoke into microphones. Everything they said was recorded to create an audio archive of their language. At first, they could only recall a handful of words. Animal names came easily, grammar and sentence structure were a struggle. But the longer they spoke with each other, the more they remembered.