Tsohom-Djapa

Little is known about how the Tsohom-Djapa settled in the region, but they probably left the Jutaí basin around 1912. Around 1920, an internal conflict led to the death of the chief Txiwi, and part of the group, led by his son, moved to the headwaters of the Dávi stream.

In the 1950s and 1960s there were relations with rubber tappers and loggers, some lasting, others marked by violence, which helps explain the preference for isolation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, non-Indigenous residents reported friendly encounters in which they asked for salt and traded game meat for metal tools. In the 1980s, oil exploration in the region contributed to the group moving away from the Curuena and Jandiatuba rivers.

Much of the daily life of the Tsohom-Djapa remains poorly documented, and it is fair to acknowledge that most of what is known comes from accounts by neighbors and residents of the region, not from the Tsohom-Djapa themselves.

What has been recorded shows a people who live from the forest and from hunting and who choose carefully what they accept from the outside world. In encounters with non-Indigenous people, they asked for salt and traded game meat for metal tools. They maintain sporadic ties with the Kanamari, whose language is close to their own, and the term djapa, which forms part of their name, refers to a group of extended families, a sign of a life organized around kin. Part of the group lives in relative isolation, which explains why so little has reached us.

There is very little record of the spiritual life of the Tsohom-Djapa, and no account of their beliefs in their own words has been published. For this reason, it is more respectful to acknowledge what we do not know than to attribute to them the practices of other peoples.

General estimates indicate that they follow traditional religions, but there are no reliable details about myths, rituals, health care, or the way they understand the forest and the beings that dwell in it. Their isolation and sporadic contact with their Kanamari neighbors mean that this dimension of life remains, to a large extent, beyond the reach of outsiders, and it deserves to be treated with caution and reverence.

There is no published Scripture in the language of the Tsohom-Djapa. A Bible translation work has begun in Kanamari, a close and related language, which may serve as a bridge for those who understand it.

Because the group is small, lives partly in isolation, and has sporadic contact with its neighbors, the Word will probably reach them only orally and through relationships of trust with the Kanamari who know them, in the language they truly understand.

The main barrier is distance: they live in hard-to-reach forest, partly isolated, and have little contact with the outside world. Their language has very little documentation, which makes any communication of the gospel difficult. Added to this are the memory of violent encounters with rubber tappers and loggers and the very small size of the group, which makes its future as a distinct people uncertain.

The Tsohom-Djapa need, above all, protection of the territory where they hunt and gather, and respect for their decision about contact with the outside world. Health is a real concern for small peoples with little exposure to diseases common outside the forest.

Spiritually, they need the gospel to reach them in a dignified and respectful way, in the language they understand, through relationships of trust and without haste, something that can only be built with the Kanamari neighbors who know them.