Definition
Unokais and Headmen are high status members of the Yanomamö tribe, located in the Amazon Basin.
Introduction
Residing within the Amazon Basin is a large tribe of indigenous peoples referred to as the Yanomamö (Sponsel 1998). These primitive people of Brazil and Venezuela were a primary focus of research by anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (1979; Sponsel 1998). Across 35 years and approximately 25 fieldwork trips to visit the Yanomamö tribe, Chagnon documented much of the social and cultural structure of the group and came to refer to them as, the fierce people (Chagnon 2013). This title was chosen to depict the violent and aggressive lifestyle of the Yanomamö (Chagnon 1986a; Lizot 1985). A key illustration of the reverence with which violent behavior is held is the high status that is granted to any member of the group who has killed someone. These individuals are referred to as “unokai” and have among the highest status within the group....
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References
Chagnon, N. A. (1979). Yanomamö: The fierce people (3rd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Chagnon, N. A. (1988). Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population. Science, 239, 985–992.
Chagnon, N. A. (1992). Yanomamö (4th ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Chagnon, N. A. (2013). Noble savages: My life among two dangerous tribes. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Chagnon, N., Flinn, M. V., & Melancon, T. F. (1979). Sex ratio variation among the Yanomamo Indians. In N. Chagnon & W. Irons (Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human behavior (pp. 290–320). North Scituate: Duxbury Press.
Lizot, J. (1985). Tales of the yanomami: Daily life in the venezuelan forest. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Owl, M. Y. (1976). Yanomamo ecology, population control, and their relationship to slash and burn agriculture. California Anthropologist, 6, 6–20.
Rousseau, J. J. (1968). The social contract (M. Cranston, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Original work, The social contract, published 1762).
Sponsel, L. E. (1998). Yanomami: An arena of conflict and aggression in the amazon. Aggressive Behavior, 24, 97–122.
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Brindley, S., McDonald, M.M. (2018). Unokais and the Headmen of the Yanomamö. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_972-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_972-1
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