Gramática do Kamaiurá, Língua Tupi-Guarani do Alto Xingu Gramática do Kamaiurá, Língua Tupi-Guarani do Alto Xingu Gramática do Kamaiurá, Língua Tupi-Guarani do Alto Xingu, by Lucy Seki, is an authoritative and comprehensive description of Kamayurá, an indigenous language of Brazil. Kamayurá is spoken by the people of the same name, which number about 290 as of 2005, living in two villages in the Xingu National Indian Reservation, Brazil. The book has 482 pages of text, plus 17 pages of color photos of the Kamayurá. Its thoroughness and completeness set it apart from most other books on American Indian languages, which usually give only an incomplete overview of their
Xingu peoples number had been reduced by foreign epidemic diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox and malaria to less than 1,000. Only an estimated 500 Xingu peoples were alive in the 1950s. The Brazilian Villas-Bôas brothers visited the area beginning in 1946, and pushed for the creation of the Parque Indígena do Xingu, eventually established in 1961. Their story is told in a film, "Xingu". The number of Xingu living there in 32 settlements has risen again to over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years. The Xingu living in this region have similar habits and social systems, despite different