Briikasappi

Tobacco (Karaka) is our village’s sacred plant, which we need for spiritual medicine. Tobacco is, apart from an identification and unity element, a companion in everyday tasks. While we work or chat, we smoke or chew tobacco.  Without this material, baptism ceremonies, roza blessings (crop zones), funeral rites, are just not possible. Also, tobacco is used by midwives, who chew this plant to manage their concentration and communication with Yaau, God creator, during their work. Tobacco is the main material used by our traditional doctors, as it is considered a divine gift for healing and protection. The traditional doctor uses tobacco to gain concentration and to communicate with Nara Yaau, and it cannot go missing from ceremonies and healing processes. For traditional doctors, tobacco is the same Yaau, and it is for this reason that it can heal. Among the ette, tobacco is smoked, sucked, and chewed, used in this way, already chewed, to knead. Likewise, tobacco us also used as an offering at wholly sites, serving to care for them and to speak with their main spiritual “owners”.

Tobacco, the ette ennaka sacred plant

EtteEnaka Animagraph

Biikrasappi - Animagraph

Growing creole cotton

Ette Ennaka people - Biikrasappi artisans

Once the cotton is harvested, it gets collected. This work is performed by women with her family’s help. Afterwards comes the work called “purga”, that is, extracting, one by one, the cotton seeds. This is a task that is fundamentally performed by women, and it is a practice that gives rise to their encounters and conversations.

Once the cotton has been cleaned, it is collected, and the spinning process begins. For this, a good kattukwa krana (spindle for spinning) is required. 

In spinning, women take the clean cotton and join the specks with one hand, making them rotate between their fingers, and in this way obtaining a thread that they hold and wind around the spindle. Once secured, with one hand they join and twist the cotton specks between their fingers, and at the same time with the other hand, they make the spindle turn, supported on one leg, tensing and releasing the thread that comes out of this process, which is wound in the kattukwa krana. To create the chinchorro (kissa) the fiber that is spun is thick, as it must be resistant; the contrary occurs when what is desired, is cotton to knit a mochila (biikragori), where the fiber is thin.

Spinning – natural cotton

Inicio de mochila

Biikrasappi - Photo 1

​​Symbology in the elaboration of the mochila

Artisans

Briikasappi

Culture
Ette Ennaka

Artisans

Briikasappi

CultureEtte Ennaka

Culture
Ette Ennaka