They live in small villages along the banks of the river along the Chucunaque/Tuira/Balsas River watersheds. The houses are raised about 8 feet off of the ground without walls. They have their own form of government and follow unwritten rules.
Children walk around naked until puberty and by then they only wear a loincloth as adults, except when walking through other villages. The Embera-Wounaan don’t marry outside of their tribe so it looks like their culture isn’t going anywhere.
The Embera and Wounaan people lived unprotected until 1983 when the Panamanian government designated a 740,000-acre Comarca Embera-Wounaan in the vicinity of remote Darien National Park.
The comarca is divided into northeastern Cemaco and southern Sambu districts. Union Choco is the capital of Cemaco and Rio Sabalo is the capital of Sambu. The lands of the Embera-Wounaan are continually threatened by settlers, logging operations, and immigrants crossing the border from Colombia.
Some Embera families have re-located to the riverbanks of the Chagres on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal and cater to tourists. It is here that most visitors on Panama tours will see the tribe since Darien Province is quite remote.
The Chocó, or Embera, people live in small villages of 5 to 20 houses along the banks of the rivers throughout the Chucunaque/Tuira/Balsas River watersheds in the Darien Province of Panama. There are generally three villages on each tributary that branches off from the main river system. The villages are about a half day’s walk apart.
They are built on a small rise, set approximately 100 feet (30 m) in from the river. The houses of the village are set about 20–50 feet (6–15 m) apart atop the rise on posts, with no walls, but only tall thatched roofs.
Around each village, the jungle is partly cleared and replaced by banana and plantain plantations, a commercial crop for the Embera, who sell them to get cash for their outboard motors, mosquito nets, and the like. The hills leading down to the river from the villages are usually hard-packed reddish clay.
There are sometimes large boulders being played on by naked children. Dugout canoes are usually seen pulled up on the riverbanks. The Embera houses are raised off the ground about eight feet. The houses stand on large posts set in the ground and have a thatched roof made from palm fronds. All the joinery is with bejuco vines.
There are no walls. Hanging from the supporting posts and beams are hammocks, baskets, pots, bows and arrows, mosquito nets, clothing, and other items.
The floor is made of split black palm trunks or cana blanca (white cane), and have a kitchen built on a clay platform about three feet square; on top of this base, they build a fire, supporting cooking pots over the fire with a tripod of sturdy sticks.
The houses are accessed from the ground via a sloped log with deep notches for a ladder. They sometimes turn the notches face down at night if some animal is trying to climb into the house while they sleep.
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