Throughout their history, the Katukina have maintained contact – peaceful or otherwise – with various indigenous groups in the Juruá river region and, more recently, with other groups from the Javari river basin. The Kulina, Yawanawá and Marúbo are the three groups with which contacts were and are the most intense and significant for the Katukina.

Contacts between the Katukina and the Kulina – speakers of an Arawá language who currently live in villages scattered along the Juruá and Purus rivers in Brazil and Peru – remained frequent at least until the 1960s. Members of the two groups used to meet mainly in order to perform specific rituals together. Nowadays, the Katukina and Kulina no longer meet, since the successive dislocations of the Kulina have meant the two groups now live far apart. However, the Katukina still recall the songs taught to them by the Kulina. These songs were incorporated into the Katukina musical repertoire and they still sing them today, despite being unable to understand the content of the songs.

Of the two Pano groups in the upper Juruá region, the Yawanawá are the Katukina’s closest and oldest neighbours and currently share the Gregório river IT with them.

The Yawanawá were also their most assiduous adversaries. The Katukina accuse the Yawanawá of abducting their women in the past, thereby provoking warfare between them. Sorcery accusations – also frequent – continue until today. Despite the rivalry, the Katukina and Yawanawá do not confront each other the whole time. The joint performance of rituals, inter-marriages and co-residence, in both past times and the present, are fairly frequent among them. Ambivalence rather than pure and simple opposition acts as the baseline to their relations. So much so that the countless years of rivalry did not definitively push them apart, and during the 1980s the two groups actually united to demand joint demarcation of their lands.

A little more distant, the Marúbo have also maintained regular contacts with the Katukina, though only in recent years. Nevertheless, the brief time in close contact has not prevented the Marúbo from becoming the group with whom the Katukina most identify today.

The first encounter between the two groups seems to have occurred in the 1980s, when missionaries from the MNTB (who also work among the Marúbo on the Ituí river) took two Katukina living on the Gregório river to meet the Marúbo. However, this meeting appears to have led to nothing. Closer contact between the Katukina and the Marúbo happened only in the following decade, in 1992, following a chance encounter in the port of Cruzeiro do Sul. The Katukina were walking through the port area when they overheard some people speaking a language similar to their own and decided to approach. They introduced themselves, exchanged a few words and soon discovered they shared other aspects in common besides language. The main point of similarity was that some people among the Marúbo were also identified as Satanawa, Varinawa, Kamanawa, Waninawa and Numanawa. They swapped a number of presents during this encounter and arranged to meet again.

After the meeting in Cruzeiro do Sul, two Katukina visited the Marúbo villages on the Ituí river, and five Marúbo visited the village on the Campinas river. On the basis of these visits, the Katukina started to reflect on the similarities and differences between themselves and the Marúbo and the causes that could explain them. The main conclusion reached was that the Marúbo had made up the same group as the Katukina in the past. However, the separation between them occurred at a time when neither the contemporary Katukina and Marúbo, nor their parents and grandparents, had been born. And thus long before they first encountered the Whites.

According to the Katukina, their similarities with the Márubo can be attested in various ways: the Marúbo are subdivided into a number of sections and some of these have the same denominations as those of their own clans; the Marúbo language is very similar to that of the Katukina; the communal houses in which the Marúbo live are similar to the houses in which they themselves lived before establishing contact with the Whites. The Katukina agree that the form in which the Marúbo live nowadays represents their own way of life in the past and the Marúbo are thus seen by them as a proto-Katukina society.