What would then be the subject and thread of history of these people? We should think of them as a bunch of crisscrossing lines. The Yaminawá of the Acre River situate the beginning of their history in two great villages: one on the Moa River – not the tributary of the Juruá, but of another smaller river, the Iaco – and the other between the Iaco and Tahuamanu rivers. From there they moved to the headwaters of the Chandless, where they had their first peaceful contacts with the whites, Peruvian or Bolivian caucho extractors. On the Shambuyacu River, in Peru, they lived with the Sharanawa, Marinawá and Mastanawa, who served as intermediaries, geographically and commercially, with the whites, as the Shipibo did more to the northwest. The relations with these other Pano groups regularly led to conflict and the flight of the Yaminawá further into the forest. They in turn exercised the same function in relation to other, more “savage” nawa groups whom they ended up incorporating.

After a long period in which peaceful approximations alternated with incursions – in many cases protagonized by the Manchineri Indians allied with the rubber-bosses -- the Yaminawá established direct relations with white bosses, between the Acre River and the Iaco. In 1968 a group over a hundred Yaminawá – debilitated by repeated epidemicas – came to settle in the Petrópolis rubber camp, assuming a certain degree of dependence on the whites, which had never occured until then. The reports from the FUNAI, which was established in Acre in 1975, describe a classic situation: alcoholism, prostitution, disorganization of the group and economic exploitation. An Indigenous Post was established in that year, which broke the monopoly of the rubber camp. With this support, the Yaminawá settled upriver, in the Mamoadate area, which includes two Yaminawá villages (Bétel and Jatobá) and a Manchineri village (Extrema). In 1989, probably as a result of internal conflicts and of the desire to approximate more to the white world, a considerable group led by the chief José Correia Tunumã migrated to the Acre River, where another group of Yaminawá was already settled. Thus the Indigenous Land called Headwaters of the Acre River was consolidated, and interdicted in 1988. The declaration of permanent possession of the area, which was officialized on 6/3/92, includes a total area of 78.512 hectares, in the municipality of Assis Brasil, border with Peru. In 1998, its homologation was published in the Diário Oficial of the Union.

There are other villages with which the Yaminawá recognize close ties of kinship. The first, known as “A Escola" [The School], in Bolivian territory, two hours by canoe from Assis Brasil, is a village organized around a Protestant mission, with a population of close to two hundred Yaminawá inhabitants of the Yawanawá subgroup. In Brasiléia, in the Bairro Samaúma, there was a Yaminawá group which split from the Iaco group in 1987, because of internal conflicts. Since this fission they have been known by the name of Bashonawá. The Bashonawá of Brasiléia, in need of lands, live in a precarious situation with no gardens and no definite sources of income.

On the Iaco and Purus rivers there are more Yaminawá. On the Iaco there is a site called Guajará, which has one community. Upstream, the Mamoadate Indigenous Land includes a little more than a hundred Xixinawá in the village of Bétel. On the Purus River, there is a group of Paumari, in which there are eighty or ninety Kaxinawa and Xixinawá individuals, and nuclear families dispersed and mixed with “Peruvians". Near the Peruvian border of the Purus, several of them have moved to Sepahua, on the Urubamba River, where they are connected to a Dominican Catholic mission. In Peruvian territory there are still some Yaminawá communities on the Purus River and others in the area of the upper Juruá, on the Mapuya and Huacapishtea rivers. The Brazilian Yaminawá have vague information about them. Other groups known as Jaminawa in Brazil, such as those of the Igarapé Preto village, do not have any relations with the Yaminawá described here. The Yaminawá usually have close relations with other indigenous peoples; in Brazil, especially with the Manchineri, of the Arawak language family. Marital relations are frequent between both groups, but they are not considered legitimate marriages. In the same way, the visible mixing with the “whites” has not given rise to a category of "mestiço"[or, halfbreed]: the alterity of the whites is assimiliated into the set of alterities that already organizes the relations between diverse nawa groups.

The reader should be warned of the uncertainty of these data given the frequent re-articulations of the groups. Shortly after the end of my field research, in 1993, the murder of a Yaminawá in Brasiléia, at the hands of a Bashonawá residing in this city, ended up causing a fission in the group of the Acre River. Two numerous groups – who frequented the city of Rio Branco – were in the following years resettled in Santa Rosa – on the upper Juruá – and on the Caeté River; a considerable contingent has settled, more or less permanently, in the capital. The local population of Yaminawá in Brazil is difficult to evaluate: the groups described here must total approximately 500 individuals.

The Yaminawá in Peru have a population of approximately 324 people, according to the census of 1993. In Bolívia, according to the book Amazonia Peruana (1997), there are 630 individuals.

The contacts of the Yaminawá with the missionaries have been sporadic or indirect, first with the Catholic Dominican missionaries in Peru who ventured into the rubber camps, later with the evangelical missionaries of the New Tribes Mission of Brazil, who settled in with the Manchineri on the Mamoadate Indigenous Land, on the Iaco River. In the Village called ‘the School’, on the Bolivian banks of the Acre River, there has been a more systematic catechization. Yet, even today the missions do not seem to have had great impact on the traditional culture.

In the last ten years, the presence of the Yaminawá in Rio Branco has intensified, whether in the House of the Indian, or in the slum areas, or in precarious camps in the center of the city or under the bridges. The consequences are serious: denutrition of the children, serious risk of sexually transmitted diseases, conflicts which end up in the police station or in jail, not to mention the high incidence of alcoholism which comes from the time of the rubber camps and, in the city, this is aggravated by poor nutrition. This lethal attraction for the city is the dark side of Yaminawá collaboration with the indigenist entities: political commitment has led Yaminawá leaders to the cities with exaggerated frequency, depriving their communities of a reference point and an essential institution for conflict resolution. The FUNAI, which has no way of attacking the root of the problem, has reacted by removing the successive dissident groups to other areas, some – such as Santa Rosa and Caeté – being very distant. This dispersion is quite negative for the defense of the territorial rights which have already been acquired by the group.

The Yaminawá have been connected to the UNI-Acre since its creation.