Ron Embleton

Artist: Ron Embleton
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 16" x 9" (400mm x 240mm)
Date: 1979

This is the original Gouache painting by Ron Embleton.

Under attack from the Chavante Indians in Brazil. This is the original artwork for illustration on p119 of The Look and Learn Book 1980. The Xavante (also Shavante, Chavante, Akuen, A'uwe, Akwe, Awen, or Akwen) are an indigenous people, comprising some 9,600 individuals (2000 est.) within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso state in Brazil. They speak the Xavante language, part of the Jé language family.

They were enslaved in the 17th century, after which they have tried to avoid contact. A temporary coexistence with westernized society in the 19th century in the state of Goiás, was followed by withdrawal to Mato Grosso. They were re-"discovered" during the 1930s. From 1946 to 1957, they were brought under dictator Getúlio Vargas's National Integration Program, and experienced massacres and disease. Due to this history, they have a distrust of White or Portuguese men. Today they are still wary of any approach of non-Xavante, called "waradzu".

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