Autaki Waurá
is an Indigenous scholar from the Wauja community of Ulupuwene, located on the Batoví River. The Wauja speak an Arawakan language, in addition to Portuguese, and reside in the Xingu Indigenous Territory in the state of Mato Grosso, in Central Brazil.
Autaki is currently enrolled in a post-graduate program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Goiânia (UFG). Prior to this, he served as teacher in his village school for 13 years (2006-2018).
In 2018, he was chosen to be Coordinator for Ulupuwene village in the Wauja Language Documentation Project funded by the Americas Research Network (arenet.org). As coordinator, he passed onto his students the training he had received, and guided them as they transcribed video-recorded oral commentary into written text, and then translated the written Wauja into written Portuguese.
In 2019, Autaki’s undergraduate class included the first people from his Indigenous territory to receive degrees from the Federal University of Goiânia (UFB). He was awarded a degree in Linguistic Science.
