How a plastic cave made in Spain keeps Amazonian culture alive 5,000 miles away

Elewoká Waurá, cacique or chief of the Indigenous village of Ulupuwene, at the inauguration of the replica of the sacred cave, Kamukuwaká. He calls it ‘an instrument that will show our strength, our struggle and our unity with other Xingu people’. Photograph: Alaor Filho/Fotos Públicas

It is not yet dawn in Ulupuwene, an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon, but the Wauja people have already risen to prepare for the festive day ahead. The sound of clarinet-like instruments floats across the village, on the banks of the Batovi River, as women sweep the earthen floor between the thatched oca, or traditional houses.

Men paint their bodies with charcoal and bright-red achiote seeds. As the sun rises over the rainforest, men, women and children all meet in the village centre to sing and dance.