Sawin is a small mountain of about 300m, located in the Kayama Valley, in the NE of Venezuelan Guiana. Its shape is associated with a collapsed communal house or “churuata”, one of the slopes seems to have suffered a landslide.
The etymology is unknown, like many mountains in the region.
The inhabitants who live there are from the E’nyepa People, an indigenous society of 4700 people that occupies the northeastern region of Venezuelan Guiana. The site is located next to Kayama, a community of about 200 inhabitants adjacent to a Hotï community and an old Catholic mission and airstrip. The E’nyepa are artisanal farmers, hunters and fishermen, they have a semi-nomadic settlement pattern with seasonal movements.
This mountain and all the adjacent territory, a hexagon of about 2.5M ha, is in the process of demarcation of the E’nyepa People, and is far from urban populations
The place is seen as a house where the spirits of the ancients who were buried there live, whose voices are still heard. It is considered the place of emergence of all humanity, when all beings shared a human aspect and from which all beings come.