The Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai) was a key player in establishing first contact with the Matis community.
[2] Soon after this period, the Matis began making occasional visits to the Ituí IAP, where they were given resources such as metal tools and animals.
[2] The spread of foreign diseases like influenza and measles intensified with the growing presence of rubber tappers and loggers in the region, and lack of warning and medical aid from the IAP.
Debates surround the actual number of indigenous Matis that died from exposure to foreign disease, but probable figures state that 35-50% of the population succumbed, with children and elders severely impacted.
The Korubo peoples had since attacked ancestors of the Matis (Txami) who returned to the Coari River to start their own plantations.
[5] To ensure cultural survival for the Matis as well as other indigenous groups in the Vale de Javari, the Centro do Trabalho Indigenista uses professors who have been elected by local indigenous peoples to properly ensure their cultural values, day-to-day activities, and more importantly, languages are preserved to their standards.
[6] Nouns in the Matis language constitute an open class and are characterized by their case, gender, and number.
The glass cut (on the) foot)Many of these prefixes possess multiple meanings apart from body parts depending on their attachment and the context of the sentence.
[7] Suffixes are the most common morphemes to add to the end of root words derived from nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
[6] This suggests that the two allomorphs of the ergative rely heavily on the ending of the root word, specifically the type of consonant or vowel being used to apply the appropriate suffix.
Speakers use temporal words: nebi (now), uxtokin (yesterday), inden (longtime ago, back in the day) to reference the time of the action.
'Swapa-Ødog-ABSVuʃ-a-kslept-PASS.IM-DECLS Vwapa-Ø uʃ-a-kdog-ABS slept-PASS.IM-DECL'The dog slept'Vabad-e-k(to) run-NPASS-DECLSawat-Øtapir-ABSV Sabad-e-k awat-Ø{(to) run-NPASS-DECL} tapir-ABS'The tapir runs'Quantifiers in Matis are a closed class of words that can be used to modify nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.
[6] The four quantifiers used in the Matis language are as follows:[7] wakariver-n-LOCiraydadenpaintens.qtdwaka -n i dadenpariver -LOC ray intens.qtd"many rays in the river"ɨnbi1SG.ERGwakawater-∅-ABSpapitsɨka little-∅-ABSak-drink--nu-DESɨnbi waka -∅ papitsɨk -∅ ak- -nu1SG.ERG water -ABS {a little} -ABS drink- -DES"I want to drink a little bit of water"i1-∅-ABS-bɨ-SGbuɨtquicklykimoveryabadrun-e-NPASS-k-DECLi -∅ -bɨ buɨt kimo abad -e -k1 -ABS -SG quickly very run -NPASS -DECL"I ran very quickly.
There is another indigenous group called the Mayoruna that is of close linguistic and geographical proximity to the Matis and also goes by the name Matses.
A key researcher and publisher of many works on Matis language is Vitória Regina Spanghero Ferreira.
[11] Ferreira's doctoral thesis, published in 2005, is a very detailed lexical study of Matis language that includes a 1,547-word Portuguese-Matis dictionary.
[6] Rogério Vicente Ferreira, a researcher at the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, has also produced a number of key texts regarding the Matis language.
The paper discusses various classes of words, the order of constituents, marcation of the ergative case, and general themes in Matis syntax.
A masters dissertation studying the functional-typological system of word formation in eight languages of the Pano family, including Matis, was published by Raphael Augusto Oliveira Barbosa.
The paper features a thorough comparison of the semantic and morphological properties of word formation among the different Pano languages, with a specific focus on affixation, reduplication and composition.
[13] While no large ethnography specifically about the Matis community has been published, information about their culture and customs can be gained through multiple ethnographic studies and comparisons written about larger regional or linguistic groupings of languages.
[14] Barbara Maisonnave Arisi's 2007 master's thesis studies the relationship between the Matis and the Korubo, both relatively isolated groups living in the Vale do Javari.
[15] All previously listed literature from Rogérico and Vitória Ferreira include ethno-histories of the Matis people as background for the studies, most notably in the text Estúdio Lexical da Língua Matís: Subsídios para um Dicionário Bilíngüe, which contains photos and descriptions of specific cultural practices.