The Wapishana or Wapichan (or Wapisiana, Wapitxana, Vapidiana, Wapixana) are an indigenous group found in the Roraima area of northern Brazil and southern Guyana.

Currently the Wapishana are located in the State of Roraima, Brazil, northern and eastern Boa Vista, as well as in the southern Rupununi savannas of Guyana.

In Brazilian territory, in the north eastern portion of Roraima, the Wapishana villages are mostly located in the Serra da Lua (Moon Ridge) region between the Branco River and one of its affluent, the Tacutu.

Historical boundaries extend as far up as the Rio Branco basin, but the Wapishana were driven south by the Macushi under pressure by European colonizers.

[1] The term Arawak is more generally used to refer to the Arawakan or Lokono languages spoken in Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and in some of the Antilles Islands.

Since someone can cross the border between the two countries so easily, it is common to find people who speak Portuguese and English, as well as the maternal language.

[1] Early Wapishana settlements were temporary clusters of homes, but this has changed since the twentieth century, with permanent villages usually surrounding a church.

"Wapisiana women grate the cassava, express its juice, sieve it, and then toast it on iron griddles into flour", basically thick flat breads, also locally called "Beiju".

They also farm sweet potatoes and other roots, squashes, tomatoes, greens, onions, dozens of different kinds of hot peppers, and numerous other crops.

Wapishana raise cattle, swine, chickens, ducks, and many other animals that have been introduced in the past 200 years, and have since become a part of the regular diet.

Women make clay cooking pots and spin cotton and weave the thread into baby slings and hammocks.

By tradition, men have control over the labor of their wives and daughters, unmarried sons, and younger sons-in-law in their households.

Contemporary Wapishana describe illnesses hepatitis, malaria, and pneumonia to identify causes of death, but they often still believe that the true cause is kanaima or another malevolent spirit.

[4] A number of coastal Arawaks are settled in Wapishana communities, they are mostly schoolteachers from Moruca area in northwest Guyana, their relationships with indigenous inhabitants can involve some tension, despite the fact that mixed marriages are more accepted now.

[4] There has been a drastic change in the relationship of the Rupununi area with the coast recently with the completion of road between Georgetown and Lethem, which leads to Roraima's state capital, Boa Vista.

By the 1970s it was reported that 60% of Brazil's Wapishana and Atorai were integrated, speaking Portuguese as their first language, and the rest were mostly bilingual and in permanent contact with the state.