What's happened to the Yanomamo? Under the dense green canopy
of the Amazon rainforest, one of the world's last communities
of untouched peoples is struggling to survive. Having endured
for centuries the ravages of malaria, a tradition of violence
and the difficulties of making a life in the jungle, the Yanomamo
of southern Venezuela have seen their population plummet from
approximately 100,000 at the turn of the century to just under
20,000 today. Why?
The cause and cure of the Yanomamo's decline are at the
center of a contentious debate between anthropologists and
missionaries that came to a head recently in Portland. Anthropologists
are itching to preserve the Yanomamo way of life; missionaries
hope to improve it. A book released this month, Mark Andrew
Ritchie's Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman's
Story (Island
Lake Press), provides a middle ground of sorts: a Yanomamo's
side of the story.
The Yanomamo came to widespread attention as the subjects
of Napoleon Chagnon's dissertation-cum-anthropology bestseller,
Yanomamo: The Fierce People. Largely unknown to the
outside world before the book's publication more than 30
years ago, the Yanomamo have since been the subjects of
Nova, National Geographic and ABC documentaries;
evangelical prayer circles and Anthropology
101 classes; and even a musical for kids, creatively
titled Yanomamo: The Musical.
Hunter-gatherers living in the computer age, the Yanomamo
are often portrayed as endangered inhabitants of the "last
Eden" (so goes the subtitle of Chagnon's second book) whose
ways must be preserved as the "missing link" between modern
humans and our primitive ancestors. According to Ritchie,
it is an interpretation of their culture many tribal members
dispute. "Everything you see about us on your television,"
one Yanomamo elder told Ritchie after watching a PBS documentary,
"is a lie." Their lives, the Yanomamo say, are not idyllic
but fraught with violence, deprivation and disease. Animistic
spirits, which shamans invoke by snorting the hallucinogenic
drug ebene, dominate Yanomamo culture. With no concept
of the natural causes of illness and death nor any knowledge
of medicinal cures, Yanomamo traditionally interpret every
morbid incident as the work of enemy spirits. Yanomamo in
the book say that this indigenous cycle of violence, more
than any Western intrusion, infectious disease or environmental
destruction, is to blame for their precipitous decline over
the past century.
Portlanders were given some insight into this debate when
author Ritchie, Timoteo (a Yanomamo Indian) and Gary Dawson,
a second-generation American missionary who has lived with
the Yanomamo since he was 2, toured area colleges in early
November to publicize Spirit of the Rainforest and
counter popular misconceptions about the Yanomamo. "I don't
believe outsiders destroyed our village," said Timoteo,
a short, solid man who seemed tired of retelling the same
sad stories. ("You all look alike," he told the Reed College
audience through his interpreter. "I think I've already
talked to you.") According to Timoteo, conversion to Christianity
has halted the cycle of destruction and killing in his village
and holds promise for others. Following a monotheistic God,
Yai Pada or "Creator Spirit," Yanomamo have accepted
natural causes as the source of the illnesses that plague
their communities and promote medicine, rather than violence,
as the most dependable cure. The cease-fire with other villages
has enabled Christian Yanomamo to focus on obtaining medical
treatment and education for their children and creating
sustainable agriculture. Asked if these changes would have
been possible without conversion, Timoteo insisted, "Change
without is nothing without change within."
Many anthropologists bitterly oppose changes to the traditional
Yanomamo way of life. Ritchie, who first became interested
in the Yanomamo after visiting Timoteo's village 16 years
ago, insisted that the trio's tour was not taken seriously
by many in the academic community because Timoteo is a Christian
and Dawson a missionary. A note pinned to Ritchie's promotional
poster at Reed seemed to support this view. "These are activists,"
it read, "who will represent a particular set of programmatic
positions in the ongoing acrimonious debate between various
missionaries and anthropologists. For information call Rupert
Stasch or any other anthropologist on campus." No Reed professors
attended the lecture, and when contacted by phone Stasch
said he knew very little about the Yanomamo and had not
read Ritchie's book.
Spirit of the Rainforest is the "autobiography,"
as told to Ritchie and translated by Dawson, of Jungleman,
a Yanomamo shaman who converted to Christianity. Ritchie
is not an anthropologist--he made his bundle in the Chicago
commodities market--and he provides little in the way of
interpretive context. Ritchie describes Yanomamo Christianity
only in the broadest strokes--Yai Pada is the "god
of love and forgiveness." He never explains just what it
means to be a Christian Yanomamo (do they have communion
weekly, monthly, or just on major holidays? Do they practice
adult or infant baptism?) nor, most glaringly, what makes
Yai Pada Christian. Dawson and Ritchie are not neutral
observers of the Yanomamo, and both are characters in the
story--"Keleewa" and "Doesn't Miss," respectively. Both
also have ties to missionary organizations (Ritchie's parents
worked as missionaries in Afghanistan when he was young).
For this reason, perhaps, Ritchie spends the better part
of his introduction and afterword defending Jungleman's
authenticity. "Nothing herein is fiction," he writes at
the beginning, "not even exaggerated slightly."
Ritchie fact-checked Jungleman's account of events and
says no Yanomamo has yet disagreed with him. In a book with
few heroes--Yanomamo warriors bash in babies' skulls, a
documentary film crew refuses to get malaria medication
for a sick woman and then films her death, and a missionary
severely beats a young woman--anthropologists come out looking
particularly bad. The worst of the bunch is "Ass-Handler,"
a European anthropologist who molests young boys and desecrates
a Yanomamo corpse. Others harass women, provide arms to
warring villages and attempt to impose a cordon around Yanomamo
territory that will prevent any economic development, desired
or not. Chagnon, who shone the initial spotlight on the
Yanomamo, is known to them as "Irritating Bee" for his habit
of interfering in tribal life.
Anthropologists, according to Ritchie, Dawson and Timoteo,
are intent on preserving Yanomamo culture to the detriment
of the Yanomamo people, trying to freeze them in time as
cultural curiosities. "Seeing films about my people that
say we live in a paradise makes me really angry," Timoteo
stated in his lecture. "Even though the filmmakers and anthropologists
see all the suffering going on in our village, how can they
say everything is OK? My conclusion is that they want us
to stay the way we are because we are a good subject to
study." The Yanomamo have no interest in leaving the jungle
or trading in their identity for the golden ring of progress,
Timoteo continued. They simply wish for medicine, education
and the right to determine how their culture evolves.
Both the book and the lectures come across less as a diatribe
against anthropologists and a paean to missionaries than
as a warning against self-serving involvement in another
culture. "I've known plenty of terrible missionaries," said
Dawson. And while Ritchie seemed ready to spar and engage
with audiences, Dawson and Timoteo appeared ambivalent about
their appearance on the lecture circuit. They have, he said,
been "searching the mind of the Lord" about the utility
of these tours, which take them away from their homes and
their lives. All proceeds from the book go to a fund for
the Yanomamo that Timoteo and Dawson head. Dawson had no
ready answer when students at Multnomah Bible College asked
how they could get involved with the Yanomamo and seemed
genuinely perplexed when Reed students kept asking about
his or Ritchie's "plan" for the Yanomamo. "I don't care
if they build skyscrapers all over their land so long as
it's their choice to do so," he finally declared.
Jungleman's story is serviceably told in Spirit of the
Rainforest, but in the end the issues it raises are
more interesting than the book itself. Cultural anthropology
has opened a modern-day Pandora's box. In the age of mass
communication, eco-tourism and an increasingly invasive
search for natural resources, it is not possible to lift
the lid off a previously untouched culture, peer in and
pretend nothing has changed. Ritchie's book and the lectures
aren't "pure" (interaction with Timoteo is through a translator),
but they are an opportunity for those who are usually written
about to offer their own self-understanding. "I really want
for my tribe to be able to be truly represented how it really
is," Timoteo said at the trio's final lecture in Portland,
"and to be allowed the dignity and right to improve our
lives, whether our culture is changed or not."
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Willamette Week | originally
published January 12,
1999
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