Early contacts with Yanomami: an ignored and little appreciated history of ethnographic reports
From Firenze University Press Journal: Archivio per l’Antropologia e la Etnologia
Francesca Bigoni, Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze — Sede di Antropologia e Etnologia
Corrado Dalmonego, Programa de Pós Graduação em Ciências Sociais, Universidade Federal de São Paulo
Today the Yanomami are a universal symbol of the struggle of native Amazonian peoples to conserve their land and consequently to preserve the rainforest biodiversity. The very existence of the Yanomami is a challenge to the ongoing process of deforestation, mining exploitation, and uncontrolled development of economic growth. This frightening trend is driven by a neocolonialist logic based on a dominating ontology, which is causing a seemingly irreversible degradation of the Amazon rainforest environment. Over time, views and perspectives on the Yanomami have undergone many transformations. Here we review articles, scientific papers and books on the Yanomami published before 1968, the year of Napoleon Chagnon’s influential book Yanomamö: The Fierce People (first edition).The common voiced view is that Yanomami «suddenly» became known in the late 1960’s to the outside world due to the publication of Chagnon’s book. This relatively short book became an anthropological best seller and initially seen as a well written, and entertaining ethnology. It quickly became the most widely used text in introductory anthropology courses in North American universities. The book grew out of the Chagnon’s fieldwork among Venezuelan Yanomami, that he had begun in 1964. Over the years Chagnon and coworkers published many articles accompanied by a rich filmography produced in collaboration with Timothy Ash. These films show many aspects of Yanomamö life, but the best known and influential among them portrayed conflicts (The Axe Fight) or Chagnon ́s own personal encounters with the Yanomamö (A Man Called Bee). These films and publications made the Yanomami well known in the United States and on the world stage and made Chagnon famous. The Yanomami (or Yanomamö as Chagnon insisted they should be called) over the years became the «object» of different anthropological representations: «fierce» people by Chagnon, «sensual»individuals for Jacques Lizot, and «intellectuals» according to Bruce Albert (Ramos, 1990, 315). Some have argued that anthropological representations and not just those of Chagnon damaged these indigenous people (Albert, 1989). Unfortunately, the Yanomami often entered into the collective imagination characterized as either brutal savages or as cheesy reinterpretations of the bon sauvage. They became the subject of movies (Songs of the Forest based on the musical Yanomamö), were contended among several conservation groups and quoted by members of the star system like British pop singer Sting. In 2001 Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado was published. This book made, on a non-scientific journalistic level, a series of scandalistic accusations against James Neel and Napoleon Chagnon. An uproar followed and deeply divided the academic world. Yanomamö: The Fierce People, at the time already republished in several editions, was transformed, from a bestseller and basic text for introductory courses of Anthropology, into a battleground. Among the blander, but long lasting, accusations was that Chagnon’s description of the Yanomami as the «fierce people» presented a distorted view of the Yanomami culture. It is often asserted that the Brazilian media, owned by the political/economical establishment, used «Yanomami fierceness» as a justification to deny them their rights. This improper use was, in part, a counterweight to indigenous movements that had begun to appear in the 1970s to protect their territorial, cultural and social integrity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-2339
Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/aae/article/view/2339
