'Warfare and violence, unrestrained by a modern state: the Yanomama'

'A primitive group without any real history'

'Understanding the axt fight'


http://anthropology.about.com/science/anthropology/library/cultures/blYanoma
mo.htm


There we read:



Yanomama 
Description: 
The Yanomama, also known as Yanomami, Yanomamö, or Yanoama, are one of the
best studied indigenous peoples of South America, and, at least when these
studies began, one of the largest unacculturated native groups. The name
refers to a group of peoples speaking closely related languages who live
along the border between Venezuela and Brazil. They have been used,
particularly by Napoleon Chagnon, as an example of warfare and violence
unrestrained by the strictures of a modern state. 

Language: 
Four closely related languages, Yanam, Yanomam, Yanomami (also spelled
Yanomamö), and Sanima, each named after their pronunciation of their name
for themselves (Migliazza 1985). These in turn are divided into multiple
dialects. Broader affinities of Yanomama are uncertain. 
Population: 
According to Chagnon (1997), 20,000, living in 200-250 villages. According
to the Ethnologue, up to 18,000 live in Venezuela and 11,000 in Brazil. The
latter number in particular may be too large given the recent epidemics in
that region. 
Settlement Pattern: 
Villages, or shabono, range from 40 to 300 people in size, although larger
settlements have formed around Christian missions along the rivers. Villages
in the lowlands tend to be larger than those in the highlands. 
Subsistence Pattern: 
Tropical forest horticulturalists, relying upon plantains supplemented by
manioc, maize, and other cultigens and wild game. Most crops are grown in
long-fallow slash-and-burn fields, with tree crops harvested over a longer
period. 
Political Structure: 
Limited degree of sociopolitical stratification ("tribal"), with village
headmen exerting widely varying degrees of control over their fellows.
Headman status is achieved based upon both kin ties and personal
achievement. Male descent groups, or patrilineages, are important in
structuring activity, but are only traced back a few generations.
Communities frequently fission into two daughter settlements when tensions
between members get too great. 
Warfare: 
Although they were originally taken as a classic case of indigenous warfare,
more recent ethnographies have taken issue with this characterization. It
appears that very different patterns occur in different parts of their
range. In the lower-lying area of Venezuela documented by Chagnon,
intercommunity raiding is endemic. Ambushes and sneak attacks are the
favored method for killing men and capturing women. 
Marriage and Kinship: 
Polygyny is preferred, but not that common, both because women are not
married until they have reached puberty and because the practice of female
infanticide skews the sex ratio so that there are fewer women than men. As a
result, only the most successful and powerful men manage to obtain multiple
wives. The normative practice is bilateral cross cousin marriage, where a
man marries the daughter of his father's sister and mother's brother.
Individuals belong to their father's lineage, and as a result a pair of
lineages will exchange spouses in each generation. Marriage between
patrilineal relatives is considered incest and prohibited. A man may marry a
woman from his own community or from another to which he has kinship ties;
if his shabono is at war with another, he may be able to take a woman
prisoner and marry her that way. 
Ritual Life: 
There is relatively little communal ritual. Rites of passage are not
elaborated to any degree. Religious activities focus upon the hekura, or
spirits. Every adult male may become a shaman by obtaining his own hekura.
Men consume ebene, hallucinogenic snuff, and then summon their hekura to
attack members of other communities. 
History: 
Although many-- particularly Chagnon-- have seen the Yanomama as a
"primitive" group without any real history, ethnohistorians have teased out
a good bit of information about their past over the last century and a half.
Because of their preference for living inland from the main river channels,
they remained hidden from most travelers. It appears that they have been
actively retreating from outside contacts since at least the middle of the
nineteenth century, when Venezuelan slave traders raided them for captives.
Movements of several communities can be traced back for several generations
by matching oral histories against the physical remains of abandoned
shabono. 
Ethnographies: 
The anthropologist who is most associated with the Yanomama is Napoleon
Chagnon, who has spent over five cumulative years working among them since
1964. He has written many studies, but the most widely known is Yanomamö,
formerly titled Yanomamö: The Fierce People. It is now in its fifth edition
(Harcourt Brace, 1997), and has served as a text for many a class over the
past three decades. From the start, his work has been criticized on several
grounds. Most importantly, he presented the Yanomama as an untouched,
"primitive" people, in whom he could study our own ancestors. While this
assumption may have been acceptable in 1964, it has become increasingly
clear that neither the Yanomama nor any other society can be understood in
isolation from their neighbors and their history. He also considered
interpersonal violence a critical element of Yanomama society, and detailed,
both on paper and on film, cases of homicide, warfare, and simple beatings. 
More recently, Jacques Lizot, Kenneth Good, and others have taken issue with
Chagnon's portrayal of the Yanomama as violent. They report very different
behavior among the people they lived with, and have suggested that Chagnon
distorted his account to make the Yanomama look more primitive. These
diametrically opposed views have been siezed upon by missionaries,
politicians, and other outsiders as support for their own actions.
Meanwhile, Chagnon has documented different patterns of violence in
different parts of Yanomama territory, suggesting that at least part of the
difference between these two views is one of regionalism. 
Chagnon's original work was in collaboration with a team of biomedical
researchers investigating the health, nutrition, and genetics of the
Yanomama. The project has resulted in many collaborative studies and remains
one of the best examples of integrated biocultural research (e.g., Neel
1978). 
Contemporary Changes: 
Although the Yanomama have had occasional contacts with Europeans since at
least the mid-nineteenth century, these contacts have dramatically
accelerated over the past few decades. Most contact in Venezuela has come
through the Catholic missions of the Salesian order. The Yanomama have been
encouraged to settle in larger permanent communities around these missions,
and have been exposed both to Western technology and pathogens. Chagnon
describes the demographic and cultural effects of both. Epidemic diseases
have decimated the Venezuelan population, and shotguns have made both
overhunting and homicide easier. Other material goods have proven to be
focal points for intravillage conflict and fission. Current events are
clouded by recent political conflicts among foreign and Venezuelan
anthropologists, Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and the government;
different Yanomama spokesmen have aligned with different factions. It is
unclear how these will eventually be resolved. 
In Brazil since 1986 Yanomama territory has been invaded by non-Indians in
search of gold and land. The garimpeiros have cleared airstrips, introduced
numerous diseases, and have also raped and massacred Yanomama on several
occasions. At least one of these massacres actually occurred across the
border in Venezuela. Although legal steps have been taken to protect
Yanomama territory, it is unclear how successful these will be in the long
run. 



Sources: 
Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1997, Yanomamö. 5th edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt
Brace. 
Lizot, Jacques, 1985, Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan
Forest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Migliazza, Ernest C., 1985, "Languages of the Orinoco-Amazon Region: Current
Status," in South American Indian Languages: Retrospect and Prospect, edited
by H.E.M. Klein and L.R. Stark. Austin: University of Texas Press,
pp.17-139. 
Neel, James V., 1978, "The Population Structure of an Amerindian Tribe, the
Yanomama." Annual Review of Genetics 12:365-413. 


Further materials on UCSB, Professor Napoleon Chagnon, James Neel, landset
photographing of the Yanomama areas and all:

http://titicaca.ucsb.edu/~craig/research/Yanomamomapping.htm

http://titicaca.ucsb.edu/~craig/research/tm_paper/TMpaper.htm

http://titicaca.ucsb.edu/~craig/research/village_photos/Thumb/thumbs1.html

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/

http://titicaca.ucsb.edu/~craig/research/MishiGIS/

http://www.catalog.ucsb.edu/ls/anthro.htm

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects.html

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/geolocator/geolocator.py?region=South+America

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/


Nice, isn't it. Read all this, and read again:



Dying breed 
Ancient tribes fight violence, pollution and disease 
Paul Brown 
Guardian 
Saturday September 23, 2000 
The Yanomami people are one of the truly Neolithic human groups in the
world. There are still an estimated 21,000 of them spread across a vast area
of rainforest in Venezuela and Brazil. 
Although their homelands are technically protected, they are constantly
invaded by gold miners, loggers, cattle ranchers and state-sponsored
development projects. Five, including a child, were reported killed in a gun
battle with prospectors in Brazil yesterday. 
For centuries, the cover of the forest has allowed them to develop in
isolation. They were first mentioned by explorers in the 18th century but
left alone until they were "discovered" and studied by anthropologists in
the 1960s. 
The Yanomami depend on the forest for all their needs, cultivating about 80%
of their food and hunting for the rest. They grow numerous plants for
medicinal purposes and their knowledge is being exploited by western drug
companies. 
Environmental groups admire the Yanomami because they manage to live in
harmony with the forest despite the poor soils. Besides hunting and fishing,
and finding nuts, fruit and honey in the forest, each family has cleared a
garden where they plant bananas and tubers. 
They live in large communities centred around a doughnut-shaped shelter
called a yano. A single yano may house 400. 
A gold rush in the 1970s brought confrontations with the Yanomami. The
indians were accused of using violence to defend themselves and many have
been killed, although there is no real evidence that they instigated the
problem. 
Attempts have been made to save the Yanomami from being wiped out, including
the setting up of a 50,000 square mile biosphere reserve in 1991 in the
Upper Orinoco in Venezuela but this has not stopped intrusion by gold
miners. 
As well as epidemics of western diseases brought by outsiders, malaria is
wiping out the tribes. Mercury and soil runoff has polluted the rivers and
streams where they fish. Worst of all, the pools of stagnant water from the
mining operations become breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. 
The latest estimate suggests malaria is killing about 13% of the population
a year. 


 <<...>> 
Scientist 'killed Amazon indians to test race theory' 
Geneticist accused of letting thousands die in rainforest 
Paul Brown, Environment correspondent
Guardian 
Saturday September 23, 2000 
Thousands of South American indians were infected with measles, killing
hundreds, in order to for US scientists to study the effects on primitive
societies of natural selection, according to a book out next month. 
The astonishing story of genetic research on humans, which took 10 years to
uncover, is likely to shake the world of anthropology to its core, according
to Professor Terry Turner of Cornell University, who has read the proofs. 
"In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and corruption it is
unparalleled in the history of anthropology," Prof Turner says in a warning
letter to Louise Lamphere, the president of the American Anthropology
Association (AAA). 
The book accuses James Neel, the geneticist who headed a long-term project
to study the Yanomami people of Venezuela in the mid-60s, of using a
virulent measles vaccine to spark off an epidemic which killed hundreds and
probably thousands. 
Once the epidemic was under way, according to the book, the research team
"refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami,
on explicit order from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were
only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick
strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help". 
The book, Darkness in El Dorado by the investigative journalist Patrick
Tierney, is due to be published on October 1. Prof Turner, whose letter was
co-signed by fellow anthropologist Leslie Sponsel of the University of
Hawaii, was trying to warn the AAA of the impending scandal so the
profession could defend itself. 
Although Neel died last February, many of his associates, some of them
authors of classic anthropology texts, are still alive. 
The accusations will be the main focus of the AAA's AGM in November, when
the surviving scientists have been invited to defend their work. None have
commented publicly, but they are asking colleagues to come to their defence.

One of the most controversial aspects of the research which allegedly
culminated in the epidemic is that it was funded by the US atomic energy
commission, which was anxious to discover what might happen to communities
when large numbers were wiped out by nuclear war. 
While there is no "smoking gun" in the form of texts or recorded speeches by
Neel explaining his conduct, Prof Turner believes the only explanation is
that he was trying to test controversial eugenic theories like the Nazi
scientist Josef Mengele. 
He quotes another anthropologist who read the manuscript as saying: "Mr.
Tierney's analysis is a case study of the dangers in science of the
uncontrolled ego, of lack of respect for life, and of greed and
self-indulgence. It is a further extraordinary revelation of malicious and
perverted work conducted under the aegis of the atomic energy commission." 
Prof Turner says Neel and his group used a virulent vaccine called Edmonson
B on the Yanomani, which was known to produce symptoms virtually
indistinguishable from cases of measles. 
"Medical experts, when informed that Neel and his group used the vaccine in
question on the Yanomami, typically refuse to believe it at first, then say
that it is incredible that they could have done it, and are at a loss to
explain why they would have chosen such an inappropriate and dangerous
vaccine," he writes. 
"There is no record that Neel sought any medical advice before applying the
vaccine. He never informed the appropriate organs of the Venezuelan
government that his group was planning to carry out a vaccination campaign,
as he was legally required to do. 
Fatalities
"Neither he nor any other member of the expedition has ever explained why
that vaccine was used, despite the evidence that it actually caused or, at a
minimum, greatly exacerbated the fatal epidemic." 
Prof Turner says that Neel held the view that "natural" human society, as
seen before the advent of large-scale agriculture, consists of small,
genetically isolated groups in which dominant genes - specifically a gene he
believed existed for "leadership" or "innate ability" - have a selective
advantage. 
In such an environment, male carriers of this gene would gain access to a
disproportionate number of females, reproducing their genes more frequently
than less "innately able" males. The result would supposedly be a continual
upgrading of the human genetic stock. 
He says Neel believed that in modern societies "superior leadership genes
would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity". 
"The political implication of this fascistic eugenics is clearly that
society should be reorganised into small breeding isolates in which
genetically superior males could emerge into dominance, eliminating or
subordinating the male losers in the competition for leadership and women,
and amassing harems of brood females." Prof Turner adds. 
In the memo he says: "One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that
the whole Yanomami project was an outgrowth and continuation of the atomic
energy commission's secret programme of experiments on human subjects. 
"Neel, the originator of the project, was part of the medical and genetic
research team attached to the atomic energy commission since the days of the
Manhattan Project." 
James Neel was well-known for his research into the effects of radiation on
human subjects and personally headed the team that investigated the effects
of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs on survivors and their children. 
According to Prof Turner, the same group also secretly carried out
experiments on human subjects in the US. These included injecting people
with radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission. 
Nightmarish
"This nightmarish story - a real anthropological heart of darkness beyond
the imagining of even a Joseph Conrad (though not, perhaps, a Josef Mengele)
- will be seen (rightly in our view) by the public, as well as most
anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial," he says. 
"This book should... cause the field to understand how the corrupt and
depraved protagonists could have spread their poison for so long while they
were accorded great respect throughout the western world... This should
never be allowed to happen again." 
Yesterday Professor Turner told the Guardian it was unfortunate that the
confidential memo had been leaked, but it had accomplished its original
purpose in getting a full response from the AAA. 
A public forum would be held at its AGM in November to discuss the book its
revelations and courses of action. 
In a statement yesterday the association said "The AAA is extremely
concerned about these allegations. If proven true they would constitute a
serious violation of Yanomami human rights and our code of ethics. Until
there is a full and impartial review and discussion of the issues raised in
the book, it would be unfair to express a judgment about the specific
allegations against individuals that are contained in it. 
"The association is anticipating conducting an open forum during our annual
meeting to provide an opportunity for our members to review and discuss the
issues and allegations raised in the book." 


Environment  White men bearing gifts  Modern Brazil was born out of violence
and slavery. As its dignitaries meet former colonisers for a 500th birthday
party, Jan Rocha charts the ongoing rape of the Amazon  Guardian  Wednesday
April 19, 2000  Five hundred years ago this Saturday, the smooth-skinned
inhabitants of what was to become Brazil watched in astonishment as a group
of hairy white men dressed in strange coverings arrived offshore in huge
canoes, rowed to the beach and, unknown to them, claimed their territory for
the Portuguese crown.  It must have been the equivalent of watching a flying
saucer land and disgorge little green men from Mars. Even so, the indigenous
people welcomed them, exchanging their bows and arrows for hats and
bracelets, never guessing that the newcomers' lasting gift to them would be
500 years of slaughter, enslavement and disease.  Commemorating "the meeting
of two civilisations", as the speechwriters are now calling it, is a bit
like celebrating the meeting of German and Jewish cultures in the second
world war, says Jose Saramargo, the Portuguese poet. At least 5m Indians,
maybe as many as 15m, lived here when the white men arrived, but today they
number a mere 330,000 out of Brazil's total population of 165m.  The
slaughter was always ruthless: "It is after 10am when the group . . . reach
the camp. They see children playing, women cutting firewood, an old blind
woman sitting, a baby lying in a hammock. One man opens fire and the others
follow, shooting at anyone, man, woman or child . . . the attackers search
the huts, stabbing with their knives everyone they find there, injured and
uninjured . . . Goiano Doido does not spare even a small baby lying in a
hammock, wrapping it in a cloth and cutting it to pieces with a machete. The
old blind woman is kicked to death."  A 16th-century chronicle? No, it's
evidence given at the trial of a group of goldminers who in 1993 attacked a
Yanomami village in the Amazon rainforest. Five hundred years after
conquest, modern Brazil still shows little respect for the descendents of
the original inhabitants or for their unique knowledge of the rainforest.
There is evidence that the Amazon basin had been densely populated when the
Europeans arrived. Scientists now believe that the Indians had learnt not
only how to survive in the hostile environment but how to cultivate it.
Charles Clement, researcher at the government's Amazon research institute,
INPA, says the Indians domesticated a large number of wild plants (one of
them was the pineapple) to make them more productive. But the arrival of the
Europeans led to the ruin of the Indians, and the rainforest reverted to
wild.  European naturalists who trav elled to Brazil in the 18th and 19th
centuries marvelled at the exuberance of the rainforest, which they saw as
an empty paradise created by God without the intervention of man. Baron von
Humboldt, one of the first European naturalists to visit the Amazon basin,
wrote home to Germany in 1799: "What an extravagant country we are in.
Amazing plants, electric eels, armadillos, monkeys, parrots . . . we have
been running around like fools. For the first three days we could not settle
on anything."  Charles Darwin spoke of his "rapture" as he wandered by
himself through the forest: "I collected a great number of brilliantly
coloured flowers, enough to make a florist go mad . . . the air is
deliciously cool and soft."  The "empty" Amazon also attracted adventurers
in search of El Dorado, like the ill-fated British colonel Percy Fawcett,
who disappeared in 1925 while looking for a lost city, or, more recently,
the thousands of wildcat prospectors who overran the Yanomami reserve in
their frenzied hunt for gold. The turn of the century rubber boom made
fortunes for a few, but for 30,000 Indians used as slave labour it all too
often meant death, although it was the technology they had developed which
produced the latex.  One hundred years later, Asian logging companies have
joined the Americans and the Europeans in stripping the forest of mahogany
and other hardwoods, and researchers from major pharmaceutical companies,
eager to find the ingredients for new miracle drugs in Amazon plants, target
the knowledge of indigenous communities, where shamans are the repositories
of centuries of plant knowledge.  Successive Brazilian governments have seen
the rainforest's unplanned exuberance as a challenge and tried to discipline
it with roads and settlements, subsidising the burning of the forest to make
way for cattle ranches; turning its giant rivers into waterways for huge
grain barges: installing a free trade zone to swell the Amazon capital of
Manaus with a sprawling circle of shantytowns, peopled by migrants from
riverside villages.  Even environmentalists, who over the past 30 years have
campaigned to save the rainforest, took time to acknowledge that it was
inhabited.  For 500 years, the Indians have been seen as labour to be
exploited, savages to be civilised or obstacles to development plans. Rarely
have they been regarded as people whose knowledge is invaluable, whose
culture should be respected, whose opinion should be sought about what to do
with the rainforest.  Satellite surveys show that where indigenous reserves
have remained intact, the forest has not been destroyed. Indian reserves now
cover only 11% of Brazil's total land area, but they are under continuous
attack from those who want to mine and log their resources and who claim
that the reserves add up to "a lot of land for very few Indians".
Indigenous organisations have been given no say in Brazil's development
policy. This week, while Brazilian and Portuguese dignitaries hold their
solemnities on the Atlantic beach at Coroa Vermelha, where Pedro Alvares
Cabral landed in 1500, the Indians are holding their own encounter to demand
that, after 500 years, they should be heard.  * Jan Rocha, a former Guardian
South American correspondent, presents The Brazilian Dream on Radio 4,
tomorrow and on April 27, to mark the 500 years. Survival International and
Indian representatives will launch a report on indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Address: 11-15 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QL (tel 020 7242 1441; website:
www.survival-international.org).        
                 <<...>>        

Kind regards Arno Tausch 

writing my own private opinion






MR Doz. Dr. Arno Tausch