Yanomami Social Change

1. Yanomami Social Change

2. Culture Comparisons • Picchi: Bakairí as a “demographic success story” • Is this “success” generalized among indigenous groups across the Amazon? • Yanomami & Kayapó examples

3. 10,000 Yanomami live in scattered villages

4. Yanomami Shabono

5. Slash & Burn Horticulture

6. 1973: Transamazon Highway • Onchoceriasis (African River Blindness) • Carried by black flies • Causes fibrous tumors on skin & eyes Colonization Project • “Land without people for people without land”

7. 1975: Uranium DiscoveredGold Mining, mercury poisoning • 1982 Polornoroeste Development Project (World Bank) • 1000s of Poor Landless People Arrive • Measles, Flue, VD, Malaria • 1988 – ¼ Yanomami had died FUNAI – Bureau of Indian Affairs

8. AAA Lobbied for a Yanomami Park • 1991 – Brazilian Government established a Yanomami Reserve • Yet their lands continue to be invaded

9. “PROGRESS” “AN AREA AS RICH AS THIS—WITH GOLD AND URANIUM, CAN NOT AFFORD THE LUXURY OF CONSERVING HALF A DOZEN INDIAN TRIBES WHO ARE HOLDING BACK THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRAZIL” • Policy of Integration & Assimilation • Yanomami as “primitives” & an obstacle to “progress”

10. Napoleon Chagnon & “The Fierce People” 1968 800,000 Copies 35 Years of Fieldwork

11. Chagnon’s Sociobiology • Wife-beatings, club fights, axe fights, raids, perpetual warfare • Men who kill more enemies have more wives, more children

12. Influence on government policy • 1989 Deprived the Yanomami of land • Venezuela created 19 islands, “To keep them from killing each other” • 1999 “Venezuela bans U.S. Anthropologist: Government accuses him of exaggerating violence in Stone Age Native villages”

13. January 1999

14. Darkness in El Dorado • 2000 Terry Turner, Leslie Sponsel email: “The impending scandal is ‘unparalleled in the history of anthropology’”

15. Tierney’s Claims: • Chagnon’s study organized by human geneticist James Neel • Neel’s eugenics theory: dominant genes for “leadership” would have a selective advantage; males would gain more access to females & reproduce their own superior genes more frequently • Chagnon’s research provided support for Neel’s theory

16. The Measles Epidemic: • Tierney: The researchers contributed to the deaths of Yanomami by administering Edmonson B measles vaccine to previously unexposed populations • This was part of an experiment to test Neel’s theory

17. AAA 2000 Annual Meeting • Reactions of panel, audience • Edmonson B Revisited • Neel obtained 2000 doses of vaccine as a humane act to prevent measles • Dr. Samuel Katz: Edmonson B cannot cause measles • The epidemic began before the researchers arrived, brought by missionaries’ 2 year old child --17 Yanomami died

18. Tierney’s Book: • AAA Task force found the book “full of false & misleading information, half-truths, deception, and omission • Unethical journalism

19. 2003 AAA El Dorado Task Force: • The American Anthropological Association repudiates the accusations or insinuations of starting or abetting a lethal measles epidemic by vaccination among the Yanomami made against the late James Neel and Napoleon Chagnon, and recognizes the harmfulness of false accusations regarding vaccine safety. 

20. Anthropology on Trial (again) • Chagnon has been targeted for his theoretical views • Yet clearly engaged in unethical behavior • Medical testing without informed consent • Name taboos in collecting genealogies • He made his career on the Yanomami, yet remained insensitive

21. “Darkness in El Dorado was produced by 100s of Years of Colonialism and Abuse” • “The fierceness of the Yanomamo is nothing compared to the terrible & powerful violence being done to them by the outside world”