Customer Reviews

People of the Ucayali: The Shipibo and Conibo of Peru (International Museum of Cultures Publication, No 12)

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This is a broad description of the culture of the Shipibo and Conibo Indians of the lowland rain forest of eastern Peru. It is based on at least fifty person years of face to face linguistic, evangelical, and education work with the Indians by three men and women of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Plus, it has a Spanish version. Its virtue is that practically all the details I can personally verify are true, and it provides a framework for understanding a living people in an exotic environment. Its heartbreak is that it is so short and its detailed descriptions stand like isolated nuggets whose foci are unfortunately variable. The kinship terminology enjoys the only analysis and the most detail in the book. The report that most delighted me, recalling the work of Jared Diamond on the collisions of civilizations, is that Shipibo-Conibo people are actively domesticating their main game animals including peccary, capybara, and paca, but this is a very shallow area of the book. The SIL'ers - secretive until the end!

This book was written by my husband's grandfather and great-grandfather who were two very intelligent men with a great love of this tribe and intelligence and imagination to match. I have seen many linguistic students use this book as a source for their papers, and know for someone interested in studying this regions languages, it is an indispensible source of first-hand knowledge.