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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tighten your seat-belt; you're in for a ride.,
This review is from: Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman's Story (Paperback)
I received this book in the mail one day earlier this month, and finished it by about the same time the next day -- despite the fact that I had three 90 minute college classes to teach, and needed to prepare for a trip to Taiwan. It was that good, and that aweful. I had devoured a good chunk of the book by the time I turned on my computer and learned the terrible news from New York. I kept reading; there seemed to be a connection. The book is an absolutely mind-blower of a story, but if we were to translate the events it describes into a thesis, one sub-point of that thesis would be: "Mass murder and sincere spirituality are not mutually exclusive, by any means." As Ritchie put it, "(Ex-shaman and Yamomamo Indian Shoefoot) has no problem understanding the Columbine High School massacre or any other killing spree. The spirits of anger and hatred that own and drive a person are spirits he has known personally." It occured to me that we have the same choice as confronts the "converted" village in this book: to seek justice with mercy and caution, and danger to ourselves, or to pass on forgiveness and descend to the level of our enemies. While in Taiwan, I was asked to speak about the relationship between Christianity and Islam, and found myself wishing I'd brought the book along. Jungleman puts so many things so well. This is not a book you want to read your children to sleep by. It might not even work for your church (still less, coven) book-of-the-month club. Besides being full of violence, its message will be a challenge to skeptics and those who are attracted to the occult. But anyone who is untouched by it, by the pain, beauty, pathos, irony, and danger of being human that it reveals, of living in a spiritual jungle as responsible beings, must have a heart of stone. Jungleman reminds us that before a person is a "native" and subject of anthropological study, he is a human being -- and that "social scientists" and missionaries forget their common humanity and responsibility to Yai Pada, the Great Spirit, at their own peril. As a student of world religions who has written a bit about the occult in Asian traditions and the idea of God in Asian belief systems, I found a great deal that was a priori credible in this inside description of the Yanomamo culture, though of course I have no means of vouching for the specific accuracy of the events it records. Mark Ritchie's earlier book, God in the Pits, is also worth a read, though it is not as mind-blowning as this book. I also recommend Peace Child, by Don Richardson, which comes close to resembling Spirit of the Rainforest, though more conventional in approach, it is also a remarkable true story of a stone-age tribe that meets Jesus. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man // ...
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yanomamo: Noble Savages or Hobbesian Brutes?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman's Story (Paperback)
The 16,000 Yanomamo people are depicted as the most primitive, most violent, and most famous tribal society in the Amazon. Popularized by the most widely read book in the history of anthropology (*Yanomamo: The Fierce People*, by Napoleon Chagnon), these people are today suffering excruciating problems from gold miners and newly introduced diseases. Major debates have raged among anthropologists, and between anthropologists and missionaries, for 20 years over the "truth" of the Yanomamo culture. Do they live a wonderful life in a beautiful rain-forest Eden, as Chagnon implies in his 1992 book, *The Last Days of Eden*, or do they live in fear and misery as some missionaries say? Perhaps we should ask that question to the Yanomamo themselves, rather than to the anthropologists or the missionaries. Who does speak for the Yanomamo, anyway? Here, for the first time, author Mark Richie allows the Yanomamo to speak for themselves to us. This is truly "a Yanomamo shaman's story," as the book's subtitle says. It is the autobiography of a Yanomamo shaman-chief named Jungleman. He, at least, is weary of his violent society, and fed-up with the anthropologists, too. Anyone who thinks the Yanomamo culture is idyllic must be a male: The women live in chronic danger of gang-rapes, savage beatings by their husbands, and kidnapping. And men suffer one of the highest homicide rates in the world from the frequent raiding between villages. If you think it's a romantic way of life, why don't you try it? Non-specialists in Amazonian anthropology may be skeptical of Jungleman's descriptions of the sexual customs of a European anthropologist who the Yanomamo call "Ass Handler." A.H. has lived with the Yanomamo for many years and, says Jungleman, makes a regular practice of forcibly sodomizing Yanomamo boys. Disbelievers may want to ask the opinion of any anthropologist specializing on the Amazon. This is a gripping book to read: hard to put down, violent (some would say pornographic), and gut-wrenching. Students who have read the other ethnographies on the Yanomamo will recognize that this book has, above all, a ring of truth. New Age seekers will be fascinated by Jungleman's descriptions of the spirit world that shamans have found. Anthropology students will be shocked by Jungleman's insider view of the political internecine intrigues among anthropologists and between anthropologists and missionaries.
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Please Do Not Isolate Us,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Spirit of the Rainforest: A Yanomamo Shaman's Story (Paperback)
I am called Shoefoot. With my brother-in-Law and Mark I worked on this book. It is truth not lies. While we were suffering terribly the Supreme Being sent his people to us. We learned of His love. Because of His love, we now love. We live in peace. We no longer are shooting each other. We are no longer stealing women. We are alive. We have many children. They are alive. You (who say, "leave them alone") don't know anything about the Yanomamö. You have never come here.
Although we are dying out, "that's OK" you say. Without seeing us, don't be lying about our condition. You are living well, so don't just want that for yourself, and try to keep us suffering. Stop lying. That is showing your contempt for our suffering. You have no idea how we lived. If you could come to my jungle I would really discuss this with you, but you are far away. I believe if you could really see how my people suffer you would not talk like this. So don't live your good life far away and talk about something you know nothing about. Just stay quite over there. Although you are far away, don't try to make us angry, and if you ever do come to my land, don't talk like this, because if the Yanomamö hear you say this, they will fight you. If the ones that are dying out hear you talk like this, they are going to believe you are mocking us and get angry. Just keep your thoughts to yourself. I am a leader in my village. I am one whose life has been changed. Dictated to Michael Dawson by Shoefoot (Original Yanomamo text available from Island Lake Press on request) Translated by Michael Dawson (Michael Dawson was born and raised in a Yanomamo village. He learned English when he went away to school at age seven.) Shoefoot has a long-standing invitation for a public dialogue with any member of the academic community on the topic, "Leave Them Alone." His invitation has not yet been accepted. (Although he has been publicly referred to as a token nigger.)
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