After reading Kennith Good's very personal book about life among the Yanomamo, I admit that I had certain preconceptions about his one time former dissertation adviser Napoleon Chagnon and his portrayal as being "fierce." After reading this book, I see that much of Chagnon's characterization of the Yanomamo has been twisted by others -- including Ken Good. This is not to say that Chagnon doesn't bear a significant degree of culpability for what has happened to the Yanomamo since "first contact" in the 1960's. His personal culpability, is missed by Chagnon, however. The last chapter of this book points fingers at Catholic and Protestant missionaries who have created dependent peasants out of the once "wild" Yanomamo. It describes how Brazilian gold miners have poisoned their rivers with mercury and killed those who got in their way. It also describes how various interest groups use the Yanomamo for their own publicity purposes and how all these groups try to groom Yanomamo "leaders" to their own benefit. But what he misses is that he was one of the first to make contact and his entry led to others following. Anthropologists may have an ideal of being objective observers, but their presence there changes things. Chagnon, for instance, traded machetes, axes, and aluminum pots for genealogical information. These valuable trade goods changed the power relationships in the villages. Aluminum pots started replacing clay pots. Later shotguns from missionaries further changed the power structures. While Chagnon sees the danger of the missionaries giving the Yanomamo shotguns, he seems to willfully overlook that his own presence among the Yanomamo armed with a shotgun also changed the power structure and provided a reason for the various villages to want to have him live with them.
Romantically, many look to the Yanomamo as living (and now loosing) a lifestyle that all people once shared before the rise of kingdoms, organized religion, and states. Chagnon brings a good deal of reality to off set this romantic idealization. The result is a more accurate, complete, complicated, and nuanced view. But ultimately, there can be no observation without having an influence and the price we pay for knowing about the Yanomamo is that they no longer live in the same culture that they once did. They live in a blended culture--one partially the creation of Chagnon and the anthropologists.
I can see why some new Yanomamo "leaders" would want to keep them out. But these "leaders" also need to be seen in their own context. They too have their selfish motives. No one in this story has clean hands. It is a power play involving grooming, lies, deception, and tricks. And no one, not Chagnon, not the new class of mission trained Yanomamo leaders is clean.
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Ms. L. Pienaar Groenewald
To me it is important to know about tribes like this tribe.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2018
