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Between the Cross and the Pleiades: Missionaries, museums and a Baniwa...
"Right there in that deep pool," she pointed a weathered brown hand across the sand towards a bend in the river. "That's where she told him to dump it." She counted the items out on her fingers,...
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Shipwrecked: The sorry state of development in the lower Urubamba
The shipwrecked hospital boat at the mouth of the Camisea River is an apt metaphor for the sorry state of social development in indigenous communities of the lower Urubamba impacted by the Camisea Gas...
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The Sound of No Salinger
I looked up from the book, saw the Fat Lady, and found Enlightenment.I was sitting in a warm café near Lincoln Park over bagels and coffee, bracing myself for the blizzard outside. It was January in...
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Rainforest Wraith: Reading David Foster Wallace in the Amazon
David Foster Wallace is probably not the best literary companion for fieldwork in the Amazon. And I’m not just talking about the brick-like girth and serious heft of Infinite Jest. I checked it out of...
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Three Cheers for Periwinkle: Ethnobotany, histiocytosis and Rare Disease Day
Just over seven years ago, my youngest son, then eighteen months old, woke up one morning with a lump exactly the size and shape of an olive behind his ear. An X-ray revealed a quarter-sized hole in...
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Preemptive Anthropology: FAQs
Remembering the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, here is a bit of dark humor written as the bombs rained over Baghdad:Anthropological ethics must evolve in response to undeniable world...
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An Ax to Grind: Napoleon Chagnon, the Yanomami and the anthropology tribe
I felt like I had walked right into one of the Napoleon Chagnon/Timothy Asch Yanomami films. At one end of the circular village enclosure, a shouting match had erupted between two Yanomami women. As...
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Remembering Francis Bossuyt
The evening before his 31st birthday, biologist Francis Bossuyt went for his daily swim in the lake at Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Manu Park, Peru, and was never seen again. After weeks of...
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Kaya-Pop: The brave new world of indigenous music in Brazil
The lead singer crooning catchy pop lyrics, the gyrating chorus-line of girls in mini-skirts, the ecstatic crowd of teenagers swaying and snapping photos with their cell phones, the infectious beats...
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"Why Do They Want to Destroy Us?": Letter from the Munduruku
In the past we, the Munduruku, were feared for our fame in the art of group warfare and we had strategies for attacking our enemies. We did not easily give up the pursuit of our enemies and our...
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A letter of protest: In defense of the rights of indigenous peoples and...
We, the researchers, professors and technicians in Anthropology and Linguistics at the National Museum/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Goeldi Museum/Brazilian Ministry of Science and...
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Dream Tobacco: For "Apa" Mariano
It was a brilliant September afternoon on the upper Manu river, at the end of the dry season when strong breezes and gathering clouds announce the coming of the long season of rains. I had walked an...
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The Cheerful Pessimist: A shaman's farewell to Mariano Vicente Kicha
"Ariota pairani…"'And so it was long ago…'With those simple words in his rich, sonorous voice, Mariano began each one of the dozens of myths, folk tales and local histories that I recorded with him...
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Too-Close Encounters: The Mashco-Piro and the dilemmas of isolation and contact
In late August a Peruvian indigenous federation circulated remarkable video footage showing about a hundred isolated (so-called “uncontacted”) Mashco-Piro Indians just across the river from a Piro...
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The Eye of the Needle: On jaguars and transformation
The path was too dangerous: she might encounter the enemy. She crawled through a maze of roots and vines and branches that clawed and grappled from her blind side like an invisible foe. She turned her...
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Why I Sometimes Wish I Were an Armchair Anthropologist
No figure in the discipline is more despised than that smug Victorian fixture, the Armchair Anthropologist. The best antidote for this regrettable legacy is Fieldwork, philosopher’s stone of...
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Bittersweet: An excerpt from "Sorcery and the Senses" (full text)
Every time I eat watermelon I remember that day. It was the dry season, when the rust-red floodwaters of Quebrada Fierro or “Iron Creek” subside to a lazy trickle, exposing wide, meandering beaches...
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Gift of the Spider Woman: Spinning, weaving and womanhood among the...
The moon is bright, the night is giddy with festivities and Shanuiva has emerged from her cage. Jaula, literally "cage," is how Spanish-speaking Matsigenka refer to the palm leaf enclosure where...
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The Eye of the Needle: Ethno-fictional tale about jaguar transformation...
The pale light of a half moon filtered through the forest canopy and dappled the path where she tracked a maddening stench. Hunger tore at her belly like a blunt spear of boar tusk, like the tusk that...
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Encounter in Acre: Indigenous group emerges from isolation to seek aid and...
The same group of red-painted indigenous warriors famously photographed in 2008 aiming arrows at the passing aircraft now tell their own story: the story of massacre and suffering in their remote...
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