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Amazon Indians

Yanomami 1

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Indians

Early Amazon Cultures

A Visit to the Centre for the Preservation of Indigenous Art, Culture and Science

Alter do Chπo, Parß, Brazil

The Centre for the Preservation of Indigenous Art, Culture, and Sciences in Alter do Chπo is a very educational place to visit. You’ll walk away feeling as I did – aware of the huge changes that are taking place in the Amazon today. Most importantly, you’ll gain some understanding of the consequences that these changes having on Amaz⌠nia’s most innocent residents – the Amazon Indians.

A visit to the Centre is educational experience, but it is hardly an uplifting one. After my visit I felt very sad and with a feeling, almost, of hopelessness. The sad truth is that the Amazon tribes are disappearing – their people are dying as a result of disease, pollution, or in massacres such as the one in 1993 when 63 Yanomami (mostly women and children) were killed by goldminers eager to drive them from their land. In 1985 there were 15,000 Yanomami Indians, today there are only 8,000. There are an estimated 200,000 Amazon Indians still living in the rainforests of Amaz⌠nia, but 85% of the remaining tribes number less than 500 people. Many are down to less than 100 people. As the number of people in a tribe reduces, so do the chances of its survival. With small populations and few children, there is eventually no-one left onto whom the tribe’s traditions, rituals, and accumulated knowledge can be passed. The tribe dies.

But even if the people survive, cultures continue to die for other reasons:

• Many children choose to abandon the traditions of their parents – lured away by the promises of riches in the city, goldmines, or working as farmhands. In most cases, these promises are never realised, and the "accultured" Indian often ends up in debt, demoralised and destitute – living in appalling conditions on the edge of some city or town;

• Alcohol was introduced into many tribes by traders to indebt and enslave Indians – forcing their dependence on the products of "civilised" society. The Indians must work to repay their debts and to obtain more alcohol. Their dependence on the traders’ alcohol means that the Indians can be easily exploited to provide rubber, animals, and other rainforest products. Family life and centuries’ old traditions are destroyed in the process;

• Religion is another destroyer – the "saving of souls" means destroying the tribes’ centuries-old beliefs, village life, traditions, and identity. One tribe, the Tikuna, has eight major groups in competition for its people – and over 50% of the tribe have now given up its traditions as a result of strict religious rules imposed by overzealous missionaries. "Saving the Indians’ souls" frequently leaves the people confused and with few defences to exploitation by unscrupulous traders and developers.

The Centre for the Preservation of Indigenous Art, Culture, and Science was established to serve as a permanent display of art and artefacts of the Amazon Indians and to draw attention to their plight. The Indians face many problems including racism, loss of territory, forced relocation, poisoning of their environment, and attack by developers and government planners. There is a popular misconception that they are "simple" and somehow less than human. In reality, the Amazon Indians have complex societies, with a rich cultural heritage, and an intimate knowledge of their environment. By making people more aware of Amazon Indian culture, the Centre hopes to foster a change attitudes and to preserve the culture for future generations. This is a very big goal – but a very important one if these cultures are to survive.

The Centre’s director is Maria Antonia (Tixi) Kaxinawa. At only 26 years of age she at first seems a little young to be running the Centre – but then I started talking with her and the others that she works with. The conversation was interesting, and I learned a lot about the problems occurring in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Also at the Centre is an American-born sailor who was one of the main driving forces in the establishment of the Centre, but laments that he is only able to play a small role since Brazilian law makes it illegal for him to directly assist or offer advice to the Indians. Things have been difficult for the Centre, funding is very scarce since it doesn’t get any help from outside organisations or government – operating expenses are paid from money collected in the small doorfee ($3) and from private contributions (mostly from the Centre’s own directors). The small town of Alter do Chπo is a little off the "beaten" tourist track, and it is still taking time for the Centre to become accepted by the local community since "Indian Rights" has a very limited appeal in an area populated mostly by settlers.

According to Maria Antonia, the Amazon Indians are the Amazon Basin’s most endangered species – much more than any animal or plant. While there are laws to prevent continued hunting or disruption to endangered animals, no such laws exist to protect the Indians. There is FUNAI, the Brazilian Indian Agency – it has many dedicated and hard-working people, but is under-resourced and lacks any real political power.

We have been pushing the Indians continuously for the last 500 years, ever since Europeans first arrived in the New World. The Indian instinct in the past has been to run away and try to avoid the onslaught of "civilisation" – if they didn’t they risked assimilation into the European culture or death from European weapons and diseases. But as our civilisation is now pushing into the last remaining territories of the Amazon Basin, there is nowhere left for the Indians to run. They are trapped and, many think, doomed.

As a group, our European-styled society is extremely arrogant. We think that we are better than the Indians because we have technology – cars, computers, large-scale agriculture, and television – and our society now is now the dominant culture in most places throughout the world. The Indians, on the other hand, are a "Stone Age" society. What could they possibly know? The answer is: much more than we think! Research shows that Indians have been living in the Amazon basin for at least 11,500 years. During this time they have developed a detailed knowledge of agriculture in the Amazon Basin – not the European methods that we try to force on the environment and which, so often, fail here. The philosophy of European methods is the conquest of nature and forcing it to do your bidding – which works in the temperate European and North American climates where the soil is good, but not in the tropical heat and poor soils of the Amazon Basin. Indian agricultural science emphasises working with nature – instead of clearing a large plot of land, they will plant many small gardens within the rainforest. Their planning takes account of the environment around them – the other types of plants growing nearby, and the insects and other animals which (being part of the ecological system) may either help fertilise and assist the garden or otherwise damage it. Some people argue that the rainforest, itself, has been shaped as a result of thousands of years of Indian management. Who knows how many plants have been transplanted and cultivated within the rainforest because they have had some sort of beneficial properties for the Indians. Indian knowledge includes information about which plants grow under which conditions, and their unique properties (such as medicinal uses) which have yet to be discovered by science. If we paid more attention to the Indians’ methods, the land in the Amazon Basin might actually be more productive instead of the desert that it is now becoming.

The last problem that Maria Antonia talked about were the missionaries. Previously I’d always thought that missionaries were nice people who worked with people to help them. Not that I’m saying missionaries aren’t nice people – its just that their efforts are misguided and have a devastating effect on the indigenous societies that they contact. Converting and baptising a tribal society means destroying the tribe’s old values and traditions – essentially destroying the original culture. No one ever asks the Indians if they want their culture to be destroyed and superseded by another – the religious groups just go into the territory and start preaching. They’ve already made the decision for the Indians, as if the Indians were unfit to choose for themselves! The United Nations’ charters guarantee freedom of religion and freedom from persecution for all the world’s peoples – but it apparently doesn’t apply here.

Converting "heathens" is a romantic idea. Evangelists on television in the United States and in churches all over the world enthuse about the good deeds they are doing. They collect millions of dollars, spending it on airplanes, radios, building expensive airstrips and camps in the jungle, and supporting their operations – just to convert a handful of remaining tribespeople in the Amazon rainforest. Wouldn’t it be much kinder for this money to be spent helping the millions of children living in poverty and without hope in the Brazilian favelas, or children living in slums of Philadelphia with pistols and a pocketful of drugs? Mostly, the Indians just ask to be left alone in peace – they don’t want contact with the outside world. If there is going to be contact, it should be on their terms – not ours. We’ve been doing the same thing for the last 500 years and the result is consistent – the extermination of native cultures and peoples. These cultures, their ideas, and their knowledge will soon disappear unless we change our actions today.

Listening to the things that I was told at the Centre was disturbing, and it made me feel sad. The idea of peoples living in the middle of a vast forest, without technology, and knowing how to obtain everything they need from the rivers and forests around them has always been very romantic. It is an inspiration for me that there are still people living much as our ancestors might have – and by watching their society, I think we learn a lot more about ourselves and our own culture. They have so much to teach us if only we would listen – particularly in terms of living in balance with our environment. We are only just beginning to understand the need to protect our environment, but the Indians have always known this. It is tragic that the Indians are becoming extinct – and we’re losing 11,500 years of history and specialist knowledge which we’ve only just begun to hear.