Getting to Know Waiwai: An Amazonian Ethnography

262 Pages·1995·3.73 MB·English

by  Alan T. Campbell

GETTING TO KNOW WAIWAI
Getting to Know Waiwai tells the story of Alan Campbell’s encounter
with the Wayapí people in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon
Forest, by looking back from a century into the future to consider
the destruction of a way of life, and what will be left for these
people as the devastation of the rainforests proceeds.
Dealing with ethnographic themes such as material culture and
ecology, relationship terms and naming, political power and
morality, myths and cosmology, shamanism, birth precautions,
cultural change and ethnic survival, Alan Campbell examines the
complexities of anthropological theory in a way which is accessible
at the most introductory level, without losing any of its subtlety.
He presents the cultural description of the Wayapí society in the
context of the impact of the encroaching outside world. In doing
so he addresses the complex questions of contrast between elegiac
sadness for a lost culture and a romantic yearning for an imagined
past, the nature of fieldwork as a personal relation, and the
difficulties inherent in translating indigenous languages and
interpreting other cultures.
Getting to Know WaiWai is a refreshing, beautifully written and
original introduction to anthropology, and will be fascinating reading
for anyone interested in indigenous peoples, the destruction of the
Amazon forests, ethnicity and traditional cultures.
Alan Tormaid Campbell teaches Social Anthropology at Edinburgh
University. He is the author of To Square with Genesis: Causal
Statements and Shamanic Ideas in Wayapí (Polygon, 1990) and has been
involved with the Wayapí Indians since 1974.
Waiwai
GETTING TO KNOW
WAIWAI

An Amazonian Ethnography

Alan Tormaid Campbell
Imagine a forest
A real forest
(William Sydney Graham)

London and New York
First published 1995
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1995 Alan Tormaid Campbell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-43280-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-74104-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-12556-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-12557-X (pbk)
This book is for all Wayapí inheritors in years to come.
With thanks to my three kindly helpers
C.F. L.M.F. H.M.
Parts of Chapter 8 were published in Realizing Community:
Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Leonard and Isobel Findlay
(Saskatoon: Humanities Research Unit and Center for the Study
of Co-operatives, 1995).
The mouths of the Amazon and the State of Amapá
CONTENTS
1 TELLING NAMES 1
The Amazon Forest, the Old Caledonian Forest, and
the Battle of Wounded Knee. What names mean.
Arrival and first weeks with the Wayapí.
2 AT LONG HAMMOCK 28
In the woods. Men hunting. Women and manioc.
3 OTHER VOICES 58
Missionaries. Government officials. An exiled Indian.
4 ROMANCE 86
Understanding and idealization. Sprees, drunken-
ness, and dancing. Murder. ‘Lesser breeds without
the Law.’ Chiefs and power.
5 FOUR, FIRE, AND GIVING 119
Relationship terms. Four as the fundamental mode of
social logic. Fire as the fundamental mode of production.
Giving as the fundamental mode of morality.
6 REMEMBERING 157
Teaching literacy. What myths are. Narrative styles
in myths.
7 SUBMITTING 185
Shamanism and how to understand it. The
anaconda and birth precautions, ‘the couvade’.
8 AIMA 211
Cultural change. Integration. Ethnic identity and
ethnic survival.
REFERENCES 239
INDEX 247

1
TELLING NAMES
Over a spell of two years I lived in a remote area of the Amazon
Forest with a people called Wayapí. They had bows and arrows; they
wore loincloths; they walked barefoot; they spoke a language of their
own. For five centuries people like that have been called ‘Indians’,
and for five centuries people like that have been on the run.
Going to live with them is a serious adventure. It’s demanding
in the long term and it can turn dangerous in a moment. The
environment is a difficult one in some ways, insects and disease
for example, but it’s beautiful and baffling in its richness. And the
job of learning about the people is like a journey without end.
There never is a point where you can pack up and say ‘That’s it
done’. All you can ask is: ‘How far will I get in the time?’ Even
learning the language is like that, although to this day I hope that
with some more time I could really get to a stage where I felt at
ease hearing it and using it.
I found there was always an uncertainty about the venture. I
don’t mean surprises, insecurities, loss of nerve. I mean that in
spite of an overwhelming conviction that this was the most
fascinating enterprise that it was possible to undertake on this planet,
who was going to pay any heed to anything I learned? Who would
share the interest? Who would want to know?
The language effort reflected that uneasiness particularly well.
When I first arrived there were 150 Wayapí left. I had then to
plunge in to the desperate and painful struggle of learning an
unwritten language from scratch in the sure and certain belief that,
apart from 150 Indians, there would be no one else in the world
that I’d ever be able to converse with in this tongue. But that simply
didn’t matter. Rather, it didn’t matter then. It was only an uncertainty
when I looked back over my shoulder.
1