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| Yanomami preparing hallucinogenic snuff.
©Victor Englebert/Survival |
The Yanomami tribe of the Amazon rainforest were branded 'the meanest
people on the planet' in a racist insult broadcast on the BBC this
morning. The remark, made by Dirk Wittenborn, author of the novel 'Fierce
People', was completely without foundation. Similar comments in the past have
been extremely harmful to the welfare of the Yanomami people. Survival intends
to issue a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Commission about this racist
statement.
Wittenborn's opinion of the Yanomami appears to be based on the work of the
highly controversial anthropologist Napoleon
Chagnon. Chagnon's work has been heavily criticised and discredited by other
anthropologists who have worked with the Yanomami, and described as thoroughly
biased and even fabricated.
The portrayal of the Yanomami as a 'fierce' and 'mean' people has been
extremely damaging to their welfare in the last few decades. In the 1970s Sir
Edmund Leach refused to back Yanomami land rights as he thought they would
'exterminate each other' and the British government rejected a funding proposal
for an education programme in the 1990s stating that any project undertaken
would need to 'reduce violence' amongst the Yanomami.
Up to 20% of the Yanomami were wiped out by disease and mercury poisoning as
a result of invasion on their land during the 1990s, they have been massacred by
gold miners invading their land and denied full ownership of the lands they have
lived on for thousands of years. More generally, the portrayal of tribes as
'primitive', 'Stone Age' and 'unchanged for centuries' is equally damaging to
tribal peoples and is often used to 'justify' racist policies towards them.
Survival Director Stephen Corry stated, 'Staff at Survival
International have known the Yanomami people for over 30 years and they are
certainly not 'mean'. Frequently people do not attempt to check their 'facts'
when talking about tribal peoples, enabling harmful misconceptions and
stereotypes to prevail.'
View the pdf 'The fierce people' in Related Material for more on this subject.
