Culture and Personality (Psychological Anthropology) -- University of Minnesota Duluth

Photo source:
YANOMAMO INTERACTIVE CD/ROM

Ocamo is My Town

(23 min., 1988 [1975], kanopy Yanomamo Collection Ocamo is My Town)
(use Virtual Private Network (VPN) (UMD) from off-campus locations)

A Yanomamö woman wih visitor

Other Videos:

Yanomami -- Wikipedia

Search for Yanomamö on JSTOR

"Darkness in El Dorado"

Yanomamo People.

Yanomamö people

Reviews

Bibliography / Resources

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"This film describes the work of an extraordinary Silesian priest, Padre Cocco, who has headed a mission on the Ocamo River since 1957. The mission's goal, he explains, is to soften the inevitable impact of "civilization" on the Yanomamo of this area. Baptism and monogamy can wait, the priest says; what is crucial is that the Indians are no longer seen as museum pieces, but as significant human beings and citizens in the larger Venezuelan society. At the same time, indigenous Yanomamo culture must be respected. Hallucinogenic drugs, for example, are the basis for communication with hekura spirits, and through spirit manipulation many diseases can be cured. Therefore, asserts Padre Cocco, the use of these drugs should neither be forbidden nor discouraged."

"On the other hand, change is a reality at Padre Cocco's mission. The film shows some of the changes that the mission has already brought: cattle and chicken raising, manioc flour, new fishing techniques, new medicines. What are the ramifications of these changes; what are the short and long-term effects of the mission's projects on nutrition, health, settlement patterns, ecological adaptation, social and cultural life?" -- Documentary Educational Resources

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Terms / Concepts

hukura = spirits
Yanomamó Kin Terms = Iroquois Terminology
Information on Venezuela -- The World Fact Book

Notes

Question: In Ocamo is My Town, what is old, compared with earlier times (as reflected in Magical Death, Children's Magical Death, Yanomamó: A Multidisciplinary Study . . . .) What no longer is there?
- What kinds of things happened to increase the Yanomamö dependency on the outsiders?

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Note: At the time of the filming the Salesian priest, Padre Cocco, had been there 14 years
language is now Spanish
children are taken away from families for school
skills
- farming
- cattle raising
- fishing
- sewing
- cooking /baking
- outboard motors
- making houses
technology
- tractor
- medicines
  - malaria preventative
- tools

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clothing
- western style (including one shirt with a motorcycle on it)
- for sense and decency?
food
- decrease in reliance on game
- imported manioc flour
- cattle
  - the first cattle came in 1965, but there was no bull
- fish
  - increasing utilization of fish changed the division of labor by sex re fishing
- chickens (but they don't eat them)
beliefs
- hekura
  - in Caracas it was too noisy for the hekura
- hallucinogens
  - the men can "go for months without using" hallucinogens, therefore they are not addicted
- 70% of illness "is from beliefs"
- Catholicism
  - palms
  - Christian art

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transportation
- air strip
- increased number of visitors, and the number of visitors continues to multiply
- outsiders include:
  - missionary priests
  - sisters (nuns)
  - tourists
    - built "hotel" for tourists
  - anyone who comes to the Yanomamö will be well received
    - and they give away much of what they have to them
maps appear, and change of geography
How can you help incorporate them into the larger nation?
- little by little
- the missionaries consider their job to prepare them so that when "civilization" hits them they will be prepared

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Cultures

Yanomamö (Venezuela)

Individuals

References

Other Videos

Children's Magical Death (8 min., 1988, VC 1337)

Magical Death (29 min., 1988, VC 1338)

Yanomamö: A Multidisciplinary Study (45 min., 1970, VC 1290)

Darkness in El Dorado Controversy --Texas A & M

Napoleon Chagnon Responds to Darkness in El Dorado

Is the book 'Darkness in El Dorado' by Patrick Tierney a hoax? What does the evidence say? -- Center for Evolutionary Psychology

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The Anthropology Resource Center. 1981. The Yanomami Indian Park: A Call for Action. Boston: MA.
Baker, Paul. 1972. Review of 16 mm film, Yanomamö: A Multidisciplinary Study. American Anthropologist, 74:195-196.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1967. "Yanomamö -- The Fierce People." Natural History Magazine 76:1:22-31.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1968. "The Culture Ecology of shifting (Pioneering) Cultivation among the Yanomamo Indians," Proceedings of the VIII International Congress of Anthropological land Ethnological Sciences, 3:249-255. (Reprinted in D. Gross, ed., Peoples and Cultures of Native South America. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1968. Yanomamö The Fierce People. NY: Bolt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1968. "Yanomamö Social Organization and Warfare in War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression by Morton Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Murphy (eds.). NY: Natural History Press.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1972. "Tribal Social Organization and Genetic Micro- differentiation," in The Structure of Human Populations, G. A. Harrison and A. J. Boyce, eds., Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 252-282.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1967. Studying the Yanomamö. NY: Bolt, Rinehart and Winston.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. "The Ecology of Swidden Cultivation in the Upper Orinoco Rain Forest, Venezuela." The Geographical Review 64:4:475-495.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1972. "Tribal Social Organization and Genetic Micro- differentiation," in The Structure of Human Populations, G. A. Harrison and A. J. Boyce, eds., Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 252-282.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1973. "Yanomamo," in Primitive Worlds, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, Special Publications series, pp. 141-183.

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Davis, Sheton H. 1976. Victims of the Miracle: Development and the Indians of Brazil. Cambridge Univ. Press.
Davis, Sheton H. 1984. "Highways and the Future of the Yanomamo." In Conformity and Conflict, Ed. by James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy, pp. 374-383. Boston: Little, Brown.
Hannah, Joel M. 1972. Review of Yanomamö: A Multidisciplinary Study, American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 36: 453-454.
Harris, David R. 1971. "The Ecology of Swidden Cultivation in the Upper Orinco Rain Forest, Venezuela." The Geographical Review, 61 (4) 475-495.
Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1971. Review of The Feast, American Anthropologist, 73: 500-502.
Lizot, Jacques. 1985. Tales of the Yanomami. Cambridge Univ. Press.
MacCluer, J., J. Neel, and N. Chagnon. 1971. "Demographic Structure of a Primitive Population: A Simulation," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 35:193-207.
Neel, James V. 1970. "Lessons from a 'Primitive' People." Science, 170: 815-822.
Neel, J. V., W. R. Centerwall, N. A. Chagnon, and H. L. Casey. 1970. "In a Virgin-Soil Population of South American Indians," American Journal of Epidemiology, 91:418-429.
Neel, J., et al. 1971. "Studies on the Yanomama Indians," Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Human Genetics. Human Genetics, September 1971, pp. 96-111.
Neel, James V. and Richard H. Ward. 1970. "Village and Tribal Genetic Distances among American Indians, and the Possible Implications for Human Evolution," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 65 (2):323-330.
Salamone, Frank A. 1997. The Yanomami and their interpreters : fierce people or fierce interpreters? Lanham, Md. : University Press of America.
Ward, Richard H. 1971. "The Genetic Structure of a Tribal Population: The Yanomama Indians. V. Comparison of a Series of Networks," Annals of Human Genetics.
Yanomamö women -- MedLibrary.org

Yanomamö medical training
Yanomami-HIlfe

Yanomamö education

Yanomami-HIlfe