Concluding remarks invited for the international conference on "Tragedy in the Amazon: Yanomami Voices, Academic Controversy and the Ethics of Research" held on April 5-7, 2002, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
This scandalous controversy is terribly complicated. It is easy to get lost among the many details and lose sight of the larger picture--- the issues of professional ethics and human rights that transcend the particulars. What is the big picture? In particular, what are the transcendent issues? What lessons have we learned? I'll keep it short and simple, and merely identify and discuss four main points. I'll try to be brief to allow further discussion to add, delete, or revise what I say.
1. Unprecedented
By now it should be obvious that this really is the ugliest scandal and controversy in the entire 150-year old history of anthropology. Nothing else even begins to come close in scale of complexity, scope, and ugliness. Ugly in terms of the multitude of numerous and diverse allegations in Patrick Tierney's book. Ugly in terms of the way this has been handled--- leaking of Turner-Sponsel memo into cyberspace, defense tactics by partisans in defending Napoleon Chagnon, the AAA official response (including the stacked panel Thursday evening at the AAA convention in San Francisco) and appointing members to Task Force Raymond Hames and Trudy Turner, the procedures of the task force and the contents of their preliminary report, those in academia and the National Academy of Sciences who advocated boycotting not only Tierney's book but the entire publishing house of W.W. Norton, and on and on ad nauseam.
However, the unprecedented nature of this scandalous controversy also provides an unprecedented opportunity to greatly improve anthropology and its relation to the people we live and work with in field research. We can use the attention, concern, and momentum of this scandalous controversy to forge a better anthropology which is more responsible, relevant, and responsive to the needs and concerns of the communities who host research. That is something that the Dakota Sioux Indian Vine DeLoria, Jr., called for back in 1969 in his book Custer Died for Your Sins. That is something that the mostly Latin American anthropologists called for in the Barbados Declaration in 1971. Etc. Perhaps, thanks to the Pandora's box opened by Patrick Tierney and the aftermath, far more anthropologists will pay serious attention to these and other appeals.
2. Volcanic eruptions
I live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on top of volcanic islands, in Hawai`i, which is the most remote island in the world. Volcanic eruptions are of two basic types, those that erupt slowly and almost continuously like Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai`i, and those that explode suddenly with terrific force and destruction like Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. For three decades, a comparable slow and fairly continuous volcanic eruption has been going on in anthropology--- numerous and diverse individuals have criticized Chagnon's work and conduct. But finally, in the year 2000, something analogous to the second type of eruption has occurred, the explosive one, triggered by the publication of Tierney's book and preceded by two smaller explosions--- his article in the New Yorker, and the Turner-Sponsel memo. Volcanoes of either kind involve long-term processes--- and so does this controversy. It may continue to flow slowly, but there may be occasional explosions--- perhaps when the final report of the AAA Task Force is released this May, at the next AAA convention in late November with resolutions in the business meeting or discussions and debates in other forums, when Chagnon publishes his next book and/or a new edition of his now infamous case study, when some anthropologists, historians, journalists, and/or other investigators publish a critical review of this whole affair or aspects of it. This scandalous controversy will persists for decades and probably even beyond our lifetimes, judging from what has transpired with other controversies, like the Tasaday in the Philippines.
3. Phases of Yanomami Studies
It is also predictable that historians of Yanomami studies may recognize three distinct phases and types of researcch which might be labeled B.C. and A.D.; that is, B.C. = before Chagnon, and, A.D.= after darkness! Thus, three distinct periods, before during, and after Chagnon may be identified.
Furthermore, I predict that in Yanomami studies the A.D. phase may well be a tectonic or seismic shift of sorts, to again use a geological analogy; that is, a major new direction or emphasis with far more applied, advocacy, and collaborative work. This may happen most of all in Venezuela, which appears to have lagged behind Brazil, perhaps because the Yanomami situation in Brazil was more urgent and grave with the Northern Perimeter highway construction in the 1970s followed by the gold mining invasion in the 1980s and beyond. Moreover, apparently there is other mineral wealth like uranium and cassiterite or tin in Yanomami territory, and these and other natural resources may be the target of other invasions and disruptions in the future. One Achilles heel of human rights efforts is that they are largely reactive --- actions after violations have transpired. Relatively few initiatives for human rights are proactive or preventative. In the Yanomami and other cases, I think it is important to be far more proactive, and especially to help Yanomami gain more information, technology, skills, and contacts to help them better respond to new challenges in the future. Certainly efforts already long under way in Brazil and to some extent in Venezuela to develop Yanomami school curricula and teachers, health clinics and health workers, and the like are major accomplishments in this direction. But much more needs to be done by applied anthropologists working as closely as possible in collaboration with Yanomami.
4. Enlightenment
In Western society we usually think of the "Age of Enlightenment" as the period in European intellectual history of the 18th centuries. However, the 21st century could become a new age of enlightenment for anthropology and other arenas. This new research direction, perhaps even a new paradigm, will be a reflection of a greatly elevated level of information, awareness, sensitivity, and responsiveness in terms of professional ethics on the one hand and on the other advocacy anthropology and human rights. Here we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are already numerous superb guidelines in the Belmont Report of 1976, the Barbados Declaration of 1971, the Belem Declaration of 1990, the AAA Code of Ethics of 1998, and related work of the Committee on Ethics including the recent set of briefing papers, etc. There are also concrete cases of exemplary research by anthropologists including many of the anthropologists in this room and in the case of Brazilian Yanomami the work of the Pro-Yanomami Committee (Commission)(CCPY), Bruce Albert, Gale Goodwin Gomez, Alcida Ramos, and others. Unfortunately, I do not know as much about applied and advocacy anthropology with Yanomami in Venezuela because there doesn't appear to be anything comparable to CCPY there with news alerts, a web site, and the like, although I understand that Jesus Cardozo and Hortensia Arias-Caballero are developing such mechanisms. It is unfortunate that the discussions and debates surrounding the scandalous controversy brought to light by Tierney has not included more attention to the positive contributions of many anthropologists, and some quite heroic in risking their life in the face of deadly diseases and epidemics. I also wish Tierney had devoted a chapter to this aspect of anthropology to provide a more balanced account, but maybe the positive and constructive contributions of anthropologists working with the Yanomami for decades and during this scandalous controversy might be the subject of another book by Tierney or some other author.
In all of this I have not considered modernism/postmodernism, sociobiology/culturology, Hobbes/Rousseau, science/humanities, basic/applied, etc. These are all simplistic, reductionistic, and false dichotomies that serve as convenient smoke screens for partisans defending Chagnon. They are of secondary or tertiary importance, if at all, in my opinion. Some aspects of them may be valid and relevant concerns for academics, but the Yanomami and other indigenous societies and ethnic minorities which are threatened or endangered are not an academic matter.
We really need to keep focused on what is most important of all--- get our priorities straight and keep them straight--- the survival, welfare, rights, and self-determination of the communities who host and collaborate in our research. Conscience must take priority over science. Science without conscience is one of the factors which led to the biomedical experimentation in Nazi concentration camps, the irradiation experiments in the Marshall Islands, and the continuation of data collection in the midst of the measles epidemic among the Yanomami in 1968. James Neel and Centerwall, both medical doctors, and others did provide some treament to Yanomami suffering from measles and other health problems and thereby relieved some suffering and saved some lives. However, they and the rest of the research team also continued to collect their scientific data, which means that they spent time on science, time which could have been better used for medical care of suffering, sick, and dying Yanomami. A lethal epidemic is no time for business as usual! How many more lives might have been saved if all scientific data collection had been suspended temporarily in favor of medical treatment? How many more lives might have been saved if, knowing in advance of travel to the Amazon that an epidemic was underway, the scientific expedition would have been turned into a full-time humanitarian effort with more medical personnel, equipment, and supplies for such a crisis? Did the medical doctors on the expedition take the Hippocratic oath, or a hypocritical oath?
Back in 1995, I edited a book entitled--- Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia: An Ecological Anthropology of an Endangered World. In the last chapter which I wrote included was a table suggesting a paradigm shift. Some of this shift is actually taking place now as a result of this controversy and other factors, and hopefully more of the shift will occur in the near future. Furthermore, today, more than ever before, the Amazon and its people are endangered in many areas because of the new push for energy resources, principally oil and gas, and especially in Ecuador and Peru. The continued growth of the world population and economy will put increased pressure on the Amazon and other regions for resource extraction. The current presidential administration in the U.S.A. under the cover of its so-called "war on terrorism" is engaged in a war by the forces of the energy industry to control these resources. Under these circumstances, more than ever anthropologists and others have to identify and maintain their research priorities.
5. Personal note
Finally, on a more personal note, when I was a graduate student in anthropology during 1965-68 at Indiana University and 1970-73 at Cornell University, in those six years of course work, not once did the question of professional ethics or human rights ever arise, even in a graduate seminar on Indigenous Peoples of Lowland South America, unless I raised the question. I wonder if the situation is much different today at such universities. In my own teaching at the University of Hawai`i, I include discussions on professional ethics and human rights whenever I can work them into my courses. Furthermore, I insist that my graduate students write a statement on their professional responsibility to the host community where they conduct dissertation research. We all have to do far more to raise the level of information, awareness, sensitivity, and responsiveness regarding professional ethics and human rights in respect to the communities who host and collaborate with our research.
One other personal observation, but also one with broader implications may be mentioned. In 1975-76 I conducted fieldwork among a group of northern Yanomami called Sanema who live in the Erebato River area of the Venezuelan Amazon. This research was for a portion of my doctoral dissertation at Cornell. A portion of this research was supported by a grant from the Latin American Studies Center at Cornell. Even though I lived with Sanema for only six months, they taught me many things that complemented my six years of graduate studies at Indiana University and Cornell University. They taught me about the ecology of the tropical forest, hunting prey animals in it, and related matters. They taught me about our common humanity, something I had observed before in the Peruvian Amazon during a visit to the Yagua people and in the Awash region of Ethiopia with Kerayu people. The Sanema also taught me that even though the Yanomami have been mislabeled "the fierce people" violence was not an integral part of everyday life for everyone everywhere, a false but inevitable impression for readers of Chagnon's case study. Indeed, I was far more impressed with the Sanema's wonderful sense of humor, their basic happiness, their competence in the forest and in their society, their warm hospitality and courtesy, and so on. In short, the Sanema I lived with and others I visited in nearby villages were not the "fierce people" in the sence of violent “savages,” even if they were clearly brave and courageous people. Indeed, they weren't fundamentally different as humans from several other indigenous groups I have lived and worked with in the Venezuelan Amazon, including the Ye'kuana, Geral, and Curripaco, and in the Gran Sabana the Pemon.
Those positive impressions the Sanema gave me have had a lasting affect on my life and career. Even though I have moved on to research in Thailand since the mid-1980s, I have retained an interest in the Yanomami, followed the literature and their situation as closely as possible, and published on their plight in edited books by Barbara Johnston and elsewhere. Anthropologists who have far more extensive experience and knowledge with the Yanomami need to do everything possible to better inform the general public of the humanity of these people, who have clearly been dehumanized by Chagnon's persistent depiction of them as essentially “Hobbesian savages.”
At the time I left for Cornell to do field research with the Yanomami and until recent months, I never anticipated or imagined that there might be Yanomami visiting Cornell. This is a wonderful turning point in history of the Yanomami and of anthropology. I hope that in the future some Yanomami might even be students at Cornell or other universities, and study medicine, or maybe anthropology. Perhaps after a century of various anthropologists studying the Yanomami, some Yanomami might even study American culture, anthropologists, and the AAA. Perhaps a Yanomami anthropologist could help explain why some Americans are so aggressive and fierce!
During the last two years or so since September 2000 when this controversy first exploded after the Turner-Sponsel memo was carelessly or maliciously leaked into cyberspace by some AAA official (not Turner or Sponsel), there have been times when certain developments have made me embarssed and even ashamed to be associated with anthropology. But some of the anthropologists in this conference and others have helped me maintain a faith in the basic goodness and decency of most anthropologists. Likewise, seeing and hearing Yanomami representatives in this conference has helped me maintain a positive and constructive attitude. The Yanomami need help from anthropologists and others in coping with the practical problems they face--- health, land and resource rights, education, and so on. However, anthropologists also need help from the Yanomami to promote a humanistic science which is more responsible, relevant, and responsive to the needs and concerns of the communities who host and collaborate in anthropological research. Together we may improve our societies for a better future in the 21st century.
Les Sponsel