The fold behind the knee

review by Stephen Corry of ‘The Falling Sky: words of a shaman’

by Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert

This should become one of the most Albert writes additional chapters, important books of our time. Davi glossaries and notes, explaining his Kopenawa has several stories to tell; role and providing a wealth of one is that the Amazonian background material – all this Yanomami aren’t impressed with comprises the final part of ‘The our society, and that’s putting it Falling Sky’. The whole is an mildly. The Indians have a way of impressive monument to a lifetime’s looking at the world which could collaboration, work, and friendship. hardly be more different than ours, and they want to keep it that way, or The opening volume is Davi’s at least some do. It’s a slap in the detailed account of Yanomami face to the West’s creeping, and cosmology, and it uncovers a markedly adolescent, view that if we worldview as complex as any major don’t yet have quite all the answers, religion. Tribal beliefs are not a we’re well on the way to finding simple matter; this is no primitive them. nature worship, nor is it for the squeamish. It’s is a multicolored We’ve failed to convince the vision, vaguely reminiscent of a Yanomami that ours is the only Hieronymus Bosch triptych, of correct way, and irrespective of beauty and love, but also of whether you believe that’s romantic dismemberment, ‘cannibalism’, fantasy, or at least food for thought, death and destruction. Vulvas are Kopenawa’s book is destined to ‘eaten’, which is how the Yanomami become a seminal work in describe sex, and a bad-smelling anthropology, and hopefully much penis incurs the disdain of spirits more widely. and leads to nowhere good. ‘The Falling Sky’, the first book by a The universe is multifaceted and Yanomami, is best described as four multilayered, an ever changing place, volumes in one. It was constructed full of hidden forces, helpful, by the French anthropologist Bruce mischievous, or murderous, all Albert, who recorded many dozens shifting and mutating depending on of hours of Davi talking, over a how they’re treated, and even on period of decades. He arranged and what mood they happen to be in. transcribed the result, went through However unpredictable, they do the edit step-by-step with Davi, who stick to certain conventions – and made amendments, and translated that’s a point I’ll come back to. the book himself, directly from Yanomami into French. (The English What ordinary folk perceive of all translation by Nicholas Elliott and this is just the tiny tip of a deeply Alison Dundy is excellent.) esoteric and exotic reality. The

1 skillful and highly trained shaman The Yanomami are far from unique ‘drinking’ yakoana snuff (it’s actually in discovering how to trigger the blown up his nostrils), takes on the brain into something other than the strength to enter this hidden cosmos. ‘ordinary’. Similar transcendence is He becomes not only aware of its of course embedded in humanity’s forces, good and ill, but can – indeed expression, its art and beliefs must – enlist them to try and defend everywhere, and to dismiss its his community. importance is surely shortsighted (unless we really want to be Actually, the shaman’s role is even controlled, rather than served, by more important. The hidden machines and computers). universe of the xapiri and many other ‘spirits’ requires constant ‘The Falling Sky’ is without doubt the intervention to maintain balance: most authentic account of the shaman has no option but to Amazonian shamanism ever work ceaselessly to keep life recorded. It’s the nearest thing to bearable, not only for his own sitting around a fire in a communal people but – astonishingly – for Yanomami dwelling (round, everyone, everywhere. As Davi says, thatched, and open to the center, a ‘We shamans simply say that we are bit like the Elizabethan Globe theater protecting ‘nature’ as a whole thing. viewed from above) and just We defend the forest’s trees, hills, listening, uninterruptedly, to a mountains, and rivers; its fish, game, shaman’s words. That’s best done spirits, and human inhabitants. We around dawn or dusk, those edgy even defend the land of the white times when the world really does people beyond it and all those who mutate, more magically of course live there.’ when there’s no electric light to blunt the daily drama. The snuff is hallucinogenic. Though not the same as the famous Davi’s explanation of the Yanomami ayahuasca or yagé, it’s certainly universe is a brilliant illustration of powerful enough to ensure that how people’s worldviews merge what you see when you ‘drink’ it such everyday reality with other defies rational analysis (though dimensions, which themselves are doubtless many will try). That’s seen as equally real. That may be another significant point: we might less understood in industrial have persuaded ourselves that societies than it once was, but it science and industry, based on remains demonstrably true: in spite numbers, Cartesian thinking and of the current attempt to reduce replicable proof, are the key factors everything to monolithic certainties, in human life. The shaman, on the our ‘reality’ really is that much of other hand, believes that all the what happens takes place inside us. ‘merchandise’ we produce as a Even when unnoticed to all except consequence is not as conducive to the person affected, such things our wellbeing as is human society – (love, is one example) can be the the resolutely complex and logic- most important and life-changing defying ways we treat ourselves and aspects of our existence. As each another. psychotherapist Carl Jung said of his autobiography, his memories of what had actually happened were

2 mere ‘phantasms’ of little Yanomami Park Commission (CCPY), importance compared to his started in 1978 by Albert himself, recollections of ‘inner’ experiences. Brazilian photographer, Claudia Andujar, and Italian lay missionary, Davi’s shamanic drawings are Carlo Zacquini. The trio built on scattered through ‘The Falling Sky’, earlier work, particularly by and his own autobiography anthropologist couple, Brazilian, comprises the second book in it. It’s Alcida Ramos, and Scotsman, another first: that of an Amazon Kenneth Taylor, and the campaign Indian whose life uniquely straddles was pushed onto the world stage by three worlds. Davi is an occasional, Survival International. though reluctant, world traveler; he’s also a spokesman and The focus was on pressing the internationally recognized activist government to abandon reserving for indigenous rights, who has the Yanomami only small pieces of already played the key role in saving land around a few communities, and his people. However, first and to campaign for a single Yanomami foremost he’s a of the territory. Stopping the road was rainforest, who saw his people die of essential. epidemics brought in by government agents and missionaries, later As he recounts, Davi soon became embarking on his long shaman’s the principal protagonist for the apprenticeship as a response. Unlike movement and began a series of many indigenous activists nowadays, uncompromising meetings with he’s unschooled and has always government officials, eventually lived in the forest. Close to sixty (his reaching the president himself. He exact age is speculative), he’s often first left – for Britain and visited tribes other than his own, Sweden – when he was invited by including some very recently Survival International to stand contacted. alongside it when the NGO was awarded the 1989 alternative Nobel Davi has never read anyone’s prize. Survival’s publicity catalyzed biography; his is a unique, first-hand the issue in a way never seen before account, standing on no other for any Amazon Indians. That trip shoulders. It’s unlikely to be was followed by one to New York, emulated. Although it hasn’t yet when Davi met the UN Secretary been translated into Portuguese, General. A German newspaper later Davi can speak that language, though titled him ‘Dalai Lama of the not with total fluency. He learned its rainforest’! Brazilian variant when employed first by missionaries and then the In the 1980s, a new and even more government’s National Indian acute threat had arrived on Indian Foundation (FUNAI). When road territory, an invasion of illegal gold building arrived in Yanomami miners. About twenty per cent of territory in the 1970s he quickly saw Brazilian Yanomami died as that it was going to destroy the epidemics of measles, cerebral Indians. malaria, and flu, swept the region, and as mercury waste poisoned their At first, he didn’t know of the food. The shamans saw these organization trying to save them, the illnesses as ‘epidemic smokes’

3 against which they lacked real comparative ignorance and power. They were a repeat of the superficiality. Of course, he doesn’t diseases which carried off Davi’s think we know much either, mother when he was a child. Her certainly nothing like we think we body had been hastily buried by do! missionaries and could not be found – an unthinkable desecration, as I’ll He’s visited Europe and North explain. America a few times, usually cities, which he sees as particularly If the destruction of American inhuman with their inequalities and Indians through illness might be overcrowding. He observes, ‘People thought to dilute the culpability of constantly ask you for money for the invaders who brought the everything, even to drink or urinate… diseases, there is certainly no Their hearts beat too fast, their mistaking the guilt of the miners thought is seized with dizziness, and who killed with gun and machete. A their eyes are always on the alert... few of these violent bandits were The endless noise and the smoke eventually convicted of genocide, but covering everything prevent you from only after they butchered a thinking right… In the city, you also community of Yanomami women, never clearly hear the words that are children, and the elderly, in a 1993 addressed to you. You have to press massacre which Albert describes in together to understand each other an appendix. (Unusually, it was when you speak.’ reported to missionaries and successfully prosecuted. Five miners In similar vein, visiting the Bronx in were eventually sentenced to a total 1991, he tells of the houses ‘in ruins’ of 98 years in prison, but only two and movingly recounts, ‘The people were ever jailed.) who live in those places have no food, and their clothes are dirty and torn… This is just one contemporary echo they looked at me with sad eyes. It of a litany of genocides which made me feel upset. These white Indians of all the Americas have people who have created faced over the last centuries, and merchandise think they are clever which continue today. Davi’s and brave. Yet they are greedy and do descriptions are the most detailed not take care of those among them ever recorded by a witness from the who have nothing. How can they victims’ side: they provide a think they are great men and find harrowing indictment of the real themselves so smart? They do not price of the resources stolen from want to know anything about these tribal lands, one which is never paid needy people, though they too are by those who profit. their fellows. They reject them and let them suffer alone. They do not even During Davi’s travels abroad he look at them and are satisfied to keep never finds much new: he’s already their distance and call them ‘the poor’. seen these places, or their They even take their crumbling ‘reflections’, in his visions. But this houses from them. They force them to hasn’t bred arrogance: he reiterates camp outside in the rain with their how little he knows when compared children. They must tell themselves: to the great shamans of yesteryear, ‘They live on our land, but they are and he berates himself for his other people. Let them stay far away

4 from us, picking their food off the Such explanations are often met by a ground like dogs! As for us, we will sneering, ‘noble savages’ riposte pile up more goods and more from uninformed cynics, particularly weapons, all by ourselves!’ It scared those whose faith in ‘progress’ me to see such a thing.’ blinds them to the suffering it inflicts. But whatever else the idea of giving This is no cartoon primitive ogling away all your own food might be in our wondrous creations, as invented terms of exchange and reciprocity, by colonial travelers, nor is it the it’s also an altruistic sacrifice to the impression sought by NYC & community’s wellbeing above the Company. ‘The Falling Sky’ is far personal. Davi has his own quite from being just a diatribe against different explanation: the animals, it ‘whites’, however, and a different turns out, recognize a ‘hunter who reaction was provoked by Davi’s generously gives away all the prey he visits to rural areas, including arrows, they fall in love with him.’ megalithic sites of southern Britain ‘These (hunters) do not need to see such as Avebury and Stonehenge. He the game from a distance. It comes gives his view of how the giant toward them… It feels nostalgia for stones came to be, and what role in the hunters the way a man misses a creation they fulfill. But he’s clearly he is in love with. This is why happiest at home, traveling only it lets itself be arrowed without effort occasionally when invited, to talk to and is happy about it.’ In other words, the ‘people of merchandise’. He Yanomami boys are taught that they wants us to know that we are will never become good hunters destroying the world with our unless they are generous and give insatiable hunger for more stuff – away their game. and he wants us to stop. Although ideas of service to others His worldview is of course in were once commonplace in our own diametric opposition to mercantile teaching, it’s difficult to see the trade and profit, which have become notion catching on nowadays in our principal measure of ‘progress’ business schools: ‘You can’t be now that government and business successful unless you’re generous!’ force everyone away from their This though is the most fundamental former self-sufficiency and into total of all Yanomami codes, extending dependence on money and goods. through life and beyond. As Davi This brings up an important point, explains, ‘We know that we will die, both about tribal societies and what this is why we easily give our goods we think of them. away. Since we are mortal, we think it For example, Yanomami hunters is ugly to cling too firmly to the never eat their own catch: they don’t objects we happen to possess. We do even bring it home but give it away not want to die greedily clutching before it reaches their wives’ them in our hands. So we never keep cooking hearths. In turn, they have them for very long. We have barely to rely entirely on what others give acquired them before we give them to to them. Little could make less those who might in turn desire them.’ commercial sense: the best hunters It turns out that what a Yanomami derive no benefit. really desires is not more stuff, but to know that his or her funeral will

5 attract genuine mourners. disparaging claims about tribal Generosity in life will bring guests to peoples which are repeated by the party, but when the funerary ‘popular science’ writers like Jared rites are over (and they can go on for Diamond and Steven Pinker. All this months), that’s the end. Not only is is regressing to a damaging 19th there no notion of recompense in century view of brutal savages who any afterlife, a Yanomami’s loved are supposedly waiting, and wanting, ones are so stricken at his or her to be tamed by the colonial passing that they simply strive to enterprise. Chagnon falsely alleges forget: they keep no memento, all that 45% of Yanomami men are the possessions of the dead are killers and that chronic warfare destroyed, and the Indians won’t reigns (at least, where he studied). even say their names again – it He further claims that women are would be too painful. The ashes of the cause of all this brutal the dead are either buried near the savagery. hearth or portions are ingested in banana soup at grand funeral feasts. Davi doesn’t deny that the Everything is destroyed. That’s why Yanomami fight: on the contrary, he the burial of Davi’s mother without describes it. The Indians hold ritual cremation was so barbaric. duels with clubs, which can be vicious but are not intended to be All this of course runs contrary to lethal. They also occasionally raid our own thinking: the memorials for houses with the explicit intention of our dead, our burials, and especially arrowing ‘one or two reputed the displays of bodies and bones in warriors’. This is done invariably out museums and churches, are the of revenge for a previous killing, ultimate in savagery as far as the whether ‘real’ (in our terms) or Yanomami are concerned. Davi brought about through sorcery. explains these anxieties in what I call the third book in ‘The Falling Sky’. Such raiding has all but evaporated This is a collection of essays on in many areas where the Yanomami Yanomami life, and on our own. It’s face increasing threats from outside, partly Davi’s view of us, turning the but Davi is scathingly dismissive tables on those (like me) who seek about the indictment that the to describe indigenous peoples. Yanomami were ever more violent than ‘whites’. The latter, he reminds It includes a chapter on ‘war’ which us, ‘constantly tell us that it is wrong is of particular importance in the for us to arrow each other for revenge. renewed row about whether an Yet their ancestors were so bellicose American anthropologist’s they traveled great distances to characterization of the Yanomami as plunder the land of people who had ‘the fierce people’ is really just done them no harm!’ misrepresentation. Napoleon Chagnon built a lucrative career on He explains, ‘We never killed each his accounts of the incidence, nature, other without restraint, the way they and rationale of Yanomami raiding. do. We do not have bombs that burn Although he has been long refuted houses and all their inhabitants… we by practically every other scholar to do not kill… for merchandise, land, or work with the tribe, Chagnon has oil, the way they do. We fight about now become a cornerstone for human beings. We go to war for the

6 sorrow we have for our brothers and cry! They really are in love with it! fathers who have just died… But They go to sleep thinking about it like unlike white people, [we] would never you doze off with the nostalgia of a kill women and children like the gold beautiful woman.’ ‘They… always prospectors did…’ desire new goods… I fear that this euphoria of merchandise will have no He is similarly contemptuous of the end and that they will entangle claim that the cause of ‘war’ was themselves with it to the point of women: ‘Our Elders certainly did not chaos. They are already constantly arrow each other because of women… killing each other for money in their It was a question of avenging the cities and fighting other people for dead, not of fighting over women.’ minerals and oil they take from the Davi is equally unequivocal when it ground.’ comes to sticking to the ‘rules’ of Although ‘The Falling Sky’ leaves no raiding. For example, enemies’ doubt that the Yanomami ‘way of bodies must always be recovered by being’ is very different than ours, their families, to enable them to our shared humanity is also conduct proper funeral rites. It reflected: ‘even though we would be unthinkable for any [Yanomami] are other people than Yanomami to try and prevent that, they are, we have a mouth and eyes, whatever their level of animosity. blood and bones, just like white This raises a point about whether people. We all see the same single tribal, as opposed to industrialized, light. We are all hungry and thirsty. societies generally abide by their We all have same fold behind our own principles. Although Napoleon knees so we can walk!’ The Chagnon condemns the Yanomami Yanomami, together with most as treacherous, one might ask which indigenous peoples, are still seen as society is the more hypocritical. less than ‘us’, so it’s understandable After all, do we not pontificate about that Davi unknowingly echoes the human rights and the law, and are most famous Untermensch lament in not both routinely violated as much literature – Shylock’s, ‘If you prick us, by governments and corporations, as do we not bleed?’ they are by self-professed outlaws Perhaps it’s even the case that Davi’s and terrorists? The point is not lost overall vision isn’t as different to on Davi, who observes, ‘The long-ago ours as it might appear, perhaps we white people’s elders drew what they are all a little bit of shaman, striving call their laws on paper skins, but to constantly to maintain health and them they are only lies! They only pay balance both in our own lives and in attention to the words of what we see and feel around us. merchandise!’ Aren’t we too trying to figure out It is these goods which perplex Davi where our boundaries lie, and what most of all, and few will deny the effect we have on our own worlds? accuracy of his observations: ‘This The Yanomami still face several merchandise is truly like a fiancée to threats to their survival. Davi openly them! Their thought is so attached to recognizes the one from inside: it that if they damage it while it is still ‘Maybe the white people will be able shiny, they get so enraged that they to confuse the minds of our children

7 and grandchildren to the point that justice is not simply an option, but is they will stop seeing the spirits and vital in saving the world. (As such, hearing their songs? Then, without they might be seen as assuming shamans, they will live helpless, and something of the shaman’s mantle their thought will get lost. They will themselves!) Davi’s book is an spend their time wandering on the invaluable tool in this everlasting roads and in the cities. They will be struggle; but, primarily, it’s a searing contaminated there by sicknesses that testament to the immense variety of they will pass on to their wives and human genius which has blossomed children. They will not even think over thousands of generations. about defending their land anymore.’ Our planetary garden (of Eden?) still Although the campaign for grows many flowers, many different Yanomami land finally won in 1992, ways of looking at the world. Are we other external threats remain: the really intending to mow down every miners are still there and still one except our own, are we really violently taking the gold in spite of going to allow none other ever to being evicted, repeatedly but seed again – and all this, just so the halfheartedly, by the authorities. vultures can grow fleetingly fatter There is also a nationwide threat to from the spoils? all Indians in Brazil now that the escalating price of raw materials As well as an unconscionable increases the incentive to steal tragedy, wouldn’t that be a indigenous land: Indians’ rights are dereliction of duty to our now threatened in the same way descendants? Davi Kopenawa thinks they were a generation ago. that if we destroy the Yanomami, we destroy ourselves. He might have a The battle is engaged. It’s between point. For readers who can cope those who exploit the idea of with prejudices being rattled, Davi’s ‘development’ to increase their own message deserves to be heard. short-term wealth at others’ long- term cost, and those who yearn for ideas about human rights to mutate into living facts, and believe that really would be progress. The latter include some who believe that

‘The Falling Sky: words of a Yanomami shaman’, by Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert, translated by Nicholas Elliott & Alison Dundy, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

Stephen Corry is the author of ‘Tribal peoples for tomorrow’s world’, and director of Survival International.

8