Living with Strangers: Huaorani and Tourism Industry in the 21St Century
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Aleksandra Wierucka: Living with strangers: Huaorani and tourism industry in the 21st century Living with strangers: Huaorani and tourism industry in the 21st century Aleksandra Wierucka , University of Gdansk, [email protected] Abstract Indigenous groups that made full contact with Western culture relatively recently (almost sixty years ago in the case of Huaorani) are targeted by Western tourists looking for “exo- tic” people and places. Huaorani people’s image fits into this category and it can be found in various media. Huaorani have quickly adapted to increasing numbers of tourists and their needs: they sell handicrafts, found their own tourist agencies, build “jungle lodges” in the tropical forest and become licensed tourist guides. This paper focuses on the image of the Huaorani created by various media, on tourists expectations, their fulfillment by the local people as well as tourist services provided by inhabitants of one remote Huaorani settlement. KEYWORDS: indigenous people of the Amazon, local tourism, image of the indigenous peoples Introduction Puerto Francisco de Orellana (Coca), one of the biggest cities of Ecuadorian part of the Amazon region, appears like most cities in this part of the world – concrete buildings, paved streets, small number of trees or other greens, multitude of cars and crowds of people going around their daily business. The city is the Ecuadorian outpost to the Oriente, the part of the country that encompasses the tropical rainforest, some of it still pristine, including the Yasuni National Park, the tourist attraction of the area. People coming to the city from all over the world are very likely to also encounter the information about the local inhabitants of the region, indigenous groups that have been here for millennia – Quichua, Shuar, Shiwiar or, most famous, Huaorani. The life of the latter is connected with the forest more than others due to their relatively late full contact with Western world (as recent as half of the twentieth century) and many local tourist agencies advertise local people as the main attraction of the area. Large-scale images of naked Huaorani hunting with blowguns and spears decorate the walls of agencies and serve as the unequivocal signal of what to expect during the offered trips. There are few big travel agencies in the city and also number of smaller ones and the latter try to overcome this stereotypic image of Huaorani by offering trips showing every day regular life of the people, but it seems that the tourists themselves are prepared to experience the “Indians living the same way as their ancestors”. Many ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 24 (1): 97–110. ISSN 1408-032X © Slovene Anthropological Society 2018 97 Anthropological Notebooks, XXIV/1, 2018 more elements in the city depict the Huaorani in the “wild” manner: reliefs and murals on local hotels’ walls, names and pictures in the stores, Internet cafes and other facilities visited by tourists. They strengthen their desire to experience something extraordinary and completely different from their everyday life. They also shape the image that brings false notions about the indigenous people. Introduction Majority of tourists coming to the Ecuadorian Amazon are interested in observing nature. The tropical forest is well known as a biodiversity hotspot of the world. Facts such as that there are more tree species in a small fraction of an Amazonian rainforest than in the USA and Canada combined are now widely known because they appear in so many articles, brochures, papers etc. It is true for animal species as well (Bass et al. 2010). The fact that the forest is also home to thousands of indigenous people seems to interest tourists only in the context of “ethnotourism”. However, these groups are promoted by many local tourist agencies under the slogans of “primitive tribes” or “Indians living like they used to for hundreds of years”. This kind of promotion happens even for the indigenous groups that had contact with Western culture more than four hundred years ago and live the same way as most people in Amazonian countries (e.g. Hutchins 2007). It is especially true in Ecuador, where many indigenous peoples struggle with the image popularized by various media. Local people are supposed to act and look certain way that does not undermine the tourists’ expectations – to some extent people living in the forest became, as John Urry stated, the part of the landscape itself (1992). It is a result of the history of Western ima- ging of the Amazon region as well as the people inhabiting it – the tourists’ expectations create the ‘conveniently anachronistic Indians’ (Hutchins 2007: 91) that are supposed to live the same lives as their ancestors and be the part of the forest. This is what the tourists are looking for: unspoiled nature inhabited by unspoiled people. And, quite surprisingly, in many cases that is what they find during their travels because it is made possible by the agencies organizing their trips. There is a debate in anthropology regarding the influence of tourism on cultural practices and the livelihood of indigenous people (e.g. Greenwood 2004; Ness 2003; Reid 2003; Wallace 2005). The conclusion is not an easy one to achieve as the matter is com- plex and as Wallace put it, hard even to describe as well as to define (Wallace 2005). The analysis of certain cases may shed light on the practice of tourism as well as its outcome and influence on indigenous lives. The case of the Quichua people described by Frank Hutchins (2007) serves as a good example of this. Tourism practiced among the Huaorani presents a different approach and is conditioned by different factors than those in the Qui- chua community, despite the fact that the two groups reside in neighboring lands. To collect data regarding services provided to tourists by the local people, I conducted research in one of the Huaorani settlements. The work was initiated in 2007 and subsequent visits (2007-2017) to the settlement allowed me to observe the changes in offered services as well as the attitude towards tourists. To achieve the understanding of tourism influence on the local community, I led interviews with people offering tourist services – both in the settlement and in the agency in the nearby city. In total there were 98 Aleksandra Wierucka: Living with strangers: Huaorani and tourism industry in the 21st century over thirty interviews conducted with mostly young people as well as the older ones that live off tourism in the settlement. All of the people that offer tourist services in the settlement shared their experiences with me. Participant and non-participant observations were also carried out in order to gather first-hand data. These were undertaken during my repeated returns to the settlement between 2007 and 2017. I also talked with tourists during their stay, noted their reflections and overall opinion of the experience. There are not many written documents that can be studied on site regarding tourist services – the exceptions are the local guides’ business cards and “Thank You Guest Book” which allows the tourists to express their gratitude or simply comment on their experience. These documents were also subject to analysis. Cultural context: the Huaorani Indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon had full contact with the so-called Western culture at various points in time. In the case of the Huaorani it was relatively recently – in 1958 Summer Institute of Linguistics initiated “peaceful” contact (Davis 1996; Wierucka 2015; Ziegler-Otero 2004; Yost 1981a and others). As a result, Huaorani were subjected to more intense influences of the national Ecuadorian culture as well as globalization processes than ever before. Currently there are over 2000 Huaorani living in over thirty settlements in the Eastern part of Ecuador, in the Huaorani Territory (in 1990 Ecuadorian government reco- gnized the Huaorani rights to the land in the area of 612,560 hectares) as well as outside of it. The society is divided into nanicaboiri – the longhouses consisting of kin groups. Affiliation to ananicabo (the singular form of plural nanicaboiri) is one of the most impor- tant elements of the Huaorani culture, as it is the basis for establishing further relationships within the society as well as outside of it. From it stems the division for “us”, “others” and “strangers”: all within the kin group are huaorani (people); the ones that are more distant relatives are huarani (others); and everybody else is cohuori (strangers, non-humans). This order is connected with many conflicts in the past as well as recently (e.g. Cabodevilla 1994; Rival 2015; Wierucka 2015). One of the most prevalent information about the Huaorani states that they are the fiercest warriors in the world. As I argued elsewhere (Wierucka 2015) war traditions are an important aspect of the culture nevertheless it is impossible to state for sure if they are characteristic for a specific time frame during the Huaorani ethnohistory or they are an immanent part of the cultural practices throughout the centuries. Nonetheless war traditions are most widely known element of Huaorani culture both in Ecuador and outside of it. The nanicabo in which the research was conducted lies relatively far away – it can be reached either by an almost hour long flight or by a two day long travel by hired canoe. Nanicabo is inhabited by almost a hundred people living in small clusters of houses. There are also several other buildings: a school with the teacher’s house and a wooden building serving as a guest house. All people in the nanicabo are interconnected through blood ties or marriage. Few of them are not Huaorani by birth (to be a Huao one needs to have huao parents and speak their language, Huao Terero), nevertheless despite being married to a Huao, they are still considered cohuori.