On those ‘uncontacted’ folks in Brazil…

A friend sent me a link yesterday to a BBC version of that story out of Brazil about new photographs of ‘uncontacted’ tribes, writing: “Isn’t this what archeologists dream of?” While it’s lovely to know that my close friends are thinking of me, it is a bit chagrining that my profession remains confusing, including basic distinctions in the respective objects of study of ‘anthropologists’ and ‘archaeologists,’ to say nothing of more complicated stuff to do with critiques of the pervasive Western fantasy of ‘uncontacted’ tribes, noble savages, and so on. And doesn’t the general public know that anthropologists today fetishize nanotech scientists as much as they do Amazonian tribes? (I imagine here images something like a Gary Larson cartoon, with pictures of ‘natives’ in lab coats threatening a drive-by photographer with bunsen burners.)

Anyway, Greg Downey has written up a very nice response to the Brazil story at Culture Matters, including his experience being asked to comment on the story for Australian radio. Downey writes:

I feel a little queasy that we have to sell the drive for cultural autonomy and respect for foraging peoples with the whole ‘never seen a white man’ drivel. The term ‘uncontacted’ is part of the problem; ‘isolated’ would be better, as these groups have seldom ‘never seen a white man.’ They usually have developed a habit of reacting hostilely when they do, perhaps suggesting that it’s not so much lack of contact, but certain kinds of contact that they have experienced.

Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.