Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamo

This article is of a man name Napoleon A. Chagnon and the Yanomamo Indians, and what he went through living with them for nineteen months. These indians live in southern Venezuela and part of northern Brazil. They have about 125 villages some not even known by outsiders. Their people love to fight wars, because they are fierce for reasons being the blood of "Moon". They are also known as the "fierce people". Chagnon stated that what impressed him the most was the importance of aggression in their culture. The Yanomamo would beat their wifes, pound their chest to dueling and organized raidings to ambush and kill men from enemey villages. Another tribe of indians called the Carib-speaking Makiritare Indians were pleasant and charming compared to the Yano's. They were excited to show Chagnon the courtesies of their system of etiquette.

Chagnon traveled by rowboat two and half days and reached a missionary mission settlement on the third day. James P. Barker, who was the first non-Yanomamo to make a sustained permanent contact with the tribe in 1950, joined Chagnon at the settlement. Barker had lived with this group for about five years. When they got to the village, Bisaasi-teri, Chagnon explains how it felt hot and muggy. They were greeted with a dozen naked men with their arrows drawn.

After just arriving Chagnon questioned himself on why he chose anthroology, and he was ready to quite and leave. He talks about how everything smelled bad and how everyone was filthy and nasty, but within two weeks he was smelly and filthy just he same.

When Chagnon had to prepare a meal, he describes how just plain oatmeal took forever. He goes through the details of preparing it and says when he completed the meal it was almost lunchtime. He would only eat once a day and lasted all day on mainly cafe con leche, a heavily sugared expresso coffee. Also, Chagnon created a water system as so he wouldn't have to walk to the river everyday. He would catch rain water on sheets of zinc roofing and funneled it into a gasoline can then ran a hose from the can to his hut.

The Yano's would always beg for his food so he started eating peanut butter which looked like animal feces. He would tell them it was cow dung so he wouldn't have to share. Furthermore, the indians would give Chagnon plantain seeds that were easy to eat, but in exchange they wanted steel tools. This is the cultural aspect I got out of this article.

My Opinion:

I can relate to the Yanomamo Indians because people (women/girls) in our country get kidnapped or stolen, and we have to fight to find them and get them back. Also, when they give someone something they expect something in return and thats how American are to. If I gave a friend $5 I would expect them to give me something or give the money back later on. Basically you can look at our states as being tribes of ours and in each tribe we have different ways. Not every one state is alike. In class we learned about how we percieve other societies and their way of living being different and strange to us. While I was reading this article they did seem strange. Especially when Chagnon said he would be eating and the Indians wanted some they would sit in his face and beg or they would refer to the food asking him what kind of animal semen was he eating. Also, at the beginning of the article in the subtext it as how would you have felt in Chagnon's place? My answer would be dirty, uncomfortable, irritated, and fed-up because I'm use to my way of life which is being able to take showers and brush my teeth and having meals prepared fast. I would have been uncomfortable living in mud huts and living among people different from myself. Then I would have been irritated and fed-up because of the way they would of acted towards me. Stealing my belonging, destroying things I worked hard on, and being in my face begging.

Eating Your Friends Is the Hardest: The Survivors of the F-227

Andes Mountains

The artice is basically about people who survived a plane crash in the Andes Mountains, and what they had to endure. 27 survived the crash but 70 days later only 16 were left alive. They had no food or fuel to start a fire, and it was very cold considering there was snow on the ground. They were starving and weak, and eventually realized they had to eat the dead. A few said God gave them the bodies to survive. They cut the bodies and dried the pieces on top of the plane. Some, not all started eating the pieces. They got the radio in the plane to work and heard that the Air Force was calling off the search. They had to find their way back on their own. When they realized this most of everyone started to eat the bodies except for a man and his wife. They said God must want them to die. Then they started cooking the meat which made it taste better, but they wouldn't eat the women's bodies. Most of the people were constipated and could not defecate. The people who were going for help used human skin as socks so their feet wouldn't freeze. They eventually grew tired of the same meat and started eating bone marrow, blood clots, and rotting meat for a variety of taste. When the three people left who were selected to go for help, a guy named Parrado told some of them they might run out of food and if so to eat his mother and sister. They were rescued four days before Christmas. When they got back home the Government wanted to keep the Cannabolism a secret. Survivors said that the bodies were from God, and wanted to tell the story. They buried the rest of the dead at the crash site. The survivors were like celebrities and they thought of themselves as special people.

My opinion:
I feel that this article goes along with the perspectives we learned about while watching "Freeks and Geeks", because the men who survived organized what job everyone had to do while trying to survive. They also had the people who were like the leaders. Specifically a man named Canessa, because he was the first to push the issure of eating the bodies and had a few friends follow his lead. Also, I can somewhat relate this to my life, because in the article it was mentioned that the bodies were no longer human, they were dead and had no souls. The meat was that of animals that they ate back home. So to look at it in that perspective all people who eat meat can relate it to their lifes. At the end of the article it said a Chilean paper asked in its headlines, "What would you have done?" I thought about it and tried putting myself in their position. What would I have done if I had no other way to survive but eat the bodies? I couldn't really answer that question because it's still compulsive to me to think about eating someone. I guess I will never know unless I ever get into that position.

Who am I?

I go by Krystal Kay, I'm very optimistic and adventurous. I've taken alot of chances in my life so far, and I would like to say thats how I have become the person I am today. My mom has been one of my biggest influences to do well, and she is also the most inspirational person I have in my life. I plan to graduate this January, and I've been thinking about a few colleges. Some being Georgia State, UCLA, Spelman, and U of C. California has always been somewhere I've wanted to attend school, and Georgia has the 2 schools I've been looking at for awhile now. In my perspective I have come along way. Meaning maturing and understanding the importance of education. One of my most biggest and important goal is to simply have a great life, and make the most of it.