Assignment 9: Kayapo Environmentalism and Cultural Survival: Indigenous Resistance

Assignment 9: Kayapo Environmentalism and Cultural Survival: Indigenous Resistance

The anthropologist Terence Turner has worked with the indigenous Kayapo of the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, Turner has documented how the Kayapo have actively formulated a resistance against efforts to exploit natural resources in their traditional lands. Using the example of Kayapo resistance, Turner has maintained that indigenous people are capable of shaping political policy and that their knowledge of ecologically fragile environments around the world is essential to contemporary efforts to protect these places. At the same time that indigenous peoples are threatened by the efforts of state governments to increase revenue through promoting extractive industries such as timber and mining, perhaps surprisingly, wildlife conservation efforts may also threaten their way of life.Learn more about the Kayapo. Their struggle has become something of a model for indigenous environmental activism. With the assistance of anthropologists, indigenous advocacy groups, members of the U.S. Congress, and the international media, their cause has rallied support from around the world. Visit the website of the organization Cultural Survival and read the following articles: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/brazil/kayapo-choices-short-term-gain-vs-long-term-damage and http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/kayapo-plan-meeting-discuss-dams.

1. Describe the basic challenge facing the Kayapo.
   
2. How have the Kayapo organized to resist these challenges? In what ways has this resistance relied on traditional means of organization? In what ways has it required the Kayapo to adapt to their changing circumstances?
   
3. How is the experience of the Kayapo similar to and/or different from the situation facing indigenous peoples in Peru as described in the "In Their Own Words" textbox titled "Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru's Amazon"?
   
4. Do you think that the case of the Kayapo is an appropriate model for indigenous resistance or environmental activism more generally?
   
5. Read about the organization Cultural Survival while you are visiting the site. Does this appear to be an organization whose efforts you would support? Why or why not?