A photographic documentary of the world of the Huaorani tribe of Ecuador.

Huaorani of the Western Snippet documents changes that the Huaorani culture of eastern Ecuador underwent over a period of fifty years. Part I focuses on the geographical, historical, sociological and economical background of the Ecuadorian Amazon as well as the problems that indigenous groups of this region face. Part II describes different aspects of Huaorani culture, and its consecutive subsections present research completed by anthropologists in different decades of twentieth century, and the data is reviewed and supplemented with data gathered during my research (2007-2013). Part III explores the life of a Huao man, Miñe, who serves as a local shaman. His different social roles are discussed in consecutive subsections in order to understand what shaped him as a person of the Huaorani group.

This is a firsthand account of a small band of Amazonian warriors and their battle to preserve their way of life from the scourge of civilization. Joe Kane, author of Running the Amazon, returns to the river to search for the Huaorani, a nation of 1300 nomadic warriors so remote that their language is unrelated to any other on Earth. For millenia all comers have been turned away from their land, a territory in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon the size of Massachusetts, USA.

A beating heart. A talking tree. The rain forest. Love. Mysticism. Harvest. And above all, chocolate. Dear Coco and Leo,I miss you! We all miss you! The whole forest misses you! I hear their thanks and wishes in my dreams. I hope you do, too. Prepare for a journey into a world filled with what so many crave -- the sweet savoring of a chocolate drop. A drop that can melt even the most troubled realities. But in this nuanced, heartrending story, before good can emerge, there is destruction, the bombarding of a people, their culture, heritage, sacred beliefs, and the very soul that drives their traditions. This urgent, beautiful novel takes readers into the ugly realities that surround the destruction of the Amazon rain forest and its people. Acclaimed author Laura Resau shows us that love is more powerful than hatred, and that by working together, hope can be magically restored, root and branch.

This book explores representations of Amazonian Indigenous peoples in contemporary cultural texts. It analyzes a variety of mediums from novels and films to games and exhibitions, uncovering a distorted image of Indigenous peoples of the Amazon in Euro-American common imagination. The author suggests that these texts rely on a stereotypical vision that was shaped in the first decades of colonization. The chapters consider the formation of the image of Amazonian Indigenous people throughout history and some of the contemporary issues they face, touching on daily life and themes such as shamanism and cannibalism. Together they highlight the misrepresented image of Indigenous groups in the Amazon, who are portrayed as different, even strange, in relation to Western culture. The argument put forward is that both “exotic” and “self-exoticization” rely on the notion of otherness, leading to romanticization, patronization, and caricature. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of Indigenous studies, Latin American studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and comparative literature.

From Gustavo Politis, one of the most renowned South American archaeologists, comes the first in-depth study in English of the last “undiscovered” people of the Amazon. His work is groundbreaking and urgent, both because of encroaching guerrilla violence that makes Nukak existence perilously fragile, and because his work with the Nukak represented one of the last opportunities to conduct research with hunter-gatherers using contemporary methodological and the theoretical tools. Through a rich and comprehensive ethno-archaeological portrait of material culture “in the making,” this work makes methodological and conceptual advances in the interpretation of hunter-gather societies. Politis’s conclusions, based on six years of original research and on comparative analysis, are integrative and contribute to the identification of the multiple factors involved in the formation of hunter-gatherer archaeological assemblages.

MORE THRILLING ADVENTURES WITH THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE SAFARI GUIDE Plans are usually only good for one thing - laughing at in hindsight. So, armed with rudimentary Spanish, dangerous levels of curiosity and a record of poor judgement, I set off to tackle whatever South America could throw at me. Not content with regular encounters with dangerous animals on one continent, Peter Allison decided to get up close and personal with some seriously scary animals on another. Unlike in Africa, where all Peter's experiences had been safari based, he planned to vary things up in South America, getting involved with conservation projects as well as seeking out "the wildest and rarest wildlife experiences on offer". From learning to walk - or rather be bitten and dragged along at speed by - a puma in Bolivia, to searching for elusive jaguars in Brazil, finding love in Patagonia, and hunting naked with the remote Huaorani people in Ecuador, How to Walk a Puma is Peter's fascinating and often hilarious account of his adventures and misadventures in South America.

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

"Shadow of the Almighty" is the bestselling account of the martyrdom of Jim Elliot and four other missionaries at the hands of the Huaorani Indians in Ecuador. "Elizabeth Elliot's account is more than inspirational reading, it belongs to the very heartbeat of evangelic witness"--"Christianity Today."