Secrets Of The Tribe: Putting Anthropolgists Under The Scanner

What is the size of an average African family? Five:the parents, the two children and the French anthropologist studying them. You could think of anthropologists as dashing figures bravely going into and unravelling the secrets of pre-modern societies or is there a more sinister side to them?

At the recent Sundance film festival in Utah, USA, Jose Padilha’s Secrets of the Tribe (Brazil, 2009, 110 mins, colour) revisited an old anthropological wound. Western anthropologists in the ‘60s and ‘70s began studying the Yanomamo people in Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomami lived for a long time beyond the influence of the modern world and suddenly became one of the most studied and filmed pre-modern societies.

The research set off a firestorm of controversies. There were allegations the researchers gave the Yanomami machetes in exchange for their cooperation. There were reports of sexual abuse of Yanomami boys and girls by the anthropologists who allegedly caused a measles epidemic among them and denied them medical treatment. Patrick Tierney documented these in his book Darkness in El Dorado, and anthropologists are still sharply divided over the book and the allegations.

Padilha allows the anthropologists to tell their side of the story and the Yanomami theirs, deconstructing the legacy of colonial anthropology, its claims of objectivity and the very notion of the “other”. Padilha has another acclaimed documentary to his credit, Bus 174.