Amazon Tribals

David Jones realizes their immune systems were weak, and he presents the question why: is it possibly because they were malnourished, exhausted, and stressed out due to Europeans? He speaks in detail about Indians being defenseless to pathogens, through homogeneity, and how their fates depended on their entire environment. Combined with their vulnerability, “it could well be [assessed] that the epidemics among American Indians, despite their unusual severity, were caused by the same forces of poverty, social stress, and environmental vulnerability that cause epidemics in all other times and

In a country known for its elegant and flashy display of beautiful and wealth, there are groups of people, particular in the Amazon Rainforest, who still live detached from modernity and lifestyle of the contemporary world. Even though some of those groups live in voluntary isolation, they are united in their fight for land and environmental rights. One of these groups is the Kayapo, a group of around nine thousand indigenous people, who lives in the village of Gorotire along the Xingu River. Although the Kayapo have famously evolved from an isolated tribute to active voice against numerous developmental projects proposed by the Brazilian government, other groups such as rubber tappers in the Xapuri area have also made significant progress in securing political and cultural rights. While these communities and indigenous groups often share different cultures and customs, they are connected through a common struggle: defending their cultural and political identity amidst oppression and neglect from the Brazilian government.

An excerpt from the above book states: ‘... an epidemic broke out, a sickness of pustules. It began in Tepeilhuitl. Large bumps spread on people; some were entirely covered. . . .[The victims] could no longer walk about, but lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, . . . And when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules that covered people caused great desolation; very many people died of them, and many just starved to death; starvation reigned, and no one took care of others any longer.’ This shows the severity of the natives contracting disease from the whites, especially since the immune system of the Indigenous North Americans was not so much to be called ‘weak’, however, it was vulnerable.

There have been many instances throughout history in which indigenous people have unwillingly suffered the consequences of foreigners’ interaction with their culture. In the case of the Huaorani two foreign groups, the oil companies and the missionaries, invaded their land and gravely affected the life they led in the Ecuadorian amazon. In the book Savages Joe Kane gives a firsthand account at how the Huaorani fight to preserve their land and traditional way of life.

Moreover, the immune system of the indigenous people also played a role. Simply put, a person’s immune system’s defensive tools are MHC types, most people have several different varieties of MHC types to protect against many different mutations of one pathogen but the indigenous people of America had homogenous MHC types.

Since the native Americans have lack of experiences with diseases, it’s hard for the Americans to handle and treat them.

     Napoleon Chagnon has spent about 60 months since 1964 studying the ‘foot people’ of the Amazon Basin known as the Yanomamo. In his ethnography, Yanomamo, he describes all of the events of his stay in the Venezuelan jungle. He describes the “hideous” appearance of the Yanomamo men when first meeting them, and their never-ending demands for Chagnon’s foreign goods, including his food. There are many issues that arise when considering Chagnon’s Yanomamo study. The withholding of genealogical information by the tribesmen, and how Chagnon was able to obtain his information is an interesting and significant aspect of this study. Why did Chagnon feel that this genealogical information was

When the English, French, and Spanish explorers came to North America, they brought terrible changes to American Indian tribes particularly in the way of new diseases. Native peoples of America had no immunity to fight the diseases that European explorers and colonists brought with them. Diseases such as measles, smallpox, influenza and chicken pox were deadly to American Indians. The Europeans were used to these diseases. They had antibodies that built up over the centuries to ward off these diseases, but the American Indians had no resistance to them at all. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were

This paper is written almost exclusively with information taken directly from the book Families of the Forest by Alan Johnson about the lifestyle of the Matsigenka Amazonian Natives. Information regarding the Matsigenka is almost solely derived from the work of Johnson unless noted otherwise. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Matsigenka people, their needs as a community and finally pose a development project that meets the needs described. Realistically this is only one possible solution posed by an inexperienced undergraduate student. The author is student who has never set

Everyone gets sick and throughout generations they find ways to handle the symptoms. The ways that people define and decide to treat their illnesses depend on their culture. The Native Americans have developed their own ways to handle their illnesses. Their techniques should be incorporated more into modern medicine; this would improve the way modern medicine is practiced.

The history of the Americas has certainly seen its fair share of violence since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Much of this violence, though certainly not all, has been inflicted upon the native peoples of North, Central, and South America. European colonization of these lands has had immense and broad adverse effects on the people already residing there; some of these effects were calculated by the Europeans, while some were not. Among some of the calculated effects were extreme and heinous acts of violence towards natives and theft of native land. Some of the effects the Europeans did not foresee were the diseases that would wreak havoc on the natives and the depletion of Native American culture.

Certainly very passionate about the topic, Mayor uses multiple ancient sources to try and weed out the myths surrounding the Amazons, and give the reader a view at the true origins of the Amazons and their culture. This essay will attempt to provide an unbiased review on the writings and opinions of Adrienne Mayor and the topic of the Amazons.

In the documentary First Contact: Lost Tribe of the Amazon, José Carlos Meirelles, Sertanista (backwoodsman),who worked for the Brazilian government’s National Indian Institute (FUNAI) for 40 years and is part of the leadership of the FUNAI's Isolated Indians group (Índios Isolados da FUNAI ) and coordinator of the Ethnoenvironmental Protection Front of the Envira River (Frente de Proteção Etnoambiental do Rio Envira (FPERE)) , in Acre, makes “contact” with a ”Lost Tribe”. The film focuses on a group of 35 “uncontacted” indigenous people, the “Tsapanawas” or “Sapanahuas”, who were filmed in June 2014 turning up at a village in Brazil’s Amazon near the border

Andre Bartsch. "Problems in the Amazon." WWF Global. World Wild Fund for Nature, 2015. Web. 17 September 2015.

The Indigenous people of the Yasuni region have lived a traditional life in the Amazon Rainforest for centuries and have made a conscious choice to continue their way of life. At the heart of their lifestyle is a harmony with the earth and