The Xilixana Yanomami of the Amazon
History, Social Structure, and
Population Dynamics
by
John D. Early and John F. Peters
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The Xilixana Yanomami, an Indian tribe of the northern Amazon Basin in Brazil, has been widely studied as the largest indigenous people to retain a traditional way of life. Breaking new ground, this book presents the most complete account available of the Yanomami before and after their encounter with the modern world.
Recapturing details of the group's history and demography back to 1930, the authors describe the fortunes and misfortunes of the Yanomami over a period of nearly seven decades, including 28 years prior to their first contact with the outside world. For each of eight villages, they present a complete demographic profile of fertility, mortality, and migration. They also explain some of the mysteries of Yanomami social structure and offer specific information on both the number and the reasons for the tribe’s infanticide, a topic that has received vague treatment in other writing.
The historical sweep of the book finds the contemporary Yanomami in a life-or-death situation, with their health seriously threatened by contact with infectious disease and their land being expropriated by government action and inaction. It also shows the impact of the modern industrial world on the Brazilian rain forest and its tribal inhabitants.
Presenting rich data--the sort that in many cases can no longer be gathered--in an even-handed way, this seminal work will become indispensable for anyone who would use the Yanomami to exemplify a particular theoretical position on a variety of topics and issues. And since genocide and ecocide continue among the Yanomami and in the Amazon, the book offers not only a significant scholarly study but also a major humanitarian contribution.
John D. Early, retired professor of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, is the coauthor of
Population Dynamics of a Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta (UPF, 1998), which received a
Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award, and coauthor of The Population Dynamics of the Mucajai
Yanomami.
John F. Peters, professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada, is the author of
Life among the Yanomami: The Story of Change among the Xilixana on the Mucajai River in Brazil and coauthor of
The Population Dynamics of the Mucajai Yanomami.
2000. 320pp. 6 X 9.
7 b&w photos, 22 figures, 9 maps, 59 tables, appendix, references, index.
0-8130-1762-9 Cloth, $55.00
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"A most worthy addition to the growing body of literature on
Yanomamology. The authors demonstrate that Yanomami demography is not simply a means to advance some theoretical fads and/or
the careers of academics, but that it has very practical humanitarian implications in the context of the ongoing genocide in the Amazon. . . . I most highly recommend this
book."--Leslie E. Sponsel, University of Hawaii
"Simply the best demography we have of a tribal horticultural people. . . . I expect it will become one of the standard reference works on the
Yanomamo."--Raymond B. Hames, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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