Brazil's native Indians
Contemporary Review, August, 2004 by Joaquina Pires-O'Brien

Die If You Must: Brazilian Indians in the Twentieth Century. John Hemming. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]30.00. 855 pages. ISBN 1-4050-0095-3.

Whenever Marshal Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, the first head of the Brazilian Indian Protection Service, set out to meet a new group of Indians for the first time, he would say to his men: 'die if you must, but do not kill'. From this vignette came the title of this book, the last of John Hemming's trilogy about the history of the Brazilian Indians.

It is not easy to write objectively about indigenous peoples. Not only are there many conceptual problems in the myriad of attributes linked to their cultural identity but also too many agendas attached to their cause; from government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to religious missions and researchers. This difficulty is highlighted by the controversies that frequently reach the mainstream media after bursting out of the specialist publications. In Chapter Nineteen, Mr. Hemming gives an account of the furore that erupted in 2000, following the venomous accusations regarding two renowned scientists and their research with the Yanomami Indians. The charges were made in a corrosive book by the American researcher, Patrick Tierney. Strifes like that are due to excessive dogma and idealism and can only lead to lose-lose situations. An objective understanding of the indigenous peoples requires listening to what they have to say as well as an awareness of the many accessories that surround them. John Hemming happens to be one of those rare scholars who has not only such awareness but also the skills to write it all down rationally and succinctly. This book is a substantial contribution to the ethnohistory of the Brazilian Indians as well as to the ongoing debate in Brazil about the social policy on Indians. It is enriched by a beautiful collection of black and white and colour photographs of Indians and explorers; together with thirty-four carefully drawn maps depicting the areas where the Indians live. While those illustrations make the book more amenable to the general reader, the extensive section of 'Notes and References', detailing the sources used in each chapter, are of great value of researchers.

Unlike many American or European scholars who ignore the research by local scientists and scholars, this book cites many references to works by Brazilians in Portuguese. Thus, after the first chapter on Rondon, Mr. Hemming goes on to describe several Brazilians who followed in Rondon's footsteps: Orlando Villas Boas and his two brothers, Claudio and Leonardo. The iconic Villas Boas brothers, as they became known, started their careers as sertanistas (bushmen) in 1943, when at twenty-seven, twenty-five and twenty-three, they took part in the famous Roncador-Xingu expedition, aimed at mapping the wilderness of Central Brazil. After learning about the oncoming expedition they travelled to Aragarcas, Mato Grosso, to apply for the jobs posing as locals. Only after they were taken on did it emerge that they were the educated and enterprising orphans of a failed coffee rancher in the state of Sao Paulo. During this expedition, which was led by another famous sertanista, Francisco Meirelles, the Villas Boas brothers gained their first experience in contacting new Indian tribes, namely the Xavante Indians of Central Brazil. Years later the three brothers would play a major role in the creation of the huge Xingu Park, in Central Brazil, which turned out to be a safe haven for many tribes.

The author also happens to be one of the great twentieth-century explorers and his 1961 expedition to the Iriri River in the company of Richard Mason, his Oxford friend, is described in detail in Chapter Sixteen. The two young men did not simply walk behind their woodsmen. Armed with machetes they worked with their woodsmen in the arduous task of trail cutting. After five months hacking through the savannas of the Cachimbo Hills and then downwards from a low plateau into the uninhabited rainforest, the expedition ended abruptly when Richard Mason was killed by the Indians. Before departing from the last campsite Hemming left the machetes they had taken as presents for the Indians at the site of the ambush where the body of Mason was found, hoping to placate their anger for the benefit of the next strangers. In the years that followed that tragic incident, rumours spread about a very tall tribe of fierce warriors. Such myth was debunked after the Panara Indians were finally contacted and a photograph, showing Orlando Villas Boas and a Panara Indian whose height only reached his shoulder, appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide.

The most talked about Brazilian tribe in the second half of the twentieth century was undoubtably the Yanomami who live alongside the border zone between Venezuela and Brazil, whose culture remained virtually unadulterated until the mid-twentieth century. Their name, Hemming informs us, comes from yano, the communal roundhouse which can house from thirty to two hundred people. It is estimated that there are some 320 yanos scattered along their territory, and members of the yanos visit one another not only on friendly exchanges on the occasion of ceremonies and barter but an occasional intermarriage and also on unfriendly exchanges, including raids to seize women, considered their most desirable commodity. In November 1991, the Yanomami got their own park, an area of 9.4 million hectare (36,300 square mile), after a campaign that lasted more than twenty years. Unfortunately the Yanomami have endured a lot of troubles resulting from the development of the State of Roraima, such as the encroachment of cattle ranches and the trespassing on their territory by dispossessed peasants turned into gold prospectors.