Shabono. ©1982 by Florinda Donner.

Part 0 - Author's Note.

The Yanomama Indians, also known in anthropological literature as the Waika, Shamatari, Barafiri, Shirishana, and Guaharibo, inhabit the most isolated portion of the border between southern Venezuela and northern Brazil. It has been roughly estimated that there are between ten and twenty thousand of them occupying an area of approximately seven thousand square miles. This territory encompasses the headwaters of the Orinoco, Mavaca, Siapo, Ocamo, Padamo, and Ventuari rivers in Venezuela; and the Uraricoera, Catrimani, Dimini, and Araca rivers in Brazil.

The Yanomama live in hamlets of palm-thatched dwellings called shabonos, which are scattered throughout the forest. The number of individuals residing in each of these widely dispersed hamlets varies between sixty and a hundred people.

Some of the shabonos are located close to Catholic or Protestant missions, or in other areas accessible to the white man. Others have withdrawn deeper into the jungle. And some hamlets still exist in remote parts of the forest that have not been contacted by outsiders.

My experience with the Iticoteri, the inhabitants of one of these unknown shabonos, is what this book is about. It is a subjective account of the surplus data, so to speak, of anthropological field research I conducted on curing practices in Venezuela.

The most important part of my training as an anthropologist emphasized the fact that objectivity is what gives validity to anthropological work. It happened that throughout my stay with this Yanomama group I did not keep the distance and detachment required of objective research. Special links of gratitude and friendship with them made it impossible for me to interpret facts or draw conclusions from what I witnessed and learned. Because I am a woman with an unusual physical appearance, and because of a certain bent of my character, I posed no threat to the Indians. They accepted me as an amenable oddity, and I was able to fit, if only for a moment in time, into the peculiar rhythm of their lives.

In my account I have made two alterations of my original notes. The first has to do with names. The name Iticoteri as well as the names of the persons portrayed are imaginary.

The second alteration has to do with style. For dramatic effect I have altered the sequence of events, and for narrative purposes I have rendered conversations in the proper English syntax and grammatic structure. The versatility of suffixes and prefixes gives the Yanomama language delicate shades of meaning that have no real equivalent in English. If I Had literally translated their language, I could not have done justice to its complexity, flexibility, and its highly poetic and metaphoric expressions.

Even though I was patiently drilled until I could differentiate and reproduce most of their words, I never became a fluent speaker. However, my inability to command their language was no obstacle in communicating with them. I learned to "talk" with them long before I had an adequate vocabulary. Talking was more of a bodily sensation than an actual interchange of words. How accurate our interchange was is another matter. For them and for me it was effective. They made allowances when I could not explain myself, or when I could not understand the information they were conveying about their world since, after all, they did not expect me to cope with the subtleties and intricacies of their language.

Also, the Yanomama, just like ourselves, have their own biases. They believe whites are infantile and thus less intelligent.