Secrets of the Tribe

The documentary portrays the complex web of relations around the discovery of indigenous rain forest tribe, the Yanomami, by Napoleon A. Chagnon. These relations of anthropologists of different schools, and their conflicts has ended in or added up to the total devastation of the members of the tribe, as a consequence of the method and the objective of Chagnon.

Biological anthropologists, who in an attempt to critique the inaccurate representation of the Yanomani people as peaceful, develop the argument that the chances of transferring of genes (taken as the main motives of human 'subjects', the natives in this case) increases in war making tribes compared to more peaceful tribes. However, how can one prove this argument, especially when there is active interference of the anthropologists? Exchange of information and sexual favors with subsistence tools and diseases can leave an 'unacculturated' sphere, as the scientific approach requires?

We are presented a picture of the inner workings of the relations of power between anthropologists of various schools.(structural anthropology and biological anthropology appear, not as opposite poles but dominant elements of a complex network) The ethics of anthropological research has been compramised; and the whole process of research has been devastating to the community.

In short, this documentary presents a powerful critique of the practices of field work in the 60's and 70's, the disciplines relations with government/military complex and the question of the value of the anthropological knowledge over the lives of its subjects.