Wayana notes
These notes relate to the Wayana article at crosslines.ch. You may want to keep this pag open and not bother to click on the other links. Scroll down as you finish each note.
Avatar the movie: link
The official movie site: opens with a flashplayer movie.
Avatar is a much more subversive film than Daniel Mendelsohn gives
it credit for in the New York Review of Books.
He is right to underline James Cameron's concern about corporate misdeeds with
"security" (ex-military) employees (shades of Blackwater). And, of course, you
are supposed to pick up the Wizard of Oz Kansas reference and the nod
to Walt Disney's Pocahontas, as many did before him: Pocahontas = Avatar and James Cameron’s
Pocahontas Avatar, for example. But it is hard to believe that
audiences did not recognize the U.S. 21st century adventures into Muslim states
with the explicit mention of "Shock and Awe". I know I wasn't the only one to
start thinking we were also meant to see the Na'vi as having a lot in common
with Afghan tribals and Muslim natives who don't seem to understand that their
freedom does not include the ability to reject corporate exploitation. At the
same time, it immediately pointed up the differences. Similarly, the Wayana are
not direct victims of corporate power, just the market for gold. The gold
panners are not interested in the land except for the metal. The environmental
destruction is not caused by the poverty of local inhabitants or immigrants
seeking to scrape a living from poor soils. And the damage is only out of sight
because authorities on Earth are not bothering. It is not a universe away.
Wayana ethnographic details
Largest French commune
Wikipedia French communes site
Gold
A flyer on mercury, available at the Festival display tables and prepared by Merryl Schoepf in collaboration with OMNIA TERRA, says that in Guiana, the authorities have banned the use of mercury in its legal operations. "But how is it that the gold declared in 2004 was 2.8 tonnes when the gold declared for export with Customs was around 4.6 tonnes?" she asks.
French action
The French army carries out sweeps of regions where gold panners are reported, but the "illegals" are tipped off and only empty camps are found, the Wayana report in the film.
Population
Wayana Baseline Study 2006 (18 pages) by the Stichting Amazon Conservation Team Suriname
"The current total number of Wayana is around 1,500 people in Suriname, Brazil, and French Guiana. An estimated 503 people of (mixed) Wayana descent spread over 115 households are living in Suriname. Stating an / absolute population figure is difficult because the Wayana have mingled with at least 11 other – often related - Indigenous ethnic groups." (p7-8)
Tribal situation
Daniel Schweizer pointed out that the Wayana do not have an overarching tribal structure outside the village, so no-one can claim to speak for all of them. As the Wayana Baseline Study (below) indicates, it is not clear whether they have chiefs in the conventional sense. The film focused in part on one of these, a woman.
Daniel Schweizer
Dirty Paradise
See my blog for commentary on the film itself. The French title, Sale Paradis, is not really translatable except by something like F**king Paradise, which is really what is happening to the region. This is the film website
Associated blog
This is the crosslinesch blog on the festival and human rights issues.
Literacy
An anthropological study in 2006 (this link is to an 18-page PDF) described the schooling available locally as pretty minimal but said the Wayana have a high literacy rate: "Even though educational achievement is generally low, the majority of Wayana men and women are literate" (p8).
Ethnologue.org, however, gives a much lower figure overall (10-15%, or 20-30%) but it is hard to differentiate between Suriname, Brazil and Guiana from the texts. The film indicates that Parana's fellow villagers are literate enough to read Le Petit Indien and write letters to the authorities. It even opens with the children coming back to the village in a in a boat, apparently from school, wearing loin-cloths but with backpack "cartables" (the French school briefcase).
Wayana Boys video
There is a lot of mercury in the Moroni. The Maroni river forms the boundary between French Guiana and Suriname.
ILO Convention 169
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
The February 2010 issue of the French Amnesty International magazine for young children AJ! (a PDF) covers the convention on page 3 under the headline: France behind the times. It suggests that authorities are afraid that giving legal recognition to an ethnique minority might feed separatist ambitions in other French regions.
France adopted a 2007 Declaration on the same theme. Amnesty France points out that a the legal obligation in a declaration is not as constraining as in a convention.
"When will there be a French political project adapted to the modern world which takes into account the differences between each of us, to develop a multicultural policy?" asks the author Cécile Ringot.
Dominique Darbois
The French photographer, whose illustrated children's book Parana, Le Petit Indien stirred Schweizer's interest in the Wayana. Photo. Book cover.
Created on ... 10 March 2010