WAORANI BACKGROUND

Casey High
Goldsmiths, University of London

The Waorani are an indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador who live on a legally recognised territorial reserve of more than one million acres between the Napo and Curaray rivers, where their subsistence economy is based primarily on hunting, gathering and gardening. While most reside in relatively permanent settlements with airstrips and state-run schools, their long treks in the forest, residential movements between villages, and temporary migration for employment with oil companies operating within the reserve all lead to a mobile way of life. There are at present some 2,000 Waorani people living in more than 30 villages. All Waorani speak their native language, Wao-terero, a little-studied language that has yet to be classified among other indigenous languages of South America (Klein and Stark 1985). However, the emergence of state-run schools where only Spanish is spoken, combined with increased urban migration, threatens to replace the indigenous language in the near future.

The Waorani traditionally lived in highly autonomous and atomised households which maintained a remarkable degree of social distance from one another, coming together only occasionally for feasts in which inter-group alliances and marriage alliances were forged. Despite the establishment of semi-permanent multi-family villages in the wake of missionization in the 1960s, Waorani social organisation continues to be based primarily on household and extended family ties (Rival 2002, High 2006). While there are few reliable historical records on the Waorani, they have for many years held a prominent place in the popular imagination of Ecuador and beyond. As a result of their revenge-killings and resistance to contact with outsiders during much of the 20th century, they were until recently referred to as aucas, a Quichua term meaning “wild”, “savage”, or “enemy”. Their reputation for spear-killing brought the Waorani international fame in 1956 when five North American evangelical missionaries were killed on the banks of the Curaray River in an attempt to make “first contact”. This event, which was subsequently labelled the “Palm Beach” tragedy in missionary literature (Elliot 1957, 1961, Saint 2005), became one of the defining moments in 20th century evangelical missionary lore. The Waorani subsequently became the target of an intensive and highly publicised evangelical mission campaign by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Stoll 1982). The “history” suggested in the missionary literature that followed refers to how Waorani internal revenge killing and violence toward outsiders decreased dramatically during the 1960’s as missionaries established the now legendary “auca mission” (Yost 1981, Robarchek and Robarchek 1996). In 2006 the Waorani became part of an even wider cultural imagination as a Hollywood feature film about their ‘history’, entitled End of the Spear, was viewed in cinemas by millions of Americans.

Popular historical accounts, such as missionary texts and the recent film, tend to essentialize violence as a primordial characteristic of Waorani culture only to be subordinated by the efforts of missionaries and the state. Anthropologists have focused on the ethno-psychology of past Waorani revenge killings (Robarchek and Robarchek 1998, 2005) and how discourses of victimhood form the basis of Waorani sociality and cosmology (Rival 1996). More recently, anthropologists have examined the transformation of Waorani practices and relations with other Ecuadorians from a broader regional and historical perspective. High (2006) has described the ways in which Waorani communities have responded politically to oil development on their traditional lands through their official organisation, the Organisation of Waorani Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (NAWE), based in the regional capital city of Puyo. This work examines how Waorani ideas about self and community are expanding to include people and institutions with whom they have a history of conflict. In many contemporary contexts Waorani language and culture are marginalised in the face of these changing and intensifying inter-ethnic relations in Ecuador.

Despite the presence of missionary linguists in some Waorani communities from the 1960s to the early 1980s, there remains a striking lack of linguistic documentation on Wao-terero. Among the few language materials available to date are a preliminary grammar published by an SIL linguist in the 1970s (Peeke 1973, 1979) and a series of articles on a few specific features of the language (Pike and Saint 1988). The alphabet originally introduced by the missionaries has very limited use today in Waorani communities, and no in-depth linguistic research has been carried out in the area for at least 20 years. At present there is considerable Waorani interest in documenting the language, both within the communities and in the political organisation. One of the primary local concerns is that the very survival of Wao-terero is threatened by the exclusive use of Spanish in formal education, increasing urban migration, and the current trend of inter-ethnic marriage between Waorani and Quichua speakers. The present project is of interest to elders, who want to see their indigenous language acquire a greater cultural value within their communities, and to young people, who have expressed their interest in both acquiring a new skill in language documentation and an opportunity to engage more directly with the knowledge and stories of elders through transcribing and translating texts.

Bibliography

Elliot, E. (1957) Through the Gates of Splendor. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Elliot, E. (1961) The Savage My Kinsman. New York: Harper & Brothers.
High, C. (2006). From enemies to affines: Conflict and community among the Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology. London School of Economics, University of London.
High, C. (2007) Oil development, indigenous organisations, and the politics of egalitarianism. Cambridge Anthropology. 26 (2): 34-46.
Klein, H. and L. R. Stark, eds. (1985) South American Indian Languages: Retrospect and
Prospect. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Liefeld, O. (1990) Unfolding Destinies: The Untold Story of Peter Fleming and the Auca
Mission. Grand Rapids, MI: Harper Collins.
Peeke, C. (1973) Preliminary Grammar of Auca. Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Peeke, C. (1979) El Idioma Huao: Gramatica pedagogica, tomo 1. Cuadernos
Etnolingüísticos no. 3. Quito: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Rival, L. (1996) Hijos del sol, padres del jaguar: Los Huaorani de ayer y hoy. Quito:
Coleción Biblioteca Abya-Yala.
Rival, L. (2002) Trekking Through History: The Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. New
Robarchek, C. and C. (1998) Waorani: The Contexts of Violence and War. Fort Worth:
Harcourt Brace.
Rival, L. (1996) The Aucas, the cannibals, and the missionaries: From warfare to peacefulness among the Waorani. In A. Wolfe and H. Yang (eds.) A Natural
History of Peace. 189-212. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
(2005) Waorani Grief and the Witch-killer’s rage: Worldview, Emotion, and Anthropological Explanation. Ethos. 33(2):206-230.
Saint, S. (2005) End of the spear: A true story. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers.
Stoll, D. (1982) Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators
in Latin America. London: Zed Books.
Wallis, E. (1960) The Dayuma Story: Life Under Auca Spears. New York: Harper and
Brothers.
(1973) Aucas Downriver. New York: Harper & Row.
Yost, J. (1981) Twenty Years of Contact: The mechanisms of change in Wao (Auca) culture. In N. Whitten (ed.) Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern
Ecuador. 677-704 Urbana: University of Illinois Press.