Technology and Gender in the Heart of the Amazon: an interview with Orlando Lemos and Fabiola Morais

One of the greatest challenges of trying to map global changes in contemporary culture is dealing with the enormous disparities that are found among different social groups, many of which are still unexposed to recent technological developments. It is a matter of fact that, despite all the advances in trying to bridge the digital divide, there are millions of individuals who still have no access to a standard of living that would only seem appropriate to the 19th century… It is hard to imagine how the 21st century could fit into a context in which many still have neither the skills to operate the tools that would enable them to become citizens of the digital – nor access to these very tools. Millions still have no access to basic electricity, clean water, and proper food. Poverty is still as contemporary as it has always been.

When we face native tribes who are struggling not only with their physical survival, but also with the survival of their native culture, trying to identify how these local developments could possibly fit into a broader picture of a global contemporary culture can be a difficult task. In the heart of the Amazon, in spite of having very little access to information and media, native tribes are evolving culturally, incorporating elements that seem to resonate with global changes as a whole.

One of the areas in which we can identify similarities between global and local cultural trends are how gender issues are being translated and expressed in native tribes, as a reaction to the changes brought about by technology in the native lifestyle, reconfiguring traditional gender roles. Orlandos Lemos and Fabiola Morais, two visual artists from Goias, Brazil, are working right now on the final editing of a documentary film about the Daw tribe from the Rio Negro amazonian region. I have asked them some questions that might bring new insights about how local cultures can develop as hybrids that integrate traditional cultural elements to contemporary trends.

Renata: The Dâw tribe is the smallest tribe in the rio negro region. the urgency implied in saving a tribe from its literal extinction is also found in the urgency of saving a culture from its extinction? in other words: do you believe that “saving a culture from extinction” is a feasible or desirable goal?

Orlando: Definitely not. we tend to read the false pureness of nondominant, nonwestern cultures as a kind of “holy grail” for possibly understanding “where we failed”, endeavoring to “preserve” a knowledge that could, perhaps, reconnect humankind to real, natural bonds that are truly about “what matters now”, like seth godin has beautifully portrayed. it is reasonable to assume, if we agree that indigenous cultures could indeed bring new perspectives about human evolution as a whole, that they might have trodden a different path – but are still as contemporary as the most digitally connected of humans are, since both natives and nonnatives are traveling along one and the same timeline.  we would then perceive that the quoted “cultural extinction” is not really about extinction, but in fact about a natural process of cultural hybridization and dilution, both for “them” and for “us”.

Fabiola: The idea of “saving” a culture from extinction seems to be a recent possibility that was only afforded by digital technologies and archiving. before these technological possibilities of registry, cultures that were considered to be “extinct” left their signs scattered around until archeology could retrieve them and build hi(s)tory(ies) based on them. this is different than meeting the culture “at risk” for the purpose of documenting it, and thus preserving the largest possible number of its elements, making use of equipment for capturing and processing images and audio that is far superior to the perception and memory of the very subjects of recorded cultural “preservation”. however, both the archaeological and the “video documentary” rescue maintain a fundamental (and insurmountable) distance between the cultural performance being represented and its representation itself. in other words, it is impossible to save an endangered culture from extinction. it may be possible to prolong the process and observe it with “more” quality but extinction is a natural process and many times nature escapes the will of scientific observation. “Saving” a tribe from its extinction also conflicts with “saving” a culture, because such a task requires an artificial conservation of habits or attitudes within a context in which such habits do not fit anymore. I always remember how tiny seem to be the distances man has conquered in exploring the inlands of the Earth when compared to the vast distances that man has conquered in Earth´s outerspace: could our own culture be the fuel that is burned in this journey “outwards”? every culture depends on its physical basis, and all the basic physics of the planet is in the service, ultimately, of the cosmic quest to find an ultimate meaning that no human culture seem to have achieved so far. and that is also true when it comes to indigenous cultures. like the rest of humankind, they are also fascinated by the “unknowns”, ever since they were given mirrors as gifts of wonder.

Renata: When considering how the Dâw traditional culture could fit within the edge of contemporary culture (that i have been calling nowdernity), what are its contrasts, oppositions and points of contact?

Orlando: This is an interesting subject as it touches upon the issue of belongness, which is an old discussion but finds new stamina when we approach a tradition that is supposedly placed in a different realm from western “cultural evolution”. they have definitely been impacted by this contact but then again the very history of humankind has been filled up with cultural fusions and mixes for dozens of centuries. I remember an episode from years ago, when i was pointing a camera at an indigenous leader, a hupd’ah leader, who was seeing a video camera for the very first time in his life, so i had to explain him how the device worked. he understood it so fast that his instruction to me was to “turn on the camera’s eye and ears, put it in the box and send it to the president of the brazilian republic”. what i mean is that this cultural edge can be much more subtle than what we tend to imagine. maybe we do not have enough references from their point of view, to really evaluate the extent of our “presence” in their lives. to be honest, i have sometimes considered that real innocence might stand on the western side…

Fabiola: A possible point of contact is education that leads to self-awareness, of learning how to deal with questions that come from one’s own self. what we’re talking about here is establishing the very conditions that enable the existence of “doubt”, of an attitude of questioning. do indigenous people allow themselves to doubt their own cosmological constructions as we westerners often choose to do? joining a christian religion affirms this attitude of questioning or does it represent an alignment that is more political than religious? such oppositions are explicit and are found in any layer of comparison. one must bear in mind that the civilizing project based on the idea of “progress” was painstakingly constructed in absolute opposition to our primitive past, that, paradoxically, today we wish to “save”. european gardeners shaped plants as a way of affirming the undoubted power of man over nature. this practice remains even in the streets of sao gabriel da cachoeira, the closest city to the native ethnic tribes from the rio negro Amazonian region, which I think I can call one of the most desolate places in the world if we take into account their physical isolation from the urban centers of western “knowledge”. another possible threshold in the conservationist perspective in our current relationship with nature (and the imagination of natives as being part of “nature”) might lead to situations in which the amazon could become a sort of “biodiversity model zoo”, in which natives and ethnic tribes are there to be seen by tourists or examined as scientific “specimens”, in both cases exotic “creatures” inhabiting a controlled environment.

Renata: Is technology recognized by the tribe as a cultural force? is there an explicit rejection or is it openly embraced?

Orlando: First of all, technology is a means for reaching a goal in a faster, more effective, more productive way. hunting with a zarabatana assures a silent killing, thus it widens the possibilities of bringing a bigger amount of meat back home. but technology is relative, it may not have a use when placed outside of its context. the technology of using a zarabatana is useless in a urban context, whereas a mobile phone can be useless for a native hunting in the middle of the forest. as their exposure to western society widens, the need for access to digital technology, for instance, becomes a natural issue. they are fully aware of the benefits of technology when placed in its proper context.

Fabiola: Among the eldest I think what exists is an open denial of technology and among the youth, an open enchantment. however it all depends on what kind of technology we are referring to. television is hypnotic and welcome by all social layers of the group. telephones, symbols of status, are also embraced by the youth and the “rabeta” (a boat motor that is slow and economic) that enables fast transportation up and down the river seems to be as natural to them as a tree. even though they are inner forest people and not river people, the mere presence of a new technology brings about the answer to present needs? If yes; then it is embraced by everyone. nevertheless, what is consider as a “need” is not always a consensus between different age groups. those who are going through their final stages have different reactions than those who will grow up inside the next chapters of the story of cultural “contact” and miscegenation, including the fetishes that arise from / are explored by the emotional aspects of design. I find symptomatic that the eldest have a relation of fearful rejection to cameras, while the kids keep asking to be photographed. there is something about the power of the image that has ceased to be transmitted, or has ceased to be taken seriously. I think this is a sign of cosmological rupture which, ultimately, points toward a break in the knowledge chain of transmission degrading into an devaluation of elderly in general, something which is also present in the west. as an observer, I found this rupture lamentable. after being with the Dâw, I have come to accept such rupture as necessary… although it is still tragic.

Renata: How is gender articulated in the tribe leadership? are there women leaders in the tribe?

Orlando: As far as I know, in the northwestern part of the amazon, none of the 23 ethnic groups have female leaders. so it seems that leadership is definitely gender determined, and it has always been like that. if you think about it from a survival point of view, in an environment in which physical power makes the difference in determining life or death, male leadership seems natural, although women have an extremely important role, counseling their husbands privately.

Fabiola: The idea of a masculinity which is tied to a virility that finds its meaning in war and hunting-gathering has been losing its momentum everywhere. I would even say that, inherent to the loss in self-esteem that is implied in a disappearing ethnicity is also a loss in the self-esteem of its male members. If the Dâw see themselves today as inglorious survivors from a luminous past, that is because the tribe has failed exactly on the male tasks of hunting-gathering. however, these changes also find a place on their cosmologies as a time of cosmic “shifts of energy”. these changes are connected to the changes happening in the world at large. when it comes to change, we are all at the same boat: if the initial arrangement doesn’t work, we must redesign relations of force – “if good isn’t good anymore, we must invent a new good”. the world is exhausted by wars. the forests are exhausted by wars. all of us, westerners, easterners, natives, we all want mythical peace and prosperity; none of our generations has reached this magic moment. If having access to frozen chicken at the amazonian supermarket means that native men stop fishing and therefore begin to lose their traditional skills, this also brings changes to the women, who also get lazy and less focused. doesn’t this stand as an example of the logic of global consumption as a whole? Is female energy and perception the very kind of energy that is needed in re-thinking the planet? when I think about it like that, I see that feminism might be a vector of balance, but I think it would be very difficult to apply its urban assumptions about gender equality to the native realities because this would bring about a total reversal of roles.

Renata: Can you give us an example of a certain type of “feminist” attitude within the Dâw tribe?

Orlando: Sure, I have actually witnessed something that could be seen as a kind of well-humoured “feminist manifesto”. this old dâw woman came up to us in a very early hour in the morning saying that she was prepared to sing to our cameras. after a relatively long wait, the song that sprouted in dâw language said that the dâw men are lazy, they do not hunt anymore, they just want (frozen) chicken from the other side of the river, that they are “firewood”. there´s also an explicit indignation when she verses the fact that men are the owners of hammocks and they have been using them a lot and still consider themselves as “worthy” of women. even though this kind of female indignation is pretty explicit, dâw women are not aggressive about it and seem to accept most of the gender status quo as part of their “human condition”.

Fabiola: I think that “feminism” is a concept that is inapplicable within groups where gender roles have not undergone the very same conditions as gender in european and american cultures (and their controversial reverberations around the world). in other words, I see feminism as an urban pathology, and the gifts of “urbanitiy”, spread mainly by the presence of TV among indigenous women (DAW) is not sufficient to align them, because I think gender differences (more than age differences) will be one of the last bastions to fall in the process of extinction or cultural reframing. thus, manifestations from indigenous women in relation to contemporary issues, tend to pull back both men and women to their traditional places in which a feminist point of view can even be seen as anti-feminism, or sexism. in spite of the fact that male authority in many cultures has been used to oppress women; women did not, in many instances, lose all authority because this specific form of female power is legitimized by “generation” transmission. among the natives it seems to be easier to perceive these power relations, because of their inherent social frankness: women can say whatever needs to be said about them. men are embarrassed when women’s speech highlights their failure to perform the role of men and so a relative equilibrium follows until a tribe truly faces extinction, which is the final imbalance.

more information about their film at: http://100daw.com

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Renata Lemos is a professional international surfer on the edge of contemporary culture. She has lived and worked in the US, France, Canada, Israel and it is now based in Brazil. She is a well published academic writer and scholar; a builder of transdisciplinary bridges that integrate culture, economics, politics, technology, science, art and spirituality. Her current conceptual exploration is about trying to identify and map the aesthetics of the edge of contemporary culture, that she is calling nowdernity.

Tagged in: belongness, cultural trends, documentary film, gender, nowdernity, technology, the Dâw tribe

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