The Great Explorers Series
Videoconference with Beth Conklin
"Living Among People of the Amazon Rainforest"
for High School Students Only!

Associate Professor of Anthropology
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Director of Undergraduate Studies

Professor Conklin is a cultural and medical anthropologist specializing in the ethnology of indigenous peoples of lowland South America (Amazonia). Her research focuses on the anthropology of the body, religion and ritual, cannibalism, death and mourning, disease and healing, and indigenous identity politics. She teaches courses on cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, shamanism, international development, South American Indians, and the anthropology of contemporary issues. Her publications include Consuming Grief: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, "Body Paint, Feathers, and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism," and (with Laura Graham) "The Shifting Middle Ground: Brazilian Indians and Eco-Politics."

Vanderbilt anthropologist Beth Conklin has lived with and studied the Wari', an indigenous population of about 2,300 people in the western Brazilian rain
forest, near the border with Bolivia. Until the late 1950s and 1960s, the
Wari' (pronounced wha-REE) lived in isolation, outside western civilization.
When the Brazilian government sent expeditions of backwoodsmen to make contact with them, the outsiders introduced deadly diseases unfamiliar to the Wari'. Measles, mumps, influenza, colds, malaria, and other diseases killed 60% of the tribe within two years. Conklin's research has investigated how Wari' coped with illness and death before and after they entered sustained contact with outsiders.

Cannibalism was once a requirement among this tribe in the Amazon rainforest. Wari' thought it was much better, more loving and respectful, to consume a body than to bury it and leave it to rot in the dirt. They were as horrified by the idea of burial as we are by the idea of cannibalism. Wari' stopped practicing cannibalism in the 1950s and 1960s, and changed to burying their dead in cemeteries. Today, younger Wari' consider the traditional funeral practices as folklore, a quaint custom from the old days. Some elders, however, continue to feel that the old ways were more emotionally comforting, because they offered a bereaved family a structured set of ritual activities that helped them cope with their loss. In contrast to contemporary Western society, Wari' mourners are given a full year to grieve, during which time they are cared for by their relatives. But Wari' are concerned that if you dwell too much on memories of the dead, you will spiral into uncontrollable, consuming grief. They believe it's necessary to use the funeral and year-long series of mourning rituals to help mourners accept the finality of death, and gradually come to see the dead person in a different form.

The sight of things associated with the dead evokes memories, so Wari' destroy or transform all tangible reminders. They burn the dead person's house and personal possessions, and stop speaking their name. In the past, they consumed the body for the same reason, because the body, and images of how someone looked while alive, are some of the strongest reminders. Wari' wanted mourners to let go of their old memories and begin to think of the dead in new ways, as part of the animal world. They believe that their ancestors' spirits return as animals that offer themselves to be hunted so their living relatives will have meat to eat. Producing food and feeding others is the essence of Wari' family life. At traditional funerals, eating the body evoked the dead person's transformation from human to animal, and the promise that the dead would continue to feed and care for the loved ones they left behind.

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This page is last modified on January 24, 2006