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Published in BBC WILDLIFE TV & RADIO Vol.2 No.9 September 1984 Page454-457

WAORANI: THE LAST PEOPLE

Written and Photographed by ADRIAN WARREN

The world is a flat disc covered in rainforest and bisected by a river . Above the clouds is Heaven. On the disc's surface are the 600 'people'-the ones who have survived the depredations of the 'outsiders'-and even 500 of these have been exiled to a reservation. Film-maker Adrian Warren travelled to the land of the last of the sad and 'savage' Waorani.

The Waorani tribe of Amazonian Ecuador first became world famous in 1956, when they speared to death five American missionaries who had landed their light plane on a riverside sandbank and were trying to explain their plans to build an airstrip. Outsiders may have been shocked by the manner of the missionaries' departure, but to the Waorani, no way of dying could have been more ordinary. Spearing accounts for 40 per cent of deaths, usually in interfamilial vendettas; 20 per cent are shot or kidnapped by outsiders-a fact that may have influenced their way of greeting missionaries; and snakebite and other accidents account for most other deaths. Only about 1 per cent are 'natural'.

Waorani; to the Waorani, means 'people'. But to Ecuador's predominant indigenous group, the Quechua, they are Aucas, 'savages'. Indeed, there is much about their life-style that would invite the label. They have no writing, no reason to count higher than 10 and no history other than a tribal recollection that their ancestors came from "downriver; long ago". They roam naked in the jungle, hunting monkeys and birds with wooden blowguns and curare-tipped darts; for pigs they use spears. They also Use spears to deal with the incapable elderly, and unwanted babies are strangled with vines, burnt or buried alive. And by and large their contacts with the Quechua or any other outsiders have not been notably peaceable.

But it is they who have suffered. Only 600 survive today, and 500 of these have been moved to a reservation, where they are increasingly influenced by Western ways. Of the other 100, half remain mercifully uncontacted. The rest live traditionally, but being aware of an outside world, they are at the top of a slippery slope which leads to the loss of most of their culture, exposure to Western diseases to which they have no resistance and, for any survivors, a life that will end in bewilderment on a reservation.

One outsider who has contacted the Waorani without kidnapping, murder, exile or religious conversion in mind is the American anthropologist Jim Yost, who has managed to live with one group off and on for the past 10 years and now knows them so well that he thinks of them as his family. Desperate over the Waorani plight, he decided to make a collection of artefacts, a medical survey and a film record of their culture before it was too late. To this end he persuaded the BBC to join an expedition to visit his 'family', in the hope that a film shown on American and British television might arouse public interest in the Waorani and, for that matter, all Amazonian tribes.

Our journey began in Quito, 2,750 metres up in the Andes. The team- Jim Yost, four other Americans, BBC cameraman Hugh Maynard and I travelled for eight hours by bus across the Altiplano, and down through cloud forest to the base of the Andes-the western edge of almost 4,000 kilometres of unbroken rainforest.

From here we took a light plane to the Cononaco River, and when we reached Waorani territory, we circled until we located the current encampment of Jim's semi-nomadic 'family'. They were beside the river, an unusual spot for them: their habit of staying deep in the forest and away from the river is what kept them isolated from the rest of the world for so long.

We landed at a small oil-company airstrip about two hours' boat journey downstream and ferried ourselves and our equipment upriver in inflatable boats with outboard motors. Our preparation for the expedition had included learning some useful Waorani phrases, among them "Please don't kill me".

On Jim's recommendation, we built our main camp about half a kilo metre up from the Indians' settlement. We chose a high ridge above the river. While at first the steep climb was inconvenient, four days later our wisdom paid off-the river rose more than six metres. Two metres more and our camp would have been swamped.

The heat and humidity were oppressive, and we were constantly covered in wasps and small stingless sweat bees, which crawled over our bodies till we could stand it no more and dived into the river to find a few minutes peace.

Often we had visitors. Silently and without warning, a number of small, naked, dark brown bodies would emerge from the undergrowth to watch us, examine our hammocks, clothes, camera equipment and the strange things we were eating. Then they would melt away into the forest as suddenly and as silently as they had come.

For the first few days, we kept away from the Waorani settlement, preferring them to come to us. We had no doubt that their acceptance of us depended solely on Jim Yost, whom they knew and obviously loved. Little by little during that first week, more and more of the Indians visited our camp for longer and longer periods, eventually smiling, relaxing in our hammocks and trying our food until Jim decided they were ready for us to visit them. We took no cameras in the boat, just ourselves, and after we landed, we walked up a long tree trunk which had been felled to make a path from the river to the tribal house.