Kayapo People and Living Sustainably

Living sustainably is a challenge everyone faces, especially in light of climate change. Environmental sustainability is crucial, as history has shown the downfall of societies due to unsustainable practices. Ethnoecology, the study of how traditional societies interact with their environment, provides valuable insight. Daryl Posey's work on the Kayapo people of Brazil is particularly noteworthy. The Kayapo have a deep understanding of their environment and rely on horticulture for sustenance. They practice slash-and-burn agriculture, using burnt vegetation as nutrients for crops. Despite criticisms of Posey's translations and resource citations, his work highlights the importance of local ecological knowledge and the need for sustainability. Living sustainably, or the means of maintaining processes and practices over time, is a challenge that all people face. With emphasis placed on current issues like climate change, an anthropological spotlight has been placed on sustainability with regards to our natural environment. The focus of Nina Brown, Laura Tubble de Gonzalez, and Tomek Miguel-Reyes' Perspectives 14th chapter, environmental sustainability is something that must be understood and worked towards. This is a much more immediate concept for those living in natural environments, and given that the vast majority of the global population lives in urban areas like towns, suburbs, or cities, the inclination to turn a blind eye to sustainability and its significance is reasonable. Nevertheless, our human history has shown the falling of countless early societies due to practices which were, quote, at some level, environmentally unsustainable, leading to deforestation, soil salinization, or erosion, end quote. These examples act as a warning for modern people to put focus back on the environment and how to engage with it in a sustainable way. One of the best ways in which we can better understand this concept is by looking at people who have already mastered doing so using a process known as ethnoecology, or the, quote, use and knowledge of plants, animals, and ecosystems by traditional societies, end quote. For such a daunting task, the work done by Daryl Posey on the Kayapo people of Brazil is the perfect starting place. Daryl Posey's most prominent work focused on the Kayapo people for 25 years, an ethnobotanical project that consisted of himself and a variety of natural and social scientists. Ethnobotany, a branch of ethnoecology, is the study of, quote, traditional uses of plants for food, construction, dyes, crafts, and medicine, end quote. With this project, this group sought to better understand the ways in which, quote, the Kayapo people of Brazil understood, managed, and interacted with the various ecosystems they encountered, end quote. It focused on how the indigenous people worked with and for their environment to flourish and thrive. Additionally, Posey's earlier writings detail the history of the area and its people, explaining that the Kayapo, known amongst themselves as the Mvengokre, or, quote, people from the water's source, end quote, divided into much smaller groups, settling in villages scattered throughout the Amazonian rainforest in Pará and Mano Grosso, Brazil. This division of the Kayapo people had been a result of widespread illness sprouting from foreigners and the families in each new village were forced to develop strategies to survive their respective unfamiliar environments. While the initial group of Mvengokre people had been settled into a semi-permanent living space, the dispersal of the Kayapo resulted in each subgroup adopting much more nomadic ways of life. Posey found that the Kayapo villagers had a great deal of trails connecting their villages and farmland, quote, and their margins served as areas for planting, transplanting, and spreading numerous semi-domesticated plant species, end quote. These plants are then used for a variety of reasons, whether it be food, construction, or raw materials for crops and handiwork. Additionally, people in the Kayapo area established small plots, translated as war gardens, intermittently near by campsites or trails. These plots provided food that could be used in case of emergency situations and the concept led to the creation of, quote, Apaté, or islands of resources in the Campo Serrata, which are then further molded to provide forest islands filled with requisite species for human and animal survival, end quote. A large emphasis was placed by the Kayapo on the resources available in their environment and it was common for exchanges of plants or seeds to occur between villages. Kayapo subgroups have had a major impact on the environment's natural diversity for this reason, and it's further instilled by the way they plant their crops. While the Kayapo rely on certain nomadic patterns, Posey makes a point to clarify that they are much more sedentary than they had been in the past. The Mavingacre people have altered much of their lifestyle through the years and in congruence with such changes, as have their modes of subsistence. Subsistence, defined in perspectives as the specific set of procedures in place within a society to gain and provide food to its members, can be seen in four distinct modes. Foraging, which includes methods like hunting and gathering, pastoralism, which focuses on the raising of animals, horticulture, which covers small-scale farming, and agriculture, which is much more intensive on larger-scale areas. These subsistence systems may overlap in some societies, but all forms of food growth and distribution can be accounted for within these categories. Kayapo, namely, predominantly partake in horticulturist patterns and behaviors, though they initially followed and eventually developed from methods of hunting and gathering, a practice that, at the time of Posey's work, was still remembered by the village's elder members. More recently, the Mavingacre people have established themselves as people who rely heavily on gardens and farmland as their main source of food, hence allowing them to live more stationary lives than their foraging ancestors. Particularly, the Kayapo use a method of farming known as slash-and-burn agriculture, a method which derived its name from practices of cutting down, quote, the trees and underbrush to carve out a field site, and later burning the dried remains to clear the way for planting, end quote. A fraction of the new crops are planted in the plots before burning takes place, as the ash from the older vegetation is able to provide many of the nutrients needed to help the sprouts and seedlings grow. The seeds are also planted pre-burning so as to have, quote, a head start on weeds, which also flourish on the newly cleared fields, end quote, which is crucial to prevent overgrowth while waiting for the soil to cool. Once the soil has collected the nutrients from the burning and the soil has cooled off, the rest of the crops are planted in accordance with the nutrient densities required for their cultivation. These plots can be used for two to three years before the Kayapo allow it to be reclaimed by the forest, but this does not mean they simply abandon the land. In fact, the fields that are left behind are used as natural attractions to, quote, plants that colonize naturally in the reforestation sequence, thus establishing such plants in areas convenient for the Kayapo to use, end quote. The flora that are able to regrow in these old plots are of much use to the Kayapo due to their extensive knowledge in herbal substances as ingredients for food, medicine, and bait for wild game, which means that they're able to use the land for sustenance even long after farming in that area has ended. Posey's study of the Mibangukre people is a very famous project and one of notable importance to the field of ethnobotany and ethnoecology. Many credit Posey for the work he did, appreciating the anthology for the attention it brought to the study of environmental sustainability. For instance, a review done by Vanessa Lee discussed not just the anthology as a whole, but also considered his writing style and word choice, commending him on his persuasive speech. She gives some credit for the accessibility of his writing to those not involved in the biological or anthropological field, even brushing aside the repetitive nature of some of the book's content, saying that due to the complexities of his study, the problem would be difficult to solve regardless. She praises Posey's writing for displaying, quote, how blind Western man has been to the local ecological knowledge of other cultures, warning us of the perils of procrastination in the face of erosion, desertification, and the exhaustion of natural resources, end quote. However, alongside this recognition, her review also focuses on errors in the book. Most significantly, she points attention to multiple critical errors in his translations from the Mibangukre language to English, explaining that Posey, quote, discusses at length the relation of the body, ka, and the spirit. In reality, the kayapo do not have a category equivalent to our notion of the body, ka corresponds to covering, and what he glosses as the spirit, karon, or energy, could just as easily be translated as the soul, but this term can also be glossed as shadow, mask, photograph, echo, or map, and is used verbally in the sense of to explain, end quote. She concludes that regardless of the good this book served, any linguist with knowledge of the kayapo language would agree that the content of the work is in need of reanalysis. These other criticisms of Posey are shared by another reviewer of the anthology, William Fisher. The critique focuses on the lackluster resources cited in Posey's book, pointing out the discontinuity between the sources listed on different pages, and errors simply in how the sources are listed themselves. On top of this, however, Fisher has his own thoughts on Posey's book, which he considers to be more of a career review than a completed case study. He makes the point that the works collected in this book, while written over the course of nearly 20 years, is heavily weighted towards the beginning of the range, as his personal focus shifts to put more emphasis on property and resource rights during the course of his career. His biggest critique of the book, however, is aimed at the editors of the anthology rather than the majority author himself. Fisher brings into conversation the fact that Posey had, quote, commented that his studies were clearly identified as preliminary studies, end quote. However, he says that the editors, in their formatting and organizing of Posey's writings, have covered up the clarity Posey had once ingrained within his work, allowing the assumption to be that the book's information is considered correct via, quote, disciplinary consensus rather than serving as a springboard for future research, end quote. Overall, he concludes that the editors' choices detract from the relevancy the book could have had. Rather than using the anthology as a conclusive case study, both Fisher and Lee agree that Posey's work is, and was always meant to be, the beginning of a large, in-depth study of the Mavangakare people and their methods of living sustainably. In the next of Posey's works, Kenneth Taylor produced his own piece of writing, chapter 15 in the book Biodiversity, focusing on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, comparing the Caiapo in southern Brazil to the Yanomami in the north, and how they live alongside their respective environments. This piece provides just the kind of additional research that both Fisher and Lee are looking for. He describes the Caiapo as having a surprisingly complex grasp on their surrounding area. He gives credit to the Caiapo and how they use flash and burn methods in their farming practices, explaining that they, quote, make their modest-sized fields and plant crops sufficient only for their needs, end quote, so as to avoid removing too much of the natural vegetation. In fact, the Caiapo farming fields are quick to be taken over by weeds and other natural plant growth, forcing farmers to allow the land to be reclaimed by the forest after only two to three harvests. He clarifies further that in the majority of cases, these Indigenous people, quote, stop using a field not so much because the productiveness of the tropical soils declines so rapidly, but because clearing the field of weeds is just more trouble than it's worth, end quote. Furthermore, with the way in which the Caiapo employ flash and burn agriculture practices, they're helping restore the natural environment rather than harm it. Taylor writes that this distinction is due to their more isolated state. Because their products are used only by the people who help hunt and grow them, they are not required to use more land than is absolutely necessary, allowing more space for natural greenery rather than forest cultivation. As a direct result of the care the Mvengacre people put in their surroundings, not only are they able to thrive among the environment, but the forest has also had the chance to grow and diversify. However, we cannot only rely on the work written before 2000 for an Indigenous group so successful in their field. As Fisher and Lee mentioned, Posey's work demands more research be done about this area and the people that live there. Lindsay Munson Meyer partakes in this exact kind of investigation in her article, Nature vs. Culture, a Comparison of Blackfoot and Caiapo Resource Management. While the work in its entirety is focused on the differences between Indigenous groups and their resource management, focus will be placed on the research reported on Caiapo land and people. Meyer explains that due to more work being done by more researchers in recent years, work from Posey regarding resource management has been more generally accepted by the vast majority of researchers in the field. Regardless, she provides the results of her own study and research. For instance, she explains the agricultural methods employed by the Caiapo, not only listing the types of farming they practiced, detailing that their, quote, agriculture consisted of, one, village gardens, two, plantings associated with trails, three, plantings around old campsites, four, forest plantings, and five, cerrado plantings, end quote, but also how their nomadic traditions required more use of land away from villages and village trails. Moreover, the Caiapo have altered nomadic ways of life to better fit a stationary lifestyle like the one Posey detailed in his anthology. Specifically, groups of men often leave their villages for intermittent hunting and trading purposes. Since the women are left to tend to village farms, it is men's responsibility to care for plots outside the villages or along trails. On top of how the Caiapo used the land to their advantage, though, Meier's work reflects the ways in which Caiapo practices aided and forced revitalization and diversification. She explains that while it may be difficult to see on a larger scale, the Caiapo have had a significant impact on the areas in which they settled amidst the Amazonian rainforest. According to Meier, quote, by creating and maintaining forest gaps, trails, and clearings as part of their nomadic agricultural system, the Caiapo preserved forest patches at several different stages of succession. Each stage encourages the growth of unique species, which would quickly be outcompeted if the natural progression of forest succession were allowed to continue. Furthermore, by concentrating useful plants in known locations, the Caiapo increased the number of economically important species in those places. End quote. The Caiapo people are undoubtedly skilled in their use of their surroundings to thrive in their environment. However, it is more than just this talent that makes the Mvengakre unique. These people are able to employ practices which aid to their own survival while simultaneously preserving and restoring the forest itself, a balance and duality that is incredibly important for the goals of conservation and environmental sustainability. Moving more into the ways in which the Caiapo have impacted the Amazonia, the article Seed Use and Socioeconomic Significance in Caiapo Handicrafts, a case study from Paro State, Brazil, results from a study performed by Sol Gonzalez-Perez, Pascal de Robert, and Marlia Colo Ferreira is a fantastic addition. The project focused on the ways in which Caiapo people collect seeds in Moicoraco and Las Casas, two Caiapo villages in Paro State, Brazil, and evaluated their importance on a socioeconomic level. Caiapo people, especially in Moicoraco and Las Casas, use naturally occurring seeds as raw materials for handicrafts like necklaces, inklets, and bracelets, which they will then sell as a source of income. The team participated in intensive fieldwork to complete the study, beginning with satellite mapping of the included areas and involving interviews with approximately 25 adults in each village. Perez and Talia spread out through applicable trails near the villages and collected samples of different seeds, which were later identified by botanical specialists. The results of the study showed that while, quote, some species were found to be native to the Amazon region, others were introduced from other regions of Brazil, other countries, or even other continents, end quote. This finding is linked with one of Posey's. His original claim had been that, due to the increased emphasis placed on plant life, it's fairly common to exchange plants with sprouts from between far apart villages, which aids in increasing the forest's diversity. While the majority of flora found near these villages was native to the area, multiple species of seeds would not be present if not for Caiapo intervention and involvement. The study found that, of the 42 types of seeds used in the making of Caiapo handicrafts, only 31 are native to respective Amazonia regions. Between the two villages, specifically, 32 differing species were found in Moico Rocco, 26 in Las Casas, and 16 species found in common in both. Furthermore, two seeds in Moico Rocco were brought to the area through trades with families from farther villages, and five were shown to be products of the same thing in Las Casas. One additional seed was native not to Brazil, but to Asia, and was the only exotic species found in either of the two villages. Perez Atalia explains the diverse nature of the seeds discovered in these regions as reflecting the significance of these handicrafts in Caiapo culture and economy. As stated above, the species of seeds not customarily used as food sources are used as raw materials in the crafting of a variety of jewelry and body ornaments. What was intriguing, however, was the way in which the Caiapo people view seeds as a material. Seeds are not the only material used to craft these artifacts. They also use beads. Oftentimes, when Indigenous people use beads as crafting materials, it's observed that beads become a status symbol due to the connections to those who do not come from Indigenous origins. Curiously, the Caiapo people did not follow this pattern, with equivalent value placed on artifacts created with seeds as on artifacts created with beads. In fact, seeds are desired to such an extent that jewelry crafted with seeds predominantly fills the handicraft market in certain Caiapo regions. In terms of the commercializations of these artifacts, however, the team found that they are not considered commercial items. As, quote, Caiapo prefer to hold on to their wares and sell them when groups of villagers travel to fairs, meetings, seminars, or training events in urban centers, end quote. This is due to the fact that Caiapo use resources which are illegal to sell, like feathers that have come from endangered birds. In order to bypass this hiccup and maintain an income, Caiapo people either sell locally to families within the village or give freely to passing groups. These seed species, though, do much more than just display the socioeconomic status of Caiapo villages. These findings aid in confirming Fossey's research regarding Caiapo cultivation of diverse flora. Indigenous people with a priority on plants and vegetation use sprouts and seeds as materials for exchange between villages. From here, respective villages will cultivate the saplings into harvestable plants, thereby increasing the biodiversity of the environments they surround themselves with. As an additive to Perez-Italia's study, it's also important to mention the project done by Rui and Alia, detailed in an article titled, Anthropogenic Landscape in Southeastern Amazonia, Contemporary Art Impacts of Low-Intensity Harvesting and Dispersal of Brazilnuts by the Caiapo Indigenous People. This study considered three Caiapo villages, Eugre, Moicoraco, and Cucuritum, in an effort to better understand the spread of Bartholichia excelsia, also known as B. excelsa or Brazilnut trees. Each of the villages chosen works especially with the Brazilnut in their own unique way. Eugre, for example, quote, produced Brazilnut oil for a British cosmetic company between 1991 and 2003 and has sporadically traded nuts on the local market, end quote. And Cucuritum has sold Brazilnuts on the local market since its founding in 1976, quote, except during the gold mining and logging period between the late 1980s and 2002, end quote. All villages have been involved in low-intensity harvesting of Brazilnut trees and selling of Brazilnuts since the early 2000s, which makes each village a crucial piece in Rui and Alia's research. In order to gain accurate information for their project, members of the team, quote, followed 60 harvesters from 36 different families in Brazilnut collection trips in three Caiapo villages over 19 days in 2009 and 2010 and visually counted all seeds dropped by them between the groves and campsites, end quote. What Ruviero et Alia specifically wished to discover was that B excelsa harvesting in these regions was impacting the forest's natural density of the Brazilnut tree. By the end of the study, it was clear that the harvesters from the village were efficient in collecting the materials, and yet they were harvesting them in such a way that they still maintained density of the trees themselves. They found that harvesters dropped 34 seeds in total along the path back to their villages on 16% of the days this research group was present. Regardless of any efficiency during initial harvest, the density of Brazilnut trees increased in the areas along the trails, being as high as four times that of unharvested groves of nut trees. Moreover, while it cannot be said what will happen to the density of trees in the future, Ruviero et Alia does not anticipate that the Caiapo people's harvesting of the trees will lower the overall density. In fact, Ruviero et Alia clarifies that, quote, the Caiapo have only harvested a small proportion, around 7% to 43% of the total seed production of harvested groves in the recent years, which is lower than the levels of harvesting described as sustainable in other studies, end quote. This means that the Caiapo people are not only harvesting the trees in such a way that allows them to remain sustainable, they are harvesting less than what would be expected as needed. Additionally, even if they were to further intensify their harvesting practices, they would not be in danger of harming the natural environment. Not only are the Caiapo people able to take advantage of the environment to earn money for their crafts, but they are doing so in such a way that is also helping the environment thrive around them. The Caiapo people are a unique group of people indeed, having learned immensely regarding the ways to best use the environment to live sustainable and successful lives. However, they have done so in a way that does not detract from the original, organic, natural world. In fact, they have done the opposite. They have helped the forest regrow, adding to its overall diversity and density, restoring the Amazonia to its natural state. While it has been made clear that the Caiapo have been successful in quite a lot, we must also think about what their story can teach us in the ways we interact with the environment. These practices and methodologies teach us that there are ways in which we can live fruitfully without damaging the environment. There is a balance to how we must live sustainable lives, and what we can learn from the Caiapo's success is that we must prioritize the state of our natural environment in the process. Thank you.