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This afterword discusses some of the recent events described in this book that have continued to unfold in Ecuador. The most important of these is the arrest and imprisonment of seven Waorani men involved in the latest revenge attack against the Taromenani. Just as Waorani make appeals to the Ecuadorian authorities to respect their autonomy, lawyers and other commentators call for the state to recognize the latest massacre of the Taromenani as a form of “indigenous justice,” arguing that revenge killings are necessary for restoring “equilibrium” in Waorani society. Another contentious issue is the ever-expanding oil frontier in Ecuador that continues to pressurize relations between Waorani people and groups living in voluntary isolation. The author concludes by expressing the hope that national and global attention to environmental conservation and indigenous rights in Amazonia will make the growing public concern about these issues less easily ignored in the future.

This chapter examines how Waorani youth talk about and perform past violence in ways that contradict the “victim's point of view” often expressed in stories told by elders. It considers how colonial imagination of Amazonian “warriorhood” has in certain contexts come to define Waorani relations with kowori people. The chapter also shows how the warrior performances of Waorani youth in local school events and state-sponsored folklore festivals reveal the generational and embodied dimensions of memory in urban intercultural encounters. The imagery of violence and “wildness” can be seen in the social categories and processes of historical “ethnogenesis” that emerged in the first centuries of colonialism. This chapter explains how the aucas (“wild Indians”) are portrayed in the colonial imagination in relation to other indigenous peoples of Amazonia.

This chapter examines the way missionaries and the Waorani faced three issues arising from the relocations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as from ongoing contact between the Waorani and outsiders: adequate land, literacy skills, and the Wao desire to imitate their lowland Quichua neighbors. Jim Yost and various Waorani laid the groundwork for parts of Wao ancestral territory to be set aside for Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park and for another large tract to be designated a Waorani Ethnic Reserve. SIL literacy specialist Pat Kelley worked with the Waorani to encourage literacy and native-authored literature in Wao tededo, the Wao language. While seeking to preserve their traditional territory and their language, many Waorani also began to imitate the customs of the more populous Quichuas in an effort to move up the social ladder of Ecuadorian society.

This book is an ethnographic account of how Waorani people experience and remember past violence and the role these memories have in the context of ongoing social, political, and economic changes in Amazonia today. For centuries outsiders have imagined Amazonia as a place of violence, whether in colonial European accounts of “Amazon warriors,” contemporary ideas about “wild Indians” in South America, or famous studies of “tribal warfare.” In order to understand the experiences of Waorani people today, this book focuses on interethnic relations and the history of Christian missionaries in Amazonian Ecuador. It examines violence not simply in terms of “tribal warfare” or “revenge killing” but as a symbolic practice through which Waorani people today understand themselves, their ancestors, and kowori (non-Waorani people). This introduction provides an overview of the author's fieldwork among the Waorani people as well as the chapters that follow.

This chapter explores the relationship between historical representations of Waorani and indigenous forms of social memory that define Waorani people as victims or “prey” to violence. To accomplish this task, the chapter draws on the autobiographical narratives of Waorani elders and the place of Waorani concepts of civilización (“civilization”) in such narratives. The Waorani elders' stories about past revenge killings and becoming “civilized” not only describe a time of intense violence but also voice indigenous understandings of what it means to be Waorani and kowori in the context of social transformation. The chapter relates the emphasis on victimhood in Waorani narratives to imagery of Christian martyrdom in missionary writings and in End of the Spear, a Hollywood film about the Palm Beach killings in 1956. By comparing missionary narratives to the stories of indigenous peoples, the chapter reveals the shared and contrasting ways in which Waorani and kowori people represent past violence.

This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of alterity and Waorani understandings of what it means to be “like the ancient ones” (durani bai). It analyzes the place of violence and memory in contemporary Waorani gender dynamics by elucidating the meanings of the expression durani bai by which young people describe their public warrior performances. Despite a strongly egalitarian ethos, the chapter shows that Waorani women and men experience the generational changes that have come with oil work, urban migration, and other social transformations in different ways. It explains how young men struggling to demonstrate the abilities for which male elders and ancestors are remembered embrace the Amazonian warrior of colonial imagination and violent imagery in popular cinema in expressing a form of masculinity they associate with durani bai. Rather than leading to pronounced gender antagonisms between women and men, these generational changes reflect Waorani understandings of gendered agency that associate women with the production of interiority and men with relations of exteriority.

This chapter examines how Waorani understandings of violence are linked to ongoing political and economic transformations in Amazonia by focusing on the Taromenani massacre of 2003. Multinational oil development and illegal logging on indigenous lands are among the ecologically destructive and socially disruptive forces that Waorani and other indigenous peoples of Amazonia face today. These and other kowori-driven processes contribute to violent conflicts within and between indigenous communities in unpredictable ways. Rather than viewing Waorani people simply as victims of powerful outsiders, the chapter considers how these processes are also embedded in Waorani understandings of sociality, alterity, and revenge. It suggests that the Taromenani massacre is a manifestation of the complex interrelationships between Waorani cosmology and ongoing processes of economic development in Amazonia, including oil roads and the rapid influx of colonists and illegal loggers. The massacre also illustrates how violence at once creates and transcends boundaries between kinship and enmity, whether we consider the logic of revenge killing that appears to have motivated the perpetrators or Waorani concerns about losing potential kin.

This chapter explores the dynamics of kinship and marriage in Toñampari and what it means for Waorani people to live in a community that incorporates kowori people into household and village life. For many Waorani, the Quichuas are highly desired marriage partners and the primary source of shamanic curing. At the same time, they describe Quichua people as morally different from themselves, as “enemies” who invade Waorani lands and practice powerful assault sorcery. This seemingly paradoxical relationship illustrates the symbolic importance of affinity in transforming interethnic relations in Amazonia. The chapter shows that despite ongoing conflicts that sometimes erupt into interethnic violence, relations with Quichuas and other kowori have an important value for Waorani men and women.

This chapter examines the themes of shamanism and witchcraft in the context of Waorani–Quichua relations in Toñampari. Even as a growing number of kowori have come to live in Waorani villages, Quichua people continue to have a prominent place in local discussions of enmity and violence. This sense of alterity can be seen in Waorani ideas about shamanism, a practice that is associated closely with Quichuas. This chapter describes indigenous understandings of shamanism and the historical role of shamans in mediating intercultural relations in Amazonia. It considers how Quichuas have become the primary source of both shamanic curing and witchcraft accusations, a seemingly paradoxical situation that reflects indigenous understandings of shamanism and Waorani efforts to “live well” in contemporary villages in the aftermath of violence. The chapter shows that Waorani in Toñampari object to shamanism not because of a lack of belief in its efficacy but because shamanic power presents a threat to the idealized conditions of living in what they call a comunidad (community).

This chapter brings together several strands of the book's argument that memories of violence are not only about establishing a sense of mutual experience and kinship but are also the basis of alterity and revenge. Located at the intersection of indigenous cosmology, intercultural relations, and ongoing social transformations, these memories construe the relationships between past and present in ways that challenge dominant ideas about tradition, modernity, and indigenous peoples as historical objects. Just as shamans, kowori outsiders, and “uncontacted” people become targets of violence, so too are they remembered in certain contexts as kin. For many Waorani, violence not only leads to feelings of loss and anger but also to a certain “mutuality of being” with people whose kin become victims of violence. This chapter also considers recent events that have important consequences for the future of Waorani communities, such as changes in Ecuadorian national politics, proposals to halt oil development in the Yasuní National Park, and the escalation of violence between Waorani and Taromenani people.

The chapter records changes in Waorani marriage as acculturative forces reduce the power of young people’s parents to decide whom they must marry. With the arrival of missionaries, oil workers, anthropologists, and tourists, the social world has expanded; new possibilities for marriage have been presented and indeed encouraged by non-Waorani; new residential patterns and ways of making a living have reduced the influence of parents. There are more love matches, more extra-marital pregnancies, and fewer planned alliances between families. Most ethnographers who have worked with indigenous populations have probably noticed that with contact and acculturation, one of the first things to weaken is the authority of the older generation over the sexual behavior of the younger. Because of the dramatic history of the Waorani and the ethnographic attention they have received, this case is particularly well documented and instructive.

This chapter analyzes the eight-year struggle of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ecuador to remove Rachel Saint, one of their most famous missionaries, from the Waorani and to curb the culture of dependence Saint and Dayomæ had fostered. For more than a decade, Saint controlled outside access to the Waorani, while Dayomæ used her relationship with Saint to establish a power base in Tewæno. Jim Yost suggested that these dynamics exploited other Waorani, a conclusion backed by his SIL colleagues. Other concerns included the oppressive style of Christianity practiced in Tewæno and the slow progress of Bible translation. Saint fought back, confident that her actions reflected God’s will and what she erroneously believed was the matriarchal character of Wao culture. All attempts at compromise failed, and in April 1982 Saint retired, living the rest of her life near Dayomæ in the newly established village of Toñæmpade.

This chapter suggests that just as during the 1960s American evangelicals idealized the Waorani as examples of missionary success, a decade later critics of missions and especially of the Summer Institute of Linguistics looked to the Waorani as evidence of the way missionaries damaged tribal cultures. After 1975 the criticisms in Ecuador became more widespread, coming from, among others, the anthropology department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador and from ¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get Out of Here!), a film by the Bolivian director Jorge Sanjinés seen by millions of Ecuadorians. Although ¡Fuera de Aquí! accused missionaries of a secret sterilization campaign against indigenous women, in the Amazonian rainforest the Waorani maintained healthy birth rates, and SIL staff helped them cope with more pressing matters of health: appropriate use of medicines, sanitation, and the prevalence of poisonous snakebites.

This chapter focuses on efforts by Catholic missionaries from the Capuchín order of missionary friars, especially Monsignor Alejandro Labaca Ugarte, to contact the Waorani. In 1965 Labaca was named the apostolic prefect of Aguarico and given responsibility by the Catholic Church for the “Auca problem,” bands of Waorani killing Quichua settlers along the Napo River. Labaca’s missionary strategy was shaped by the Second Vatican Council, especially Ad Gentes Divinitus. His early attempts to locate the Waorani were unsuccessful, in part because he was competing with Rachel Saint and Wao “missionaries.” A decade later Labaca tried again, this time successfully befriending Waorani along the Dicado River. During the next few years, Labaca made numerous visits to these kinship groups, most of whom were part of the Wepeidi, sometimes called the ridge people. While the Capuchíns and SIL were no longer competing, the collaboration the Catholics hoped for did not materialize.

This chapter explains how SIL linguists Catherine Peeke and Rosi Jung accomplished one of the main goals of missionaries among the Waorani: the translation of the New Testament into Wao tededo. Rachel Saint and Dayomæ began the informal translation of Bible stories as early as 1957. Translation work was not Saint’s strength, and over time Dayomæ lost enthusiasm, so when Peeke and Jung were assigned the task in 1979, only the Gospel of Mark, the Book of Acts, other verses and short passages, and some Old Testament stories had been translated. With help from Waorani translation assistants, Peeke and Jung worked from 1982 to 1992 to finish the Wao New Testament, which was dedicated in June 1992. Despite this accomplishment, the legend of Wao Christianity as told in North America continued to credit Saint, Dayomæ, and Elisabeth Elliot for the translation.

This chapter explores changes in Amazonian Ecuador during the late 1980s and early 1990s as oil companies and environmentalists, not missionaries, exercised increasing influence over the Waorani. In 1987 the Ecuadorian government awarded an oil concession on ancestral Wao territory to Houston-based Conoco, a decision that mobilized environmentalists and raised awareness of earlier pollution. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund argued that a small group of indigenous people, the Waorani, were threatened by “Big Oil” in the Amazon. Conoco left Ecuador, selling its concession to Dallas-based Maxus Energy Corporation. Three new voices that would oppose Maxus and introduce the Waorani story to academic and popular audiences beyond the evangelical world were Judith Kimerling, author of Amazon Crude; the anthropologist Laura Rival; and the journalist Joe Kane. All three criticized SIL, reinvigorating the idea that missions damaged native cultures, especially Wao culture.

The epilogue provides an update on the Waorani and missionaries from about 1995 to 2015. For most of this time, Steve Saint, Nate Saint’s older son, was the face of American evangelical involvement. Saint criticized a dependence on missionaries that he said was destroying the Wao church. With Mart Green and others, Saint used a film, The End of the Spear, to introduce a new generation of Americans to the Ecuador missionary martyr narrative. In Ecuador, young Waorani juggled ethnic identity and the pressures of modern life. The failure of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative jeopardized the biodiversity of Wao lands. The Wao political organization, renamed Waorani Nationality of Amazonian Ecuador, struggled for legitimacy. Never more than 20 to 25 percent of the population were professing Christians as young Waorani struggled to find the meaning of faith for themselves. The long-term future remains uncertain.

This chapter presents the history of an event in January 1956 that gave birth to an iconic missionary martyr narrative with a lasting impact on American evangelicalism and on the future of the Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador. It began with five young men, representing evangelical faith missions. They were determined to make peaceful contact with the Waorani (aucas), a violent and isolated tribal people who had never heard the Christian gospel. The five men used aviation as an innovative technology to locate a Wao clearing and attempt to pacify the inhabitants by dropping trade goods from the air, followed by a face-to-face encounter. After the apparent friendliness of this first meeting, the Waorani returned two days later with spears and killed the missionaries. News of their deaths was publicized in the US and around the world.