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TEDTalks, Wade Davis – Cultures at the far edge of the world (2003)

Wade Davis – Cultures at the far edge of the world (2003)

Wade Davis on endangered cultures You know, one of the intense pleasures of travel and one of the delights of ethnographic research is the opportunity to live amongst those who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, taste it in the bitter leaves of plants.

We all bring our children into the world. We go through initiation rites. We have to deal with the inexorable separation of death, so it shouldn't surprise us that we all sing, we all dance, we all have art. But what's interesting is the unique cadence of the song, the rhythm of the dance in every culture. And whether it is the Penan in the forests of Borneo, or the Voodoo acolytes in Haiti, or the warriors in the Kaisut desert of Northern Kenya, the Curandero in the mountains of the Andes, or a caravanserai in the middle of the Sahara. This is incidentally the fellow that I travelled into the desert with a month ago, or indeed a yak herder in the slopes of Qomolangma, Everest, the goddess mother of the world. All of these peoples teach us that there are other ways of being, other ways of thinking, other ways of orienting yourself in the Earth. And this is an idea, if you think about it, can only fill you with hope. Now, together the myriad cultures of the world make up a web of spiritual life and cultural life that envelops the planet, and is as important to the well-being of the planet as indeed is the biological web of life that you know as a biosphere. And you might think of this cultural web of life as being an ethnosphere and you might define the ethnosphere as being the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity's great legacy. It's the symbol of all that we are and all that we can be as an astonishingly inquisitive species. And just as the biosphere has been severely eroded, so too is the ethnosphere -- and if anything at a far greater rate. No biologists, for example, would dare suggest that 50 percent of all species or more have been or are on the brink of extinction because it simply is not true, and yet that -- the most apocalyptic scenario in the realm of biological diversity -- scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity. And the great indicator of that, of course, is language loss. When each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet. Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities. And of those 6,000 languages, as we sit here today in Monterey, fully half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children. They're no longer being taught to babies, which means, effectively, unless something changes, they're already dead. What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your language, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors or anticipate the promise of the children? And yet, that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody somewhere on Earth roughly every two weeks, because every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue. And I know there's some of you who say, "Well, wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all just spoke one language?" And I say, "Great, let's make that language Yoruba. Let's make it Cantonese. Let's make it Kogi." And you'll suddenly discover what it would be like to be unable to speak your own language. And so, what I'd like to do with you today is sort of take you on a journey through the ethnosphere -- a brief journey through the ethnosphere to try to begin to give you a sense of what in fact is being lost. Now, there are many of us who sort of forget that when I say "different ways of being," I really do mean different ways of being. Take, for example, this child of Barasana in Northwest Amazon, the people of the anaconda who believe that mythologically they came up the milk river from the east in the belly of sacred snakes. Now, this is a people who cognitively do not distinguish the color blue from the color green because the canopy of the heavens is equated to the canopy of the forest upon which the people depend. They have a curious language and marriage rule which is called linguistic exogamy: you must marry someone who speaks a different language. And this is all rooted in the mythological past, yet the curious thing is in these long houses where there are six or seven languages spoken because of intermarriage, you never hear anyone practicing a language. They simply listen and then begin to speak. Or, one of the most fascinating tribes I ever lived with, the Waorani of northeastern Ecuador, an astonishing people first contacted peacefully in 1958. In 1957, five missionaries attempted contact and made a critical mistake. They dropped from the air eight by ten glossy photographs of themselves in what we would say to be friendly gestures, forgetting that these people of the rainforest had never seen anything two-dimensional in their lives. They picked up these photographs from the forest floor, tried to look behind the face to find the form or the figure, found nothing, and concluded that these were calling cards from the devil, so they speared the five missionaries to death. But the Waorani didn't just spear outsiders. They speared each other. 54 percent of their mortality was due to them spearing each other. We traced genealogies back eight generations, and we found two instances of natural death and when we pressured the people a little bit about it, they admitted that one of the fellows had gotten so old that he died getting old, so we speared him anyway. (Laughter) But at the same time they had a perspicacious knowledge of the forest that was astonishing. Their hunters could smell animal urine at 40 paces and tell you what species left it behind. In the early '80s, I had a really astonishing assignment when I was asked by my professor at Harvard if I was interested in going down to Haiti, infiltrating the secret societies which were the foundation of Duvalier's strength and Tontons Macoutes, and securing the poison used to make zombies. In order to make sense out of sensation of course, I had to understand something about this remarkable faith of Vodoun, and Voodoo is not a black magic cult. On the contrary, it's a complex metaphysical worldview. It's interesting. If I asked you to name the great religions of the world, what would you say? Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, whatever. There's always one continent left out, the assumption being that sub-Saharan Africa had no religious beliefs. Well, of course, they did and Voodoo is simply the distillation of these very profound religious ideas that came over during the tragic Diaspora of the slavery era. But, what makes Voodoo so interesting is that it's this living relationship between the living and the dead. So, the living give birth to the spirits. The spirits can be invoked from beneath the Great Water, responding to the rhythm of the dance to momentarily displace the soul of the living, so that for that brief shining moment, the acolyte becomes the god. That's why the Voodooists like to say that "You white people go to church and speak about God. We dance in the temple and become God." And because you are possessed, you are taken by the spirit, how can you be harmed? So you see these astonishing demonstrations: Voodoo acolytes in a state of trance handling burning embers with impunity, a rather astonishing demonstration of the ability of the mind to affect the body that bears it when catalyzed in the state of extreme excitation. Now, of all the peoples that I've ever been with, the most extraordinary are the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. Descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization which once carpeted the Caribbean coastal plain of Colombia in the wake of the conquest, these people retreated into an isolated volcanic massif that soars above the Caribbean coastal plain. In a bloodstained continent, these people alone were never conquered by the Spanish. To this day, they remain ruled by a ritual priesthood but the training for the priesthood is rather extraordinary. The young acolytes are taken away from their families at the age of three and four, sequestered in a shadowy world of darkness in stone huts at the base of glaciers for 18 years. Two nine-year periods deliberately chosen to mimic the nine months of gestation they spend in their natural mother's womb, now they are metaphorically in the womb of the great mother. And for this entire time, they are inculturated into the values of their society, values that maintain the proposition that their prayers and their prayers alone maintain the cosmic -- or we might say the ecological -- balance. And at the end of this amazing initiation, one day they're suddenly taken out and for the first time in their lives, at the age of 18, they see a sunrise. And in that crystal moment of awareness of first light as the Sun begins to bathe the slopes of the stunningly beautiful landscape, suddenly everything they have learned in the abstract is affirmed in stunning glory. And the priest steps back and says, "You see? It's really as I've told you. It is that beautiful. It is yours to protect." They call themselves the elder brothers and they say we, who are the younger brothers, are the ones responsible for destroying the world. Now, this level of intuition becomes very important. Whenever we think of indigenous people and landscape, we either invoke Rousseau and the old canard of the noble savage, which is an idea racist in its simplicity, or alternatively, we invoke Thoreau and say these people are closer to the Earth than we are.

Well, indigenous people are neither sentimental nor weakened by nostalgia. There's not a lot of room for either in the malarial swamps of the Asmat or in the chilling winds of Tibet, but they have, nevertheless, through time and ritual, forged a traditional mystique of the Earth that is based not on the idea of being self-consciously close to it, but on a far subtler intuition: the idea that the Earth itself can only exist because it is breathed into being by human consciousness. Now, what does that mean? It means that a young kid from the Andes who's raised to believe that that mountain is an Apu spirit that will direct his or her destiny will be a profoundly different human being and have a different relationship to that resource or that place than a young kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of rock ready to be mined. Whether it's the abode of a spirit or a pile of ore is irrelevant. What's interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world. I was raised in the forests of British Columbia to believe those forests existed to be cut. That made me a different human being than my friends among the Kwagiulth who believe that those forests were the abode of Huxwhukw and the Crooked Beak of Heaven and the cannibal spirits that dwelled at the north end of the world, spirits they would have to engage during their Hamatsa initiation. Now, if you begin to look at the idea that these cultures could create different realities, you could begin to understand some of their extraordinary discoveries. Take this plant here. It's a photograph I took in the Northwest Amazon just last April. This is ayahuasca, which many of you have heard about, the most powerful psychoactive preparation of the shaman's repertoire. What makes ayahuasca fascinating is not the sheer pharmacological potential of this preparation, but the elaboration of it. It's made really of two different sources. On the one hand, there's this woody liana which has in it a series of beta-carbolines, harmine, harmaline, mildly hallucinogenic. To take the vine alone is rather to have sort of blue hazy smoke drift across your consciousness, but it's mixed with the leaves of a shrub in the coffee family called Psychotria viridis. This plant had in it some very powerful tryptamines, very close to brain serotonin, dimethyltryptamine, 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine. If you've ever seen the Yanomami blowing that snuff up their noses, that substance they make from a different set of species also contains methoxydimethyltryptamine. To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity. (Laughter) It doesn't create the distortion of reality; it creates the dissolution of reality. In fact, I used to argue with my professor, Richard Evan Shultes -- who is a man who sparked the psychedelic era with his discovery of the magic mushrooms in Mexico in the 1930s. I used to argue that you couldn't classify these tryptamines as hallucinogenic because by the time you're under the effects there's no one home anymore to experience a hallucination. (Laughter) But the thing about tryptamines is they cannot be taken orally because they're denatured by an enzyme found naturally in the human gut called monoamine oxidase. They can only be taken orally if taken in conjunction with some other chemical that denatures the MAO. Now, the fascinating things are that the beta-carbolines found within that liana are MAO inhibitors of the precise sort necessary to potentiate the tryptamine. So you ask yourself a question. How in a flora of 80,000 species of vascular plants, do these people find these two morphologically unrelated plants that when combined in this way, created a kind of biochemical version of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts? Well, we use that great euphemism, trial and error, which is exposed to be meaningless. But you ask the Indians, and they say, "The plants talk to us." Well, what does that mean? This tribe, the Cofan, has 17 varieties of ayahuasca, all of which they distinguish a great distance in the forest, all of which are referable to our eye as one species. And then you ask them how they establish their taxonomy and they say, "I thought you knew something about plants. I mean, don't you know anything?" And I said, "No." Well, it turns out you take each of the 17 varieties in the night of a full moon, and it sings to you in a different key. Now, that's not going to get you a Ph.D. at Harvard, but it's a lot more interesting than counting stamens. Now, (Applause) the problem -- the problem is that even those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful but somehow reduced to the margins of history as the real world, meaning our world, moves on. Well, the truth is the 20th century, 300 years from now, is not going to be remembered for its wars or its technological innovations, but rather as the era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet. Now, the problem isn't change. All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities of life. And the problem is not technology itself. The Sioux Indians did not stop being Sioux when they gave up the bow and arrow any more than an American stopped being an American when he gave up the horse and buggy.

It's not change or technology that threatens the integrity of the ethnosphere. It is power. The crude face of domination. Where ever you look around the world, you discover that these are not cultures destined to fade away. These are dynamic living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to. Whether it's the egregious deforestation in the homeland of the Penan -- a nomadic people from Southeast Asia, from Sarawak -- a people who lived free in the forest until a generation ago, and now have all been reduced to servitude and prostitution on the banks of the rivers, where you can see the river itself is soiled with the silt that seems to be carrying half of Borneo away to the South China Sea, where the Japanese freighters hang light in the horizon ready to fill their holds with raw logs ripped from the forest. Or in the case of the Yanomami, it's the disease entities that have come in, in the wake of the discovery of gold. Or if we go into the mountains of Tibet, where I'm doing a lot of research recently, you'll see it's a crude face of political domination. You know, genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people's way of life, is not only not condemned, it's universally -- in many quarters -- celebrated as part of a development strategy. And you cannot understand the pain of Tibet until you move through it at the ground level. I once travelled 6,000 miles from Chengdu in Western China overland through southeastern Tibet to Lhasa with a young colleague, and it was only when I got to Lhasa that I understood the face behind the statistics you hear about. 6,000 sacred monuments torn apart to dust and ashes. 1.2 million people killed by the cadres during the Cultural Revolution. This young man's father had been ascribed to the Panchen Lama. That meant he was instantly killed at the time of the Chinese invasion. His uncle fled with his holiness in the Diaspora that took the people to Nepal. His mother was incarcerated for the price of -- for the crime of being wealthy. He was smuggled into the jail at the age of two to hide beneath her skirt tails because she couldn't bear to be without him. The sister who had done that brave deed was put into an education camp. One day she inadvertently stepped on an armband of Mao, and for that transgression, she was given seven years of hard labor. The pain of Tibet can be impossible to bear, but the redemptive spirit of the people is something to behold. And in the end, then, it really comes down to a choice. Do we want to live in a monochromatic world of monotony or do we want to embrace a polychromatic world of diversity?

Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, said before she died that her greatest fear was that as we drifted towards this blandly amorphous generic world view not only would we see the entire range of the human imagination reduced to a more narrow modality of thought, but that we would wake from a dream one day having forgotten there were even other possibilities. And it's humbling to remember that our species has, perhaps, been around for [150,000] years. The Neolithic Revolution -- which gave us agriculture, at which time we succumbed to the cult of the seed, the poetry of the shaman was displaced by the prose of the priesthood, we created hierarchy specialization surplus -- is only 10,000 years ago. The modern industrial world as we know it is barely 300 years old. Now, that shallow history doesn't suggest to me that we have all the answers for all of the challenges that will confront us in the ensuing millennia. When these myriad cultures of the world are asked the meaning of being human, they respond with 10,000 different voices. And it's within that song that we will all rediscover the possibility of being what we are: a fully conscious species, fully aware of ensuring that all peoples and all gardens find a way to flourish. And there are great moments of optimism. This is a photograph I took at the northern tip of Baffin Island when I went narwhal hunting with some Inuit people, and this man, Olayuk, told me a marvelous story of his grandfather. The Canadian government has not always been kind to the Inuit people, and during the 1950s, to establish our sovereignty, we forced them into settlements. This old man's grandfather refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his weapons, all of his tools. Now, you must understand that the Inuit did not fear the cold; they took advantage of it. The runners of their sleds were originally made of fish wrapped in caribou hide. So, this man's grandfather was not intimidated by the Arctic night or the blizzard that was blowing. He simply slipped outside, pulled down his sealskin trousers and defecated into his hand. And as the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of a blade. He put a spray of saliva on the edge of the shit knife and as it finally froze solid, he butchered a dog with it. He skinned the dog and improvised a harness, took the ribcage of the dog and improvised a sled, harnessed up an adjacent dog, and disappeared over the ice floes, shit knife in belt. Talk about getting by with nothing. (Laughter) And this, in many ways, (Applause) is a symbol of the resilience of the Inuit people and of all indigenous people around the world. The Canadian government in April of 1999 gave back to total control of the Inuit an area of land larger than California and Texas put together. It's our new homeland. It's called Nunavut. It's an independent territory. They control all mineral resources. An amazing example of how a nation-state can reach -- seek restitution with its people. And finally, in the end, I think it's pretty obvious at least to all of all us who've travelled in these remote reaches of the planet, to realize that they're not remote at all. They're homelands of somebody. They represent branches of the human imagination that go back to the dawn of time. And for all of us, the dreams of these children, like the dreams of our own children, become part of the naked geography of hope. So, what we're trying to do at the National Geographic finally, is, we believe that politicians will never accomplish anything. We think that polemics -- (Applause) we think that polemics are not persuasive, but we think that storytelling can change the world, and so we are probably the best storytelling institution in the world. We get 35 million hits on our website every month. 156 nations carry our television channel. Our magazines are read by millions. And what we're doing is a series of journeys to the ethnosphere where we're going to take our audience to places of such cultural wonder that they cannot help but come away dazzled by what they have seen, and hopefully, therefore, embrace gradually, one by one, the central revelation of anthropology: that this world deserves to exist in a diverse way, that we can find a way to live in a truly multicultural pluralistic world where all of the wisdom of all peoples can contribute to our collective well-being. Thank you very much. (Applause)

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

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Wade Davis – Cultures at the far edge of the world (2003) Wade Davis - Kulturen am anderen Ende der Welt (2003) Wade Davis - Culturas en los confines del mundo (2003) Wade Davis - Cultures au bout du monde (2003) ウェイド・デイヴィス - 世界の果ての文化 (2003) Wade Davis - Kultury na krańcach świata (2003) Wade Davis - Culturas nos confins do mundo (2003) 韦德-戴维斯 - 世界最边缘的文化（2003 年）

Wade Davis on endangered cultures Wade Davis sobre culturas en peligro de extinción Wade Davis sobre culturas em vias de extinção You know, one of the intense pleasures of travel and one of the delights of ethnographic research is the opportunity to live amongst those who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, taste it in the bitter leaves of plants. Ya sabes, uno de los intensos placeres de viajar y una de las delicias de la investigación etnográfica es la oportunidad de vivir entre aquellos que no han olvidado las viejas costumbres, que aún sienten su pasado en el viento, lo tocan en piedras pulidas por la lluvia, pruébalo en las hojas amargas de las plantas. Sabe, um dos prazeres intensos das viagens e uma das delícias da investigação etnográfica é a oportunidade de viver entre aqueles que não esqueceram os velhos costumes, que ainda sentem o seu passado no vento, tocam-no nas pedras polidas pela chuva, provam-no nas folhas amargas das plantas. Вы знаете, одно из интенсивных удовольствий путешествий и одна из прелестей этнографических исследований - это возможность жить среди тех, кто не забыл старые способы, которые все еще чувствуют свое прошлое на ветру, прикоснуться к нему в камнях, отполированных дождем, пробовать его в горьких листьях растений.

Just to know that Jaguar shamans still journey beyond the Milky Way, or the myths of the Inuit elders still resonate with meaning, or that in the Himalaya, the Buddhists still pursue the breath of the Dharma, is to really remember the central revelation of anthropology, and that is the idea that the world in which we live in does not exist in some absolute sense, but is just one model of reality, the consequence of one particular set of adaptive choices that our lineage made, albeit successfully, many generations ago. Solo saber que los chamanes jaguares aún viajan más allá de la Vía Láctea, o que los mitos de los ancianos inuit aún resuenan con significado, o que en el Himalaya, los budistas aún persiguen el aliento del Dharma, es realmente recordar la revelación central de la antropología. , y esa es la idea de que el mundo en el que vivimos no existe en un sentido absoluto, sino que es solo un modelo de la realidad, la consecuencia de un conjunto particular de elecciones adaptativas que nuestro linaje hizo, aunque con éxito, hace muchas generaciones. . Saber que os xamãs jaguar ainda viajam para além da Via Láctea, ou que os mitos dos anciãos inuítes ainda ressoam com significado, ou que, nos Himalaias, os budistas ainda perseguem o sopro do Dharma, é recordar realmente a revelação central da antropologia, que é a ideia de que o mundo em que vivemos não existe num sentido absoluto, mas é apenas um modelo da realidade, a consequência de um conjunto particular de escolhas adaptativas que a nossa linhagem fez, embora com sucesso, há muitas gerações. Просто чтобы знать, что шаманы Ягуара все еще путешествуют за Млечным Путем, или мифы старейшин инуитов все еще резонируют со смыслом, или что в Гималаях буддисты все еще преследуют дыхание Дхармы, это действительно помнить центральное откровение антропологии , и такова идея о том, что мир, в котором мы живем, не существует в каком-то абсолютном смысле, а является лишь одной моделью реальности, следствием одного определенного набора адаптивных решений, которые наша линия сделала, хотя и успешно, много поколений назад , And of course, we all share the same adaptive imperatives. E, claro, todos partilhamos os mesmos imperativos de adaptação. We’re all born. Todos nacemos. Todos nós nascemos.

We all bring our children into the world. Todos traemos a nuestros hijos al mundo. Todos nós trazemos os nossos filhos ao mundo. We go through initiation rites. Pasamos por ritos de iniciación. Passamos por ritos de iniciação. We have to deal with the inexorable separation of death, so it shouldn’t surprise us that we all sing, we all dance, we all have art. Tenemos que lidiar con la inexorable separación de la muerte, por lo que no debe sorprendernos que todos cantemos, todos bailemos, todos tengamos arte. Temos de lidar com a inexorável separação da morte, por isso não nos deve surpreender que todos cantemos, todos dancemos, todos tenhamos arte. Мы должны иметь дело с неумолимым разделением смерти, поэтому нас не должно удивлять то, что мы все поем, все мы танцуем, у всех нас есть искусство. But what’s interesting is the unique cadence of the song, the rhythm of the dance in every culture. Mas o que é interessante é a cadência única da canção, o ritmo da dança em cada cultura. Но что интересно, это уникальная каденция песни, ритм танца в каждой культуре. And whether it is the Penan in the forests of Borneo, or the Voodoo acolytes in Haiti, or the warriors in the Kaisut desert of Northern Kenya, the Curandero in the mountains of the Andes, or a caravanserai in the middle of the Sahara. Y ya sean los penan en los bosques de Borneo, o los acólitos del vudú en Haití, o los guerreros en el desierto de Kaisut en el norte de Kenia, el curandero en las montañas de los Andes o un caravasar en medio del Sahara. E quer se trate dos Penan nas florestas do Bornéu, ou dos acólitos do vudu no Haiti, ou dos guerreiros no deserto de Kaisut no Norte do Quénia, do Curandero nas montanhas dos Andes, ou de um caravanserai no meio do Saara. И будь это Пенан в лесах Борнео, или помощники вуду на Гаити, или воины в пустыне Кайсут Северной Кении, Курандеро в горах Андов или караван-сарай в середине Сахары. This is incidentally the fellow that I travelled into the desert with a month ago, or indeed a yak herder in the slopes of Qomolangma, Everest, the goddess mother of the world. Este es, por cierto, el tipo con el que viajé al desierto hace un mes, o incluso un pastor de yaks en las laderas de Qomolangma, el Everest, la diosa madre del mundo. C'est d'ailleurs le gars avec qui j'ai voyagé dans le désert il y a un mois, ou bien un éleveur de yacks sur les pentes du Qomolangma, l'Everest, la déesse mère du monde. Por acaso, foi com ele que viajei para o deserto há um mês, ou então com um pastor de iaques nas encostas do Qomolangma, o Evereste, a deusa-mãe do mundo. Это, кстати, тот парень, с которым я побывал в пустыне месяц назад или даже як-пастух на склонах Комолангмы, Эверест, матери-богини мира. All of these peoples teach us that there are other ways of being, other ways of thinking, other ways of orienting yourself in the Earth. Todos estes povos nos ensinam que há outras formas de ser, outras formas de pensar, outras formas de nos orientarmos na Terra. And this is an idea, if you think about it, can only fill you with hope. Y esta es una idea, si lo piensas bien, solo puede llenarte de esperanza. E esta é uma ideia que, se pensarmos bem, só nos pode encher de esperança. Now, together the myriad cultures of the world make up a web of spiritual life and cultural life that envelops the planet, and is as important to the well-being of the planet as indeed is the biological web of life that you know as a biosphere. Agora, em conjunto, as inúmeras culturas do mundo formam uma teia de vida espiritual e cultural que envolve o planeta e é tão importante para o bem-estar do planeta como, de facto, é a teia de vida biológica que conhecemos como biosfera. Теперь, вместе, бесчисленные культуры мира составляют сеть духовной жизни и культурной жизни, которая окутывает планету, и столь же важна для благополучия планеты, как и в действительности биологическая сеть жизни, которую вы знаете как биосфера , And you might think of this cultural web of life as being an ethnosphere and you might define the ethnosphere as being the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. E pode pensar-se nesta rede cultural de vida como sendo uma etnosfera e pode definir-se a etnosfera como sendo a soma total de todos os pensamentos e sonhos, mitos, ideias, inspirações, intuições trazidas à existência pela imaginação humana desde o início da consciência. The ethnosphere is humanity’s great legacy. A etnosfera é o grande legado da humanidade. It’s the symbol of all that we are and all that we can be as an astonishingly inquisitive species. Es el símbolo de todo lo que somos y todo lo que podemos ser como una especie asombrosamente curiosa. É o símbolo de tudo o que somos e de tudo o que podemos ser enquanto espécie espantosamente curiosa. And just as the biosphere has been severely eroded, so too is the ethnosphere -- and if anything at a far greater rate. Y así como la biosfera ha sido severamente erosionada, también lo es la etnosfera, y en todo caso a un ritmo mucho mayor. E tal como a biosfera está a sofrer uma erosão grave, também a etnosfera está a sofrer uma erosão muito maior. No biologists, for example, would dare suggest that 50 percent of all species or more have been or are on the brink of extinction because it simply is not true, and yet that -- the most apocalyptic scenario in the realm of biological diversity -- scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity. Ningún biólogo, por ejemplo, se atrevería a sugerir que el 50 por ciento de todas las especies o más han estado o están al borde de la extinción porque simplemente no es cierto y, sin embargo, el escenario más apocalíptico en el ámbito de la diversidad biológica. apenas se acerca a lo que sabemos que es el escenario más optimista en el ámbito de la diversidad cultural. Nenhum biólogo, por exemplo, se atreveria a sugerir que 50% de todas as espécies ou mais foram ou estão à beira da extinção, porque simplesmente não é verdade, e, no entanto, esse - o cenário mais apocalítico no domínio da diversidade biológica - dificilmente se aproxima do que sabemos ser o cenário mais otimista no domínio da diversidade cultural. And the great indicator of that, of course, is language loss. Y el gran indicador de eso, por supuesto, es la pérdida del lenguaje. E o grande indicador disso é, naturalmente, a perda da língua. When each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet. Quando cada um de vós nesta sala nasceu, havia 6.000 línguas faladas no planeta. Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. Ahora bien, una lengua no es solo un cuerpo de vocabulario o un conjunto de reglas gramaticales. Ora, uma língua não é apenas um corpo de vocabulário ou um conjunto de regras gramaticais. A language is a flash of the human spirit. Un idioma es un destello del espíritu humano. Uma língua é um lampejo do espírito humano. It’s a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. É um veículo através do qual a alma de cada cultura particular vem para o mundo material. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities. Cada idioma es un antiguo bosque de la mente, una línea divisoria de aguas, un pensamiento, un ecosistema de posibilidades espirituales. Cada língua é uma floresta antiga da mente, uma bacia hidrográfica, um pensamento, um ecossistema de possibilidades espirituais. And of those 6,000 languages, as we sit here today in Monterey, fully half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children. Y de esos 6,000 idiomas, mientras nos sentamos hoy aquí en Monterey, la mitad ya no se susurra al oído de los niños. E dessas 6000 línguas, enquanto estamos aqui hoje em Monterey, metade já não é sussurrada aos ouvidos das crianças. They’re no longer being taught to babies, which means, effectively, unless something changes, they’re already dead. Ya no se les enseña a los bebés, lo que significa que, efectivamente, a menos que algo cambie, ya están muertos. Já não são ensinados aos bebés, o que significa que, na prática, a menos que algo mude, já estão mortos. What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your language, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors or anticipate the promise of the children? O que pode ser mais solitário do que estar envolto em silêncio, ser o último do seu povo a falar a sua língua, não ter forma de transmitir a sabedoria dos antepassados ou antecipar a promessa das crianças? And yet, that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody somewhere on Earth roughly every two weeks, because every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue. Y sin embargo, ese espantoso destino es de hecho la difícil situación de alguien en algún lugar de la Tierra aproximadamente cada dos semanas, porque cada dos semanas, algún anciano muere y se lleva consigo a la tumba las últimas sílabas de una lengua antigua. E, no entanto, esse terrível destino é de facto a situação de alguém algures na Terra, aproximadamente de duas em duas semanas, porque de duas em duas semanas, um ancião morre e leva consigo para a sepultura as últimas sílabas de uma língua antiga. And I know there’s some of you who say, "Well, wouldn’t it be better? Y sé que hay algunos de ustedes que dicen: "Bueno, ¿no sería mejor? E eu sei que há alguns de vós que dizem: "Bem, não seria melhor? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all just spoke one language?" Não seria o mundo um lugar melhor se todos falássemos uma só língua? And I say, "Great, let’s make that language Yoruba. E eu disse: "Ótimo, vamos fazer dessa língua uma língua iorubá. Let’s make it Cantonese. Hagámoslo cantonés. Vamos fazê-lo em cantonês. Let’s make it Kogi." Vamos fazer com que seja Kogi". And you’ll suddenly discover what it would be like to be unable to speak your own language. Y de repente descubrirás cómo sería no poder hablar tu propio idioma. E, de repente, descobrirá o que seria não poder falar a sua própria língua. And so, what I’d like to do with you today is sort of take you on a journey through the ethnosphere -- a brief journey through the ethnosphere to try to begin to give you a sense of what in fact is being lost. Entonces, lo que me gustaría hacer con ustedes hoy es llevarlos en un viaje a través de la etnosfera, un breve viaje a través de la etnosfera para tratar de comenzar a darles una idea de lo que de hecho se está perdiendo. Por isso, o que eu gostaria de fazer hoje é levar-vos numa espécie de viagem pela etnosfera - uma breve viagem pela etnosfera para tentar começar a dar-vos uma ideia do que, de facto, se está a perder. Now, there are many of us who sort of forget that when I say "different ways of being," I really do mean different ways of being. Ahora, hay muchos de nosotros que olvidamos que cuando digo "diferentes formas de ser", realmente me refiero a diferentes formas de ser. Muitos de nós esquecem-se que quando digo "diferentes formas de ser", quero mesmo dizer diferentes formas de ser. Take, for example, this child of Barasana in Northwest Amazon, the people of the anaconda who believe that mythologically they came up the milk river from the east in the belly of sacred snakes. Tomemos, por ejemplo, a este hijo de Barasana en el noroeste del Amazonas, la gente de la anaconda que cree que mitológicamente subieron por el río de la leche desde el este en el vientre de las serpientes sagradas. Prenez, par exemple, cet enfant de Barasana dans le nord-ouest de l'Amazonie, les anacondas qui croient que mythologiquement ils ont remonté la rivière du lait de l'est dans le ventre de serpents sacrés. Tomemos, por exemplo, esta criança de Barasana, no noroeste da Amazónia, o povo da anaconda que acredita que, mitologicamente, subiu o rio do leite vindo do leste no ventre de cobras sagradas. Now, this is a people who cognitively do not distinguish the color blue from the color green because the canopy of the heavens is equated to the canopy of the forest upon which the people depend. Ora, este é um povo que cognitivamente não distingue a cor azul da cor verde porque a copa dos céus é equiparada à copa da floresta de que o povo depende. They have a curious language and marriage rule which is called linguistic exogamy: you must marry someone who speaks a different language. Têm uma regra linguística e matrimonial curiosa que se chama exogamia linguística: é preciso casar com alguém que fale uma língua diferente. And this is all rooted in the mythological past, yet the curious thing is in these long houses where there are six or seven languages spoken because of intermarriage, you never hear anyone practicing a language. Y todo esto tiene su raíz en el pasado mitológico, pero lo curioso es que en estas casas largas donde se hablan seis o siete idiomas por matrimonios mixtos, nunca se escucha a nadie practicar un idioma. E tudo isto está enraizado no passado mitológico, mas o mais curioso é que nestas casas compridas, onde se falam seis ou sete línguas por causa dos casamentos, nunca se ouve ninguém a praticar uma língua. They simply listen and then begin to speak. Simplemente escuchan y luego comienzan a hablar. Simplesmente ouvem e depois começam a falar. Or, one of the most fascinating tribes I ever lived with, the Waorani of northeastern Ecuador, an astonishing people first contacted peacefully in 1958. Ou, uma das tribos mais fascinantes com que já convivi, os Waorani do nordeste do Equador, um povo surpreendente contactado pacificamente pela primeira vez em 1958. In 1957, five missionaries attempted contact and made a critical mistake. En 1957, cinco misioneros intentaron establecer contacto y cometieron un error crítico. Em 1957, cinco missionários tentaram estabelecer contacto e cometeram um erro grave. They dropped from the air eight by ten glossy photographs of themselves in what we would say to be friendly gestures, forgetting that these people of the rainforest had never seen anything two-dimensional in their lives. Dejaron caer desde el aire fotografías brillantes de sí mismos de ocho por diez en lo que diríamos que son gestos amistosos, olvidando que esta gente de la selva tropical nunca había visto nada bidimensional en sus vidas. Deixaram cair do ar oito por dez fotografias brilhantes de si próprios, num gesto que diríamos amigável, esquecendo que estas pessoas da floresta tropical nunca tinham visto nada bidimensional nas suas vidas. They picked up these photographs from the forest floor, tried to look behind the face to find the form or the figure, found nothing, and concluded that these were calling cards from the devil, so they speared the five missionaries to death. Recogieron estas fotografías del suelo del bosque, trataron de mirar detrás de la cara para encontrar la forma o la figura, no encontraron nada y concluyeron que se trataba de tarjetas de visita del diablo, por lo que mataron a los cinco misioneros con lanzas. Apanharam estas fotografias no chão da floresta, tentaram olhar para trás do rosto para encontrar a forma ou a figura, não encontraram nada e concluíram que se tratava de cartões de visita do demónio, pelo que mataram os cinco missionários à lança. But the Waorani didn’t just spear outsiders. Pero los Waorani no solo lanzaron a los forasteros. Mas os Waorani não se limitavam a expulsar os forasteiros. They speared each other. Se lanzaron unos a otros. Eles atiraram-se um ao outro. 54 percent of their mortality was due to them spearing each other. El 54 por ciento de su mortalidad se debió a que se lanzaron entre sí. 54% da sua mortalidade deveu-se ao facto de se terem atacado uns aos outros. We traced genealogies back eight generations, and we found two instances of natural death and when we pressured the people a little bit about it, they admitted that one of the fellows had gotten so old that he died getting old, so we speared him anyway. Rastreamos las genealogías de ocho generaciones, y encontramos dos casos de muerte natural y cuando presionamos un poco a la gente al respecto, admitieron que uno de los tipos había envejecido tanto que murió al envejecer, así que lo lanzamos de todos modos. Investigámos as genealogias até oito gerações atrás e encontrámos dois casos de morte natural e, quando pressionámos um pouco as pessoas sobre o assunto, elas admitiram que um dos indivíduos tinha envelhecido tanto que morreu a envelhecer, por isso espetámos-lhe uma lança na mesma. (Laughter) But at the same time they had a perspicacious knowledge of the forest that was astonishing. (Risas) Pero a la vez tenían un conocimiento perspicaz del bosque que era asombroso. (Risos) Mas, ao mesmo tempo, tinham um conhecimento perspicaz da floresta que era espantoso. Their hunters could smell animal urine at 40 paces and tell you what species left it behind. Sus cazadores podían oler la orina de los animales a 40 pasos y decirte qué especies la dejaron atrás. Os seus caçadores conseguiam cheirar a urina de animais a 40 passos e dizer que espécie a tinha deixado para trás. In the early '80s, I had a really astonishing assignment when I was asked by my professor at Harvard if I was interested in going down to Haiti, infiltrating the secret societies which were the foundation of Duvalier’s strength and Tontons Macoutes, and securing the poison used to make zombies. A principios de los años 80, tuve una tarea realmente sorprendente cuando mi profesor de Harvard me preguntó si estaba interesado en ir a Haití, infiltrarme en las sociedades secretas que eran la base de la fuerza de Duvalier y Tontons Macoutes, y asegurar el veneno. solía hacer zombis. No início dos anos 80, tive uma tarefa verdadeiramente espantosa quando o meu professor de Harvard me perguntou se eu estava interessado em ir ao Haiti, infiltrar-me nas sociedades secretas que constituíam a base da força de Duvalier e dos Tontons Macoutes, e obter o veneno utilizado para fazer zombies. In order to make sense out of sensation of course, I had to understand something about this remarkable faith of Vodoun, and Voodoo is not a black magic cult. Por supuesto, para que la sensación tuviera sentido, tenía que entender algo sobre esta notable fe del vudú, y el vudú no es un culto de magia negra. Para que a sensação fizesse sentido, é claro, eu tinha que entender algo sobre essa fé notável do Vodu, e o Vodu não é um culto de magia negra. On the contrary, it’s a complex metaphysical worldview. Por el contrario, es una cosmovisión metafísica compleja. Pelo contrário, é uma visão metafísica complexa do mundo. It’s interesting. É interessante. If I asked you to name the great religions of the world, what would you say? Si te pidiera que nombraras las grandes religiones del mundo, ¿qué dirías? Se vos pedisse para citarem as grandes religiões do mundo, o que diriam? Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, whatever. Cristianismo, Islão, Budismo, Judaísmo, o que for. There’s always one continent left out, the assumption being that sub-Saharan Africa had no religious beliefs. Siempre queda un continente fuera, asumiendo que el África subsahariana no tenía creencias religiosas. Há sempre um continente que fica de fora, partindo-se do princípio de que a África subsariana não tem crenças religiosas. Well, of course, they did and Voodoo is simply the distillation of these very profound religious ideas that came over during the tragic Diaspora of the slavery era. Bueno, por supuesto que lo hicieron y Voodoo es simplemente la destilación de estas ideas religiosas muy profundas que surgieron durante la trágica diáspora de la era de la esclavitud. Bem, claro que sim, e o vudu é simplesmente a destilação destas ideias religiosas muito profundas que chegaram durante a trágica diáspora da era da escravatura. But, what makes Voodoo so interesting is that it’s this living relationship between the living and the dead. Pero, lo que hace que Voodoo sea tan interesante es que es esta relación viva entre los vivos y los muertos. Mas o que torna o vudu tão interessante é o facto de ser esta relação viva entre os vivos e os mortos. So, the living give birth to the spirits. Así, los vivos dan a luz a los espíritus. Assim, os vivos dão à luz os espíritos. The spirits can be invoked from beneath the Great Water, responding to the rhythm of the dance to momentarily displace the soul of the living, so that for that brief shining moment, the acolyte becomes the god. Los espíritus pueden ser invocados desde debajo de la Gran Agua, respondiendo al ritmo de la danza para desplazar momentáneamente el alma de los vivos, de modo que durante ese breve momento brillante, el acólito se convierte en dios. Os espíritos podem ser invocados de debaixo da Grande Água, respondendo ao ritmo da dança para deslocar momentaneamente a alma dos vivos, de modo a que, por esse breve momento brilhante, o acólito se torne o deus. That’s why the Voodooists like to say that "You white people go to church and speak about God. Por eso a los vudúes les gusta decir que "ustedes, los blancos, van a la iglesia y hablan de Dios. É por isso que os voduistas gostam de dizer: "Vocês, brancos, vão à igreja e falam de Deus. We dance in the temple and become God." Bailamos en el templo y nos convertimos en Dios". Dançamos no templo e tornamo-nos Deus". And because you are possessed, you are taken by the spirit, how can you be harmed? Y porque estás poseído, estás tomado por el espíritu, ¿cómo puedes ser dañado? E porque estás possuído, estás tomado pelo espírito, como podes ser prejudicado? So you see these astonishing demonstrations: Voodoo acolytes in a state of trance handling burning embers with impunity, a rather astonishing demonstration of the ability of the mind to affect the body that bears it when catalyzed in the state of extreme excitation. Así que ven estas asombrosas demostraciones: acólitos vudú en estado de trance manejando brasas ardientes con impunidad, una demostración bastante asombrosa de la capacidad de la mente para afectar al cuerpo que la porta cuando es catalizada en estado de extrema excitación. Assim, vemos estas demonstrações espantosas: Acólitos vudu em estado de transe manipulando impunemente brasas incandescentes, uma demonstração assombrosa da capacidade da mente para afetar o corpo que a suporta quando catalisada em estado de excitação extrema. Now, of all the peoples that I’ve ever been with, the most extraordinary are the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. Ahora, de todos los pueblos con los que he estado, los más extraordinarios son los Kogi de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta en el norte de Colombia. De todos os povos com que já estive, os mais extraordinários são os Kogi da Serra Nevada de Santa Marta, no norte da Colômbia. Descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization which once carpeted the Caribbean coastal plain of Colombia in the wake of the conquest, these people retreated into an isolated volcanic massif that soars above the Caribbean coastal plain. Descendientes de la antigua civilización Tairona que una vez cubrió la llanura costera del Caribe de Colombia a raíz de la conquista, estas personas se retiraron a un macizo volcánico aislado que se eleva sobre la llanura costera del Caribe. Descendentes da antiga civilização Tairona, que outrora cobriu a planície costeira das Caraíbas da Colômbia, na sequência da conquista, este povo retirou-se para um maciço vulcânico isolado que se eleva acima da planície costeira das Caraíbas. In a bloodstained continent, these people alone were never conquered by the Spanish. En un continente ensangrentado, este pueblo solo nunca fue conquistado por los españoles. Num continente manchado de sangue, só este povo nunca foi conquistado pelos espanhóis. To this day, they remain ruled by a ritual priesthood but the training for the priesthood is rather extraordinary. Hasta el día de hoy, permanecen gobernados por un sacerdocio ritual, pero el entrenamiento para el sacerdocio es bastante extraordinario. Até hoje, continuam a ser governados por um sacerdócio ritual, mas a formação para o sacerdócio é bastante extraordinária. The young acolytes are taken away from their families at the age of three and four, sequestered in a shadowy world of darkness in stone huts at the base of glaciers for 18 years. Los jóvenes acólitos son separados de sus familias a la edad de tres y cuatro años, secuestrados en un mundo sombrío de oscuridad en cabañas de piedra en la base de los glaciares durante 18 años. Os jovens acólitos são retirados das suas famílias aos três e quatro anos de idade, ficando isolados num mundo sombrio de escuridão em cabanas de pedra na base dos glaciares durante 18 anos. Two nine-year periods deliberately chosen to mimic the nine months of gestation they spend in their natural mother’s womb, now they are metaphorically in the womb of the great mother. Dos períodos de nueve años elegidos deliberadamente para imitar los nueve meses de gestación que pasan en el vientre de su madre natural, ahora están metafóricamente en el vientre de la gran madre. Dois períodos de nove anos escolhidos deliberadamente para imitar os nove meses de gestação que passam no ventre da sua mãe natural, agora estão metaforicamente no ventre da grande mãe. And for this entire time, they are inculturated into the values of their society, values that maintain the proposition that their prayers and their prayers alone maintain the cosmic -- or we might say the ecological -- balance. Y durante todo este tiempo, están inculturados en los valores de su sociedad, valores que mantienen la proposición de que sus oraciones y solo sus oraciones mantienen el equilibrio cósmico, o podríamos decir, el equilibrio ecológico. E durante todo esse tempo, são inculturados nos valores da sua sociedade, valores que mantêm a proposição de que as suas orações e apenas as suas orações mantêm o equilíbrio cósmico - ou poderíamos dizer ecológico. And at the end of this amazing initiation, one day they’re suddenly taken out and for the first time in their lives, at the age of 18, they see a sunrise. Y al final de esta increíble iniciación, un día son sacados de repente y por primera vez en sus vidas, a la edad de 18 años, ven un amanecer. E no final desta incrível iniciação, um dia são subitamente levados para fora e pela primeira vez nas suas vidas, aos 18 anos, vêem o nascer do sol. And in that crystal moment of awareness of first light as the Sun begins to bathe the slopes of the stunningly beautiful landscape, suddenly everything they have learned in the abstract is affirmed in stunning glory. Y en ese momento cristalino de conciencia de la primera luz cuando el Sol comienza a bañar las laderas del paisaje increíblemente hermoso, de repente todo lo que han aprendido en abstracto se afirma en una gloria deslumbrante. E nesse momento cristalino de consciência da primeira luz, quando o Sol começa a banhar as encostas da paisagem de uma beleza deslumbrante, de repente tudo o que aprenderam em abstrato é afirmado com uma glória impressionante. And the priest steps back and says, "You see? Y el sacerdote da un paso atrás y dice: "¿Ves? E o padre afasta-se e diz: "Estão a ver? It’s really as I’ve told you. Es realmente como te he dicho. É realmente como vos disse. It is that beautiful. É assim tão bonito. It is yours to protect." Es tuyo para protegerlo". É vossa para a protegerem". They call themselves the elder brothers and they say we, who are the younger brothers, are the ones responsible for destroying the world. Se hacen llamar los hermanos mayores y dicen que nosotros, que somos los hermanos menores, somos los responsables de destruir el mundo. Chamam a si próprios os irmãos mais velhos e dizem que nós, que somos os irmãos mais novos, somos os responsáveis pela destruição do mundo. Now, this level of intuition becomes very important. Agora, este nível de intuição torna-se muito importante. Whenever we think of indigenous people and landscape, we either invoke Rousseau and the old canard of the noble savage, which is an idea racist in its simplicity, or alternatively, we invoke Thoreau and say these people are closer to the Earth than we are. Cada vez que pensamos en los pueblos indígenas y el paisaje, invocamos a Rousseau y el viejo bulo del buen salvaje, que es una idea racista en su simplicidad, o alternativamente, invocamos a Thoreau y decimos que estas personas están más cerca de la Tierra que nosotros. Sempre que pensamos nos povos indígenas e na paisagem, ou invocamos Rousseau e o velho cânone do nobre selvagem, que é uma ideia racista na sua simplicidade, ou, em alternativa, invocamos Thoreau e dizemos que estes povos estão mais próximos da Terra do que nós.

Well, indigenous people are neither sentimental nor weakened by nostalgia. Bueno, los indígenas no son ni sentimentales ni debilitados por la nostalgia. There’s not a lot of room for either in the malarial swamps of the Asmat or in the chilling winds of Tibet, but they have, nevertheless, through time and ritual, forged a traditional mystique of the Earth that is based not on the idea of being self-consciously close to it, but on a far subtler intuition: the idea that the Earth itself can only exist because it is breathed into being by human consciousness. No hay mucho espacio ni en los pantanos palúdicos del Asmat ni en los vientos helados del Tíbet, pero sin embargo, a través del tiempo y los rituales, han forjado una mística tradicional de la Tierra que no se basa en la idea de ser tímidamente cerca de él, pero en una intuición mucho más sutil: la idea de que la Tierra en sí misma solo puede existir porque la conciencia humana la inspiró. Now, what does that mean? Ahora, ¿qué significa eso? It means that a young kid from the Andes who’s raised to believe that that mountain is an Apu spirit that will direct his or her destiny will be a profoundly different human being and have a different relationship to that resource or that place than a young kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of rock ready to be mined. Whether it’s the abode of a spirit or a pile of ore is irrelevant. Ya sea la morada de un espíritu o una pila de mineral es irrelevante. Que ce soit la demeure d'un esprit ou un tas de minerai n'a pas d'importance. What’s interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world. I was raised in the forests of British Columbia to believe those forests existed to be cut. Me crié en los bosques de la Columbia Británica para creer que esos bosques existían para talarlos. That made me a different human being than my friends among the Kwagiulth who believe that those forests were the abode of Huxwhukw and the Crooked Beak of Heaven and the cannibal spirits that dwelled at the north end of the world, spirits they would have to engage during their Hamatsa initiation. Eso me convirtió en un ser humano diferente a mis amigos entre los Kwagiulth que creen que esos bosques eran la morada de Huxwhukw y el Pico Torcido del Cielo y los espíritus caníbales que moraban en el extremo norte del mundo, espíritus con los que tendrían que enfrentarse durante su iniciación Hamatsa. Now, if you begin to look at the idea that these cultures could create different realities, you could begin to understand some of their extraordinary discoveries. Take this plant here. Toma esta planta aquí. It’s a photograph I took in the Northwest Amazon just last April. This is ayahuasca, which many of you have heard about, the most powerful psychoactive preparation of the shaman’s repertoire. What makes ayahuasca fascinating is not the sheer pharmacological potential of this preparation, but the elaboration of it. Lo que hace fascinante a la ayahuasca no es el puro potencial farmacológico de esta preparación, sino su elaboración. It’s made really of two different sources. Está hecho realmente de dos fuentes diferentes. On the one hand, there’s this woody liana which has in it a series of beta-carbolines, harmine, harmaline, mildly hallucinogenic. Por un lado, está esta liana leñosa que contiene una serie de betacarbolinas, harmina, harmalina, levemente alucinógenas. D'un côté, il y a cette liane boisée qui contient une série de bêta-carbolines, harmine, harmaline, légèrement hallucinogènes. To take the vine alone is rather to have sort of blue hazy smoke drift across your consciousness, but it’s mixed with the leaves of a shrub in the coffee family called Psychotria viridis. Tomar la vid sola es más bien tener una especie de humo azul nebuloso flotando en tu conciencia, pero está mezclado con las hojas de un arbusto de la familia del café llamado Psychotria viridis. This plant had in it some very powerful tryptamines, very close to brain serotonin, dimethyltryptamine, 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine. Esta planta contenía algunas triptaminas muy poderosas, muy cercanas a la serotonina cerebral, dimetiltriptamina, 5-metoxidimetiltriptamina. If you’ve ever seen the Yanomami blowing that snuff up their noses, that substance they make from a different set of species also contains methoxydimethyltryptamine. Si alguna vez has visto a los yanomami sonarse la nariz, esa sustancia que fabrican a partir de un conjunto diferente de especies también contiene metoxidimetiltriptamina. To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity. Que te exploten esa pólvora por la nariz es como salir disparado del cañón de un rifle forrado con pinturas barrocas y aterrizar en un mar de electricidad. Se faire exploser cette poudre dans le nez, c'est un peu comme être tiré d'un canon de fusil bordé de peintures baroques et atterrir sur une mer d'électricité. (Laughter) It doesn’t create the distortion of reality; it creates the dissolution of reality. (Risas) No crea la distorsión de la realidad; crea la disolución de la realidad. In fact, I used to argue with my professor, Richard Evan Shultes -- who is a man who sparked the psychedelic era with his discovery of the magic mushrooms in Mexico in the 1930s. De hecho, solía discutir con mi profesor, Richard Evan Shultes, un hombre que inició la era psicodélica con su descubrimiento de los hongos mágicos en México en la década de 1930. I used to argue that you couldn’t classify these tryptamines as hallucinogenic because by the time you’re under the effects there’s no one home anymore to experience a hallucination. Solía argumentar que no podías clasificar estas triptaminas como alucinógenas porque cuando estás bajo los efectos ya no hay nadie en casa para experimentar una alucinación. (Laughter) But the thing about tryptamines is they cannot be taken orally because they’re denatured by an enzyme found naturally in the human gut called monoamine oxidase. (Risas) Pero lo que pasa con las triptaminas es que no se pueden tomar por vía oral porque son desnaturalizadas por una enzima que se encuentra naturalmente en el intestino humano llamada monoamino oxidasa. They can only be taken orally if taken in conjunction with some other chemical that denatures the MAO. Now, the fascinating things are that the beta-carbolines found within that liana are MAO inhibitors of the precise sort necessary to potentiate the tryptamine. Maintenant, les choses fascinantes sont que les bêta-carbolines trouvées dans cette liane sont des inhibiteurs de la MAO du type précis nécessaire pour potentialiser la tryptamine. So you ask yourself a question. How in a flora of 80,000 species of vascular plants, do these people find these two morphologically unrelated plants that when combined in this way, created a kind of biochemical version of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts? Well, we use that great euphemism, trial and error, which is exposed to be meaningless. But you ask the Indians, and they say, "The plants talk to us." Well, what does that mean? This tribe, the Cofan, has 17 varieties of ayahuasca, all of which they distinguish a great distance in the forest, all of which are referable to our eye as one species. Cette tribu, les Cofan, possède 17 variétés d'ayahuasca, qu'ils distinguent toutes à grande distance dans la forêt, qui sont toutes assimilables à notre œil à une seule espèce. And then you ask them how they establish their taxonomy and they say, "I thought you knew something about plants. I mean, don’t you know anything?" And I said, "No." Well, it turns out you take each of the 17 varieties in the night of a full moon, and it sings to you in a different key. Now, that’s not going to get you a Ph.D. at Harvard, but it’s a lot more interesting than counting stamens. Now, (Applause) the problem -- the problem is that even those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful but somehow reduced to the margins of history as the real world, meaning our world, moves on. Well, the truth is the 20th century, 300 years from now, is not going to be remembered for its wars or its technological innovations, but rather as the era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet. Now, the problem isn’t change. All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities of life. And the problem is not technology itself. The Sioux Indians did not stop being Sioux when they gave up the bow and arrow any more than an American stopped being an American when he gave up the horse and buggy.

It’s not change or technology that threatens the integrity of the ethnosphere. It is power. The crude face of domination. Where ever you look around the world, you discover that these are not cultures destined to fade away. These are dynamic living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to. Whether it’s the egregious deforestation in the homeland of the Penan -- a nomadic people from Southeast Asia, from Sarawak -- a people who lived free in the forest until a generation ago, and now have all been reduced to servitude and prostitution on the banks of the rivers, where you can see the river itself is soiled with the silt that seems to be carrying half of Borneo away to the South China Sea, where the Japanese freighters hang light in the horizon ready to fill their holds with raw logs ripped from the forest. Or in the case of the Yanomami, it’s the disease entities that have come in, in the wake of the discovery of gold. Or if we go into the mountains of Tibet, where I’m doing a lot of research recently, you’ll see it’s a crude face of political domination. You know, genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people’s way of life, is not only not condemned, it’s universally -- in many quarters -- celebrated as part of a development strategy. And you cannot understand the pain of Tibet until you move through it at the ground level. I once travelled 6,000 miles from Chengdu in Western China overland through southeastern Tibet to Lhasa with a young colleague, and it was only when I got to Lhasa that I understood the face behind the statistics you hear about. 6,000 sacred monuments torn apart to dust and ashes. 1.2 million people killed by the cadres during the Cultural Revolution. This young man’s father had been ascribed to the Panchen Lama. That meant he was instantly killed at the time of the Chinese invasion. His uncle fled with his holiness in the Diaspora that took the people to Nepal. His mother was incarcerated for the price of -- for the crime of being wealthy. Sa mère a été incarcérée pour le prix de -- pour le crime d'être riche. He was smuggled into the jail at the age of two to hide beneath her skirt tails because she couldn’t bear to be without him. The sister who had done that brave deed was put into an education camp. One day she inadvertently stepped on an armband of Mao, and for that transgression, she was given seven years of hard labor. The pain of Tibet can be impossible to bear, but the redemptive spirit of the people is something to behold. And in the end, then, it really comes down to a choice. Do we want to live in a monochromatic world of monotony or do we want to embrace a polychromatic world of diversity?

Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, said before she died that her greatest fear was that as we drifted towards this blandly amorphous generic world view not only would we see the entire range of the human imagination reduced to a more narrow modality of thought, but that we would wake from a dream one day having forgotten there were even other possibilities. And it’s humbling to remember that our species has, perhaps, been around for [150,000] years. The Neolithic Revolution -- which gave us agriculture, at which time we succumbed to the cult of the seed, the poetry of the shaman was displaced by the prose of the priesthood, we created hierarchy specialization surplus -- is only 10,000 years ago. The modern industrial world as we know it is barely 300 years old. Now, that shallow history doesn’t suggest to me that we have all the answers for all of the challenges that will confront us in the ensuing millennia. When these myriad cultures of the world are asked the meaning of being human, they respond with 10,000 different voices. And it’s within that song that we will all rediscover the possibility of being what we are: a fully conscious species, fully aware of ensuring that all peoples and all gardens find a way to flourish. And there are great moments of optimism. This is a photograph I took at the northern tip of Baffin Island when I went narwhal hunting with some Inuit people, and this man, Olayuk, told me a marvelous story of his grandfather. The Canadian government has not always been kind to the Inuit people, and during the 1950s, to establish our sovereignty, we forced them into settlements. This old man’s grandfather refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his weapons, all of his tools. Now, you must understand that the Inuit did not fear the cold; they took advantage of it. The runners of their sleds were originally made of fish wrapped in caribou hide. So, this man’s grandfather was not intimidated by the Arctic night or the blizzard that was blowing. He simply slipped outside, pulled down his sealskin trousers and defecated into his hand. And as the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of a blade. He put a spray of saliva on the edge of the shit knife and as it finally froze solid, he butchered a dog with it. He skinned the dog and improvised a harness, took the ribcage of the dog and improvised a sled, harnessed up an adjacent dog, and disappeared over the ice floes, shit knife in belt. Talk about getting by with nothing. (Laughter) And this, in many ways, (Applause) is a symbol of the resilience of the Inuit people and of all indigenous people around the world. The Canadian government in April of 1999 gave back to total control of the Inuit an area of land larger than California and Texas put together. It’s our new homeland. It’s called Nunavut. It’s an independent territory. They control all mineral resources. An amazing example of how a nation-state can reach -- seek restitution with its people. And finally, in the end, I think it’s pretty obvious at least to all of all us who’ve travelled in these remote reaches of the planet, to realize that they’re not remote at all. They’re homelands of somebody. They represent branches of the human imagination that go back to the dawn of time. And for all of us, the dreams of these children, like the dreams of our own children, become part of the naked geography of hope. So, what we’re trying to do at the National Geographic finally, is, we believe that politicians will never accomplish anything. We think that polemics -- (Applause) we think that polemics are not persuasive, but we think that storytelling can change the world, and so we are probably the best storytelling institution in the world. We get 35 million hits on our website every month. 156 nations carry our television channel. Our magazines are read by millions. And what we’re doing is a series of journeys to the ethnosphere where we’re going to take our audience to places of such cultural wonder that they cannot help but come away dazzled by what they have seen, and hopefully, therefore, embrace gradually, one by one, the central revelation of anthropology: that this world deserves to exist in a diverse way, that we can find a way to live in a truly multicultural pluralistic world where all of the wisdom of all peoples can contribute to our collective well-being. Thank you very much. (Applause)

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

TEDTalks, Wade Davis – Cultures at the far edge of the world (2003)

Wade Davis – Cultures at the far edge of the world (2003)

Want to learn Inglés? Start now!

Want to learn Inglés?
Start now!