wanted to record and publicize the event so that other people, in

other lands, could see what was happening." (Chapter 1, p.4) - he calls them 'friends' and a twenty-year long relationship with them, yet still expresses how difficult it is for him to adopt an insider's perspective an fair portrayal of their experiences: "For an anthropologist, the questions are strange and uncomfortable... Writing those words fills me with ambivalence. I doubt this book provokes the sense of unambiguous tragedy..it is clear that Cofán people continue to enjoy their way of life, battered as it is". (Chapter 8, p.245).

Marie

Response from Karen: I had exactly the same thought as I was reading this. She presented the various 'sides' to the debate, but I didn't feel like we really got a sense of how the San people view themselves or the different ways different San feel, as there's not likely to be one San voice.

Response to Marie

I liked how she set debate within the context of anthropologist study and it helped me gain more of an understanding but yes I agree that’s she failed to represent the voices of the Sans and may have fallen victim to what she earlier stated “ethnic distinctions are a product of colonial class formation, and race and ethnicity are politically vicious fictions that mask class inequalities” by not including and promoting the voices of indigenous peoples and she would have done better to include true to life accounts of the San community.

Zoe

Yes, probably Sylvain has given more weight to the theoretical construction, and ethnography is not enough. However, it still have something help us to understanding some general challenges and ideas about indigenous people anywhere. Maybe it the point here this article.

Bo Yang

 Claudia

Response to Claudia by Sheu Jeen
I agree with you and I think that Cepek provided a holistic view that not only ascribes agency to the Cofan, but also highlights the interdependencies of the community with oil, as a destructive and polluting element but also potentially an empowering one. It also forces us to reconcile with the fact that our lives are intricately bound with natural resources like oil and other minerals, and makes us question how we can ensure a more balanced and sustainable relationship with these elements such that we can maximise the utility but also minimise the harm to communities and ecology. Not easy questions but certainly important ones.


Response to Claudia by Marie:
I also deeply enjoyed the visual elements. I felt they  really helped to situate the reader and make the space more tangible. The pictures could be stand-alone pieces of visual anthropology and still manage to convey part of Cepek's arguments. I wonder if the chapters would have suffered from lack of photos, and what other means than text can be used as effectively in anthropology.
Response to Marie:
Agreed, the pictures themselves could be a visual ethnography and tell a story. 
Response by Sarah K

Response to all: What did you guys think about the photos and how they were styled? Why these very black and white (monochromatic?) frames into their world? I don't want to re-type my whole post/argument, so please read it (titled 'A bit monological) if interested :-) Jacob Heath 685615

Good question. I wonder if the very first mistake is to approach the issue in such binary terms: preserved or modernized, almost as in ‘to be or not to be’. 
The word ‘modernization’ (or ‘development’) implies certain continuity: the improvement of something that already existed, the creation of something that allow people to go beyond what they already had. If anything (at least when it is well done) development means to preserve while modernizing. 

But somehow, as we see in Cepek’s text, development applied to indigenous communities does not leave room to continuity. It dispossesses, it erases, it dissolves communities and it even harms the body (which, as Paul Farmer would argue, is another evidence of collective memory). Rather than proving that indigineous cultures are unable to survive modern development, these accounts show that modern development is denying indigenous cultures a space ‘to be’. 

The dilemma of preserved or modernized becomes meaningless: nor development can be understood in absolutes, nor indigenous communities have a choice (either way, preserved or modernized, they are being vanished from the rest of society). Then I would ask: is this binary approach being used to create a fatalistic view over indigenous values/knowledge/customs (they are doomed to disappear)? To what extent is incompatible a fair definition of development, one that includes continuity, with ‘the current global political order and organizations’ interests and agendas’? 

least we can do is hear what Cofán people have to say,'  This approach feels very powerful not only in indigenous issues we're discussing this week, but in areas like climate change etc (all related of course), where too often the arguments are technical and lose sight of the real people impacted. - Karen

Response by Sarah M: I agree, and as you I particularly appreciated how he is stressing that Cofán so not need a saviour, this the anthropologist show that compared to other "technocrats" he is reflecting and conscious of his non-savior role. Moreover, I appreciated how he did not construct a simplistic analysis, but was keen on portraying the ambiguities, the bad but also the good aspects of oil in the society. 

Response to Sarah M:  I enjoyed Cepek's writing style - it made the reading more accessible - and his somewhat deeply personal and individual approach to the lives of Cofan people. At the same time, I'd like to think that the anthropologist can employ a language of "political positionality and interest" which moves the debate beyond that of a "saviour-victim" dichotomy. If Cepek had left his professional sense of self aside or moved beyond it - continuously negating that he was not a lawyer, not a politician - he might have had an opportunity to at least add his own political stance and interest, as an individual, and a professional anthropologist. Why point out the ambiguities of the live he has lived with the Cofan for decades, without attempting a response here? (Julis)

The Cofan community have tolerated terrible damage inflicted upon their bodies and land for decades and have been failed by the government in terms of compensation and restoration to their land rights. Oil contributed to deteriorating health of Cofan people which contributes, legitimises and sustains the view that Indigenous peoples can be viewed as ‘surplus humanity’ and without the same rights as other citizens who exist in non-indigenous communities.  

 It was noted in the beginning of the chapter the government suggested only 200 barrels had leaked when in fact it was estimated at 20,000 and I think the Cofan community could be better protected if the wider community stepped in and helped advocate for the rights of the Cofan people to help ensure they can receive apologies, medical care and future promises that land can be protected from future exploitation from the government. The first chapter made me think what would happen if the oil spills occurred on non-indigenous land and it would be interesting to see how the communities and government would act to resolve the situation, I would assume it would be more compensation than bottled water and tins of fish. These chapters also made me realise how we are all part of this problem as we live in a reality that is so heavily reliant on oil we are all contributing to these issues impacting the Cofans as well as other communities who are so negatively effected in various way by the oil industries. As members of the wider community, we should help to advocate for change and promote renewable energy sources when we can to being about sustainable living for both indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

Zoe

 

I was struck by how little Cepek elicits the voices of Cofán people. Especially when realising Cepek elicits the voices of big oil corporations and academics quite a bit; his own voice even more so, making the chapters very monological. And then struck even more so when thinking of all this in relation to Cepek’s photos; what purpose do they serve (although, I think the photos of oil in the river were very important)? The photos made me think of Steiner (2019), who comments a fair bit on anthropology’s colonial history with photography; how photography in anthropology, particularly on indigenous people, tended to be used to make anthropology/ anthropologist more scientific and modern, whilst capture indigenous communities as stagnant and premodern. The camera and its photographs freeze – quite literally – the community, culture and people in time. 

 

Photographs were also often edited to erase any reference to things that show indigenous people as anything else contradictory to colonial beliefs. I’m not saying Cepek’s photos are the same as all this; but they are edited into these strong, evocative, silent, black and white frames (or is it a gaze?), that take us into the Cofán people’s world (this same type of editing is often done to refugees, or people who are homeless). So, it speaks to who is portraying who and why are they portraying in this way?

 

I think all this is rather crucial considering we’ve just last week heard from the likes of Zoe Todd, who emphasises how the voices of indigenous people have historically been silenced (and still are), excluded, ignored, or simply not invited to speak on matters that directly affect them – not dialogical but monological, like Cepek’s chapters. 

Steiner, C. B. 2019. Reading Time: an anthropology of clocks in the history of photography. In Exotic no more: anthropology for the contemporary world (ed) Jeremy MacClancy, 337-362. London: the University of Chicago Press.

Jacob Heath 685615

Response from Sara (684725):

I think you raise some really interesting points. Although, like many of the students above, I find the Cepek's writing style pleasantly accessible and pretty engaging, for better or worse, I do agree that he centres himself in the narrative.

Whether this is a good or bad thing I think is debatable. On the one hand, as you say, the piece doesn't amplify indigenous voices anywhere near as much as it could. Local people are often anonymous, and paraphrased rather than quoted for example.

However, I guess there is some honesty/authenticity, almost, in Cepek's first-person narrative. He doesn't pretend to speak on the  Cofán's behalf, and I notice that he frequently mentions the implications of his outsider status on his experiences and interactions, i.e.:
- "They expected less of me than they would of a normal person, for which I was grateful"
- "being a gringo might increase my susceptibility to the river’s generally contaminated state."

In other words, I think that this ethnography is more useful for one potential purpose/audience - giving insight about fieldwork and anthropologist/interlocutor dynamics in an Amazonian context - than it is for the purpose of amplifying Cofán voices. In other words, raising questions about the different applications for, and audiences of, ethnography.

Response to Jacob and Sara

Sara, I agree, I really enjoyed reading both of Cepek's chapters, appreciating the lack of theory so as not to centre his own interpretations of the Cofan people, as well as making it more engaging! However, does him not being the author automatically put him in a place where he is speaking on the Cofan's behalf? I'm not saying there is an answer to this, but I think it's crucial to recognise that everything he says is somewhat skewed by his identity as a Texan man (despite what he says being much more nuanced than popular discourse, which was great). I agree with Jacob; why did he keep saying he was telling the Cofan's story, but not presenting at least one excerpt of what they had directly said? I don't think including a few direct quotes like this would have decreased his authenticity towards his claim of not speaking on the Cofan people's behalf, I think in fact it would have aided in it, and been much more useful than his disclaimers. As Todd claims, shouldn't we be working on creating space for indigenous people to form their own narratives and claims? It seems as if Cepek had a great opportunity to do this, and despite presenting a more nuanced and balanced understanding of the Cofan, I don't think he quite achieved a display of their own voices? But perhaps it is impossible to be completely neutral and not something that should be strived for? And perhaps anthropologists shouldn't be left with the responsibility to do so, their skill being to present their own interpretations? I'm not sure!
Emma (686644)

I am fascinated with this quote: “life in oil is a form of slow, confusing, and ultimately unknowable violence” (10). Indigenous communities don’t even know what they are suffering from, what they need to resist. In fact, the author says that the arrival of the oil industry and its effects happened in the blink of an eye. It is not the first time I read something similar. In her article about disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein uses the same expression: in the blink of an eye, communities that have existed for who knows how long are dispossessed from their environment, their routines, their traditions. It happens before they ‘can know what hit them’ (Klein). On their part, Texaco and the oil industry knows exactly what they are doing, what can be the consequences. Information is power.

 This is the problem of the development business. It assumes that indigenous communities, as representatives of ‘more primitive stages’, know less than developed societies. It imposes a homogenized definition of progress/modernization. It allows private interests to guide the initiatives made in somebody else’s soil. It doesn’t disclose full information before asking for permission, in the cases in which that formality is maintained. Therefore: it promotes an imbalanced information and it creates an imbalanced power. 

In other words, in the blink of an eye, development itself becomes a form of slow, confusing, and ultimately unknowable violence.

Can we make this violence knowable? Can we unwind the inequalities behind certain development discourses? Cofán people would not want to go back to a time without motor boats, but had they know the consequences of the oil industry would they have done something different? Is there a space for development without destruction/subbordination? - Laura Torres

Responding to Laura
 I was also struck by the sentence “life in oil is a form of slow, confusing and ultimately unknowable violence.” I would argue though that the Cofan experience as shown by Cepak indicates how oil is an intrinsic part of the Cofan’s life, both for better and for worse. The levels of pollution are shocking yet partially accepted because there are no alternatives. Cofan take employment to clean up the oil spill and government housing paid for by the oil is taken while their health is sacrificed. And yet, they do not see themselves as victims and understand the politics of letting this happen. They have maintained their language, culture, knowledge despite losing land, nature and health. Cepek also highlights how the Cofan’s relationship to nature has changed from a positive, spiritual and nurturing one to negative and material that can harm and kill you. They have also adopted modernity, relying on oil to take them to hunting and fishing grounds as those close to home are destroyed. They remain self aware, dignified and politically engaged and focussed while Texaco denies responsibility and compensation. After so many decades of abuse, it is hard to see how this situation will ever be rectified until the oil runs out.  

Susie

This quote in the reading really stood out to me and builds upon what was discussed in the lecture and the other readings regarding how indigenous people are perceived and defined. 
Karlsson's reading highlights the difficulties in defining who indigenous people are as well as the importance in hearing and listening to the voices of people who choose to define themselves as such. 
In the quote above, Cepek neatly shows, maybe without consciously realising it how it is the West who currently controls the narrative and image of indigenous people. 

------
In response to some of the above discussions surround the use and inclusion of black and white images. It's true the styles of the pictures remind me of Lee Jeffries work with homeless people in the U.K. I found however that Cepek chose to include different portraits he took of the family he stayed with which offers more nuance than simply offering an essentialised image of Alejandro in his shaman outfit. 

Claire Bate-Roullin

Hanna A.

I love this quote because it perfectly encapsulates what so often seems to be the problem when using the term ‘indigenous’. It is othering and, perhaps more problematically, can force marginalised inhabitants to conform to a fixed understanding of their ‘culture’ in order to gain basic human rights. I agree with Cepek, anthropologists must fight against this caricaturisation of ‘indigenous’ people. Through ethnographies, we are uniquely able to provide fleshed out and rich depictions of the variety and complexity of indigenous life, whilst critiquing the label of 'indigenous' itself. Although, as Cepek also points out, we must be aware that we are just scratching the surface.

Maria - 687047

The Shaman's Oil- The Cofan community 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGHp6Coatok.

Cursed by Coal: Mining the Navajo Nation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4uGCj6knVw.

 

I found them very helpful to put Cepek’s work into perspective, as there is a great focus on the narrative of the affected communities themselves. 

Veronika