Napoleon A. Chagnon ( ) (1938... ) is an American anthropologist and retired professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was born in Port Austin, Michigan. Chagnon had earlier taught at the Pennsylvania State University.
Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. The Yanomamo are a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.
Thus working primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers, Chagnon conducted fieldwork among these people from the mid-1960s until the latter half of 1990s. Because the Yanomamö people could not pronounce his last name, they nicknamed him "Shaki", the closest pronunciation they could approximate, which also seemed appropriate because Chagnon was constantly asking questions, and "Shaki" means "pesky bee". A major focus of his research was the collection of genealogies of the residents of the villages that he visited, and from these he would analyze patterns of relatedness, marriage patterns, cooperation, and settlement pattern histories. Applying this genealogical approach as a basis for investigation, he is one of the early pioneers of the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology.
Chagnon is well known for his ethnography, Yanomamö: The Fierce People (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968) which was published in more than five editions and is commonly used as a text in university level introductory anthropology classes, making it the all-time bestselling anthropological text. Chagnon was also a pioneer in the field of visual anthropology. He collaborated with ethnographic filmmaker Tim Asch and produced a series of more than twenty ethnographic films documenting Yanomamö life. His life's work has made him both a celebrated figure and a lightning rod for controversy and criticism.
In 2000, journalist Patrick Tierney in his book Darkness in El Dorado accused Chagnon and his colleague James Neel, among other things, of exacerbating a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö people. Groups of historians, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers who had direct knowledge of the events investigated Tierney's claims. These groups ultimately rejected the worst allegations concerning the measles epidemic. In its report, which was later rescinded, a task force of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was critical of certain aspects of Chagnon's work, such as his portrayal of the Yanomamö and his relationships with Venezuelan government officials.
The American Anthropological Association convened the task force in February 2001 to investigate some of the allegations made in Tierney's book. Their report, which was issued by the AAA in May 2002, held that Chagnon had both represented the Yanomamo in harmful ways and failed in some instances to obtain proper consent from both the government and the groups he studied. However, the Task Force stated that there was no support to the claim that Chagnon and Neel began a measles epidemic. In June 2005, however, the AAA voted over two-to-one to rescind the acceptance of the 2002 report, noting that "Although the Executive Board’s action will not, in all likelihood, end debate on ethical standards for anthropologists, it does seek to repair damage done to the integrity of the discipline in the El Dorado case."
Most of the allegations made in Darkness in El Dorado were publicly refuted by the Provost's office of the University of Michigan in November 2000. For example, the interviews upon which the book was based all came from members of the Salesian Society (an official society of the Roman Catholic Church) which Chagnon had criticized, and thus angered, in his book.
Tierney has since claimed that, "Experts I spoke to then had very different opinions than the ones they are expressing now."
Brazilian director José Padilha revisits the Darkness in El Dorado controversy in his documentary Secrets of the Tribe. The film, screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize. It provides testimonials from all the key players and will surely lead to renewed debate.
The Trap
In the television documentary film The Trap, Chagnon walks off-camera in disgust during an interview after having been asked if his presence in the village could have affected his study. Chagnon had gifted machetes and other goods to some of the Yanomamö tribesmen, thus raising the possibility that other tribesmen were only battling to gain possession of the treasured machetes. This theory is represented in the documentary by Prof. Brian Ferguson, and is discussed in his book Yanomami Warfare.
