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US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe
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- dang 12y agoWe changed the url from http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/son-finds-his-lost-mother-in-a-stone-age-tribe/story-e6frfqcr-1226930876923 http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/son-finds-his-los..., which was copied from this.
- k-mcgrady 12y agoI think this was copied from something too. I read this story 1-2 years ago. Even the writing seems familiar.
- dang 12y agoThe Yanomami get written about extensively in Western media because there are sensational academic debates about them and because Napoleon Chagnon is a polarizing figure. But naive Googling, at least, doesn't yield a previous version of this article.
- peterkelly 12y agoYou should add a regex for that your submission page. Everything on news.com.au that isn't about Australian politics or sport is "syndicated" from US media.
- deadslow 12y agoYes, HN is the appropriate place for this type of posts.
- vyrotek 12y agoOn-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- frozenport 12y agoI don't feel gratified, this belongs on TLC. Why can't we downvote articles?
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- dang 12y agoWhat disparity? The threshold for upvoting stories is very small.
- phpnode 12y agono one can downvote submissions, regardless of karma. The reason this is on the front page is that at time of writing, 32 people found it interesting enough to vote up. If you don't like the article, don't read it. Your post is not useful to anyone.
- mherkender 12y agoWow, his father sounds like a piece of work. He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. Then his long absences put her at risk of being brutally gang-raped, which happens. She ends up in the US, and eventually goes back without her kids. He tells his kids nothing about her, why she left, who she is, but still has his son beg her to come back in front of a video camera. His son thinks she abandoned him and becomes an alcoholic by 14. The guy says “We weren’t a touchy-feely, talk-about-things kind of family".
- Natsu 12y agoI thought that the US had laws against "sex tourism" so I wonder if it's possible, at least in theory, that he could get prosecuted for this?
- phpnode 12y agoThose laws were probably not on the books when this crime took place.
- ars 12y ago> sex tourism He married her. It's really not the same thing.
- Natsu 12y agoAnd then he just left, so I'm not sure what "marriage" even means in this context. Under our laws it would be something more like "statutory rape" but I do wonder what actually applies here. This isn't something I've looked into, just something I saw on 20/20 or some similar show once, so you might be right that it only applies to those setting up tours or going on them rather than to conduct that happens overseas.
- sixQuarks 12y agoIf the facts of this article are correct, the father seems to be clinically psychotic
- wwwwwwwwww 12y ago> the father seems to be clinically psychotic i dont think you know what this means
- EC1 12y agoCare to enlighten us?
- sixQuarks 12y agoActually, I meant psychopath. Psychotic has a different meaning - I stand corrected.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wwwwwwwwww 12y agosorry, in that case I didnt mean to be pedantic
- sixQuarks 12y agono, glad you brought it to my attention
- jameswburke 12y agoIf anyone has any questions, I'm close friends (roommates actually) with David and serve on the board of directors for The Good Project. He just left for Costa Rica on a service learning trip, but I'm happy to answer what I can.
- phpnode 12y agoIs the article factually correct? And if so, does he have a strong relationship with his father?
- jameswburke 12y agoWhich aspects are you questioning? It's not my favorite piece I've seen published — I don't think it covers some areas in enough detail and leaves room for insinuation (e.g. Yarima was young when they met, but it wasn't until years had gone by that a relationship occurred. They (David's parents) have spoken as recently as ~7 months ago on a satellite phone, and Yarima has expressed interested on returning to America to visit on multiple occasions. She misses David's father and the relationship they had.) David's relationship with his Dad is still strained from when he was young, there's no denying that (from my perspective). But as David's interest in Anthropology has grown, so has their ability to find common ground as individuals. I've seen him on the phone talking with Dad for hours, just like any other son.
- phpnode 12y agothanks for your reply! I wasn't questioning anything in particular, but wow this article makes his dad sound like a terrible person.
- jacquesm 12y agoIs this the right place to divulge information about a third party? I realize there is an article about him posted here and that it already contains lots of details that would normally be considered private, however I feel that somehow if you have questions about this it might be better to take it off-line. Especially parts about his father and mother's relationship in the present, it has absolutely no business being in a public forum like this. We're not exactly discussing people that have been dead for 50 years.
- frik 12y agoReminds me a bit of the movie Jungle 2 Jungle (1997) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119432/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119432/ and Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120725/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120725/ (the screenplays are different, but from a similar timeframe between '85 and '94)
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoHere's an interesting documentary about the whole affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Tribe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Tribe
- jacquesm 12y agoFTLA: "Alice Dreger, an historian of medicine and science, and an outsider to the debate, concluded in a peer-reviewed publication that most of Tierney's claims (the movie is based on claims originally made by Tierney) were "baseless and sensationalistic charges".
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoSee the documentary and judge for yourself.
- anishkothari 12y agoA few links from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23758087 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23758087 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018qzzp http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018qzzp
- eagsalazar2 12y agoKenneth must have committed a crime in there somewhere. The dude is a pedophile and cruel and hopefully someone will figure out way to bring him down.
- brazzy 12y agoThank you for taking all of 5 minutes of your precious time to speak justice and pass judgement based on a magazine article. I am sure future generations will marvel at your wisdom, O Solomon.
- DanielBMarkham 12y agoThis is a fascinating story, because there's obviously a hidden narrative that the reader is supposed to play along with: rich, sophisticated asshole of a grad student takes advantage of a terribly young girl. Heartache ensues. One child suffers alcoholism. A ton of emoting going on. As I take this apart, however, I'm at a loss to where the story is. Is it wrong to study other cultures? No. Is it wrong to take a wife of 13? Perhaps in the western world, but not there, so I gotta go with "no" on that one. Should the kids have stayed in the Amazon? Once again, I think both parents made the safest choice for the children in the long term. I also think it's great the writer is getting re-connected with his mom. If anything, I'm disturbed by the idea that the mother is just another cookie-cutter ignorant primitive. I see no indication that she was forced into a marriage. It appears she wanted things to happen as they did. She decided to move to the states and she decided to move back. In fact, the father's explanation that it was a divorce looks to me like a clearcut explanation of what happened. Older man marries younger woman, kids arrive, much heartache, story ends with grown man finding his mother. It's a great story, no doubt, but not a very unusual one. I'm not sure what the "Isolated Amazon Tribe" brings to the table that isn't already there. Just a gimmick to attract more readers? I hope this guy continues reconnecting with his mother's side of the family. As he says, his story is just beginning. I bet it's going to be an interesting one. It's the interaction of cultures that's the interesting thing here, not the all-too-common tragedy of marriages gone bad.
- emiliobumachar 12y agoAs someone else pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Yanomame do not travel to work and leave the wife. The man took two very different cultures and combined actions that are common in each but not the other. The combination was explosive.
- dang 12y agoAll: The coincidence of an HN user being personally close to this story is so remarkable that we have put James' comment [1] at the top of the thread, using the same method we occasionally use for moderation announcements. This is very rare—I don't think we've ever done it before. It does occasionally happen that one commenter is uniquely close to a story, or knowledgeable about it, in an HN thread. I've thought for some time that the HN software should support this somehow, because those moments (e.g. when Peter Norvig shows up to comment on his own work) are among the most valuable here. If we had that feature today, we'd certainly have applied it to James' comment. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797013
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- jacquesm 12y agoExcept for one little detail, it's not the subject of the article that shows up but a close friend. If one of my close friends would show up in a thread about me and would start to distribute present-day details about my private life and about my family members that are not currently public I would be less than happy. Maybe jameswburke has full support of the subject(s) about these disclosures but for all we can see here he does not. The whole affair looks like a tragedy for all involved to me and I think it would be much better to just stick to the information already in the public eye (assuming we have to discuss this sort of thing at all) until all subjects involved (such as David's sister) indicate that they are on board with having this stuff divulged.
- dang 12y agoIt doesn't have to be the subject or author of the article. Someone unusually close to or knowledgeable about a story (compared to the rest of us in the thread) also counts. Perhaps I'm naive, but I give jameswburke the benefit of the doubt, and think the thread is much better with his contribution at the top. (The top comment otherwise would be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796987. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796987.) You're right that the story is personal in a very messy and unpleasant way. It also seems obvious that it has historical and cultural significance. On the other hand, the thread (sadly) isn't exploring that, so we're going to demote it.
- omegaworks 12y ago>They also have no word for “love.” This is the kind of thing that makes the article unambiguously Western-ethnocentric. They obviously know the concept of love. His mother wept tears of joy at the arrival of her son.
- quotient 12y agoI agree. That single sentence irritated me immensely. It was a ham-fisted and misguided attempt to emphasize the 'exoticness' of the Yanomami.
- unreal37 12y agoThey don't hug either. A mother can't hug her son. The example does imply they are not an affectionate people.
- noonespecial 12y agoIndeed. They probably have 10 different words for all of the different contexts and shades of it. "Love" is a ridiculously deficient and imprecise word.
- arjie 12y agoGood grief, both the anthropologists described in the article sound like disagreeable people. The father with all his marrying of a child and then abandoning her, and the other female anthropologist who was mean to the kid.
- anotherevan 12y ago> the other female anthropologist who was mean to the kid. Not that I didn't find her behaviour reprehensible, but in the interests of accuracy, she was "the wife of a very prominent anthropologist."
- loup-vaillant 12y ago> Once admitted [to the hospital, Yarima] sprung herself out of bed and attempted to give birth by squatting in the corner of the hospital room. That one was probably highlighted to emphasize the weirdness, or scandal, or ick factor, just like the first excerpt. But this is most probably one thing the Yanomami got right, as a simple matter of physiological fact. I have recently learned from my manual therapist that lying in the back like we do in the west by default is the worst possible position for giving birth, for various reasons, the most obvious being that gravity doesn't work with you in that position. Apparently, this position is widespread in our countries because it is more convenient for the doctor. Squatting on the other hand is one of the best positions, leading to less pain, much faster birth, less risks for both the baby and the mother… Even if you're a cold heart cynic, this would be one easy way to reduce health expenditures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/birth-positions.html http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/birth-positions.html
- rusabd 12y agowell, giving birth in the bed is relatively new phenomena http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647027/pdf/amjph00256-0102.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647027/pdf/amjp... and this quote is just sick: "If most women viewed pregnancy as a normal, natural event, then the surgeons' services would not be required. If, however, pregnancy was seen as an illness, then their presence might appear more appropriate. "
- chockablock 12y ago>...this position is widespread in our countries because it is more convenient for the doctor. Another reason is because they have received epidural anesthesia which stops them from being able to move around safely. Even with the advent of lighter 'walking' epidurals, many hospitals (including the quite progressive one in SF where my daughter was born last year, with a doula in attendance) still insist on the mother staying in bed after receiving the epidural as a matter of policy (for liability reasons). >Squatting on the other hand is one of the best positions, leading to less pain, much faster birth, less risks for both the baby and the mother… Well, 'less pain' except for the epidural thing. I have nothing but respect for women who choose 'natural childbirth', but I think it's a hard sell to many moms.
- chrissyb 12y agoThis story featured on the Snap Judgement podcast last year. http://snapjudgment.org/yanomami-mami http://snapjudgment.org/yanomami-mami
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- epynonymous 12y agowas i reading the onion or something like that, this is completely outrageous, "i was 36... she was 9-12."