Hommes-oiseaux d'Amazonie
René Fuerst
If any indigenous people can be said to have enjoyed a miraculous revival it must be the Kayapo in Brazil, part of the so-called Xikrin group on the Rio Catete. Fewer than one hundred remained in 1967, after they had come into contact with the modern, industrialized outside world, just before they would have to depend on it forever. Their population was boosted to 750 thanks to the help of highly motivated people like René Fuerst. This Swiss ethnologist realizes that he is the last witness of an era and a way of life that are drawing to a close and his writing and pictures make his readers fully aware of this, too.
Aside from the author’s descriptions and commentary on the various aspects of this culture, which is very simple in material terms, but extraordinarily adaptable and resilient in its imaginative world, Fuerst’s photographs alone speak volumes. Superb as these photographs are, the gouache pictures that complete the illustrations in this book are perhaps even more spectacular. They focus on the two “coloured” aspects of Xikrin culture: their body painting and their feather art.The twenty-four plates included in the book display such precision and attention to detail as to constitute unique and invaluable art-historical documents in their own right.
René Fuerst is an ethnologist and has been a tireless defender of Amazonian Indians since 1955. He was a member of research expeditions mounted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (1970) and of the Aborigines Protection Society (1972) in London to study Amazonian Indians. In 1975, the Brazilian authorities refused him an entry visa as a result of his criticism of the official indigenous policy.