Word: shamanism
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Yanomami are the celebrities of the rain forest. No tribe on the planet is more lauded, defamed, protected, exploited and fought over. Best sellers chronicle their warlike savagery. Missionaries convert them. Gold miners massacre them. And TV movies zoom in on their loincloths and painted faces, their shaman magic and hallucinogenic habits...
Besides his monkey business, Van Roosmalen specializes in medicinal plants (he even apprenticed to a shaman of the Kamayura tribe) and in rain-forest conservation. He knew he wanted to do fieldwork when he studied primates in Holland. There Van Roosmalen clashed with his university professors over the value of observing lab monkeys. "It was like putting a child in a cage and drawing conclusions about all Homo sapiens," he huffs...