Keepers of Eden

One of the many memorable moments from this last week was when Manuela, the President of the Waorani Women´s Association, decided to set up her laptop and projector in order to show movies in the community of Meñepare. Yep, there we were in the jungle watching the Waorani become totally mezmerized by a movie that featured them--in the same jungle---and their struggle with oil development in their territory. The kids were enraptured by the images of their family that were projected on a wooden schoolhouse wall. It was a little surreal being in a remote jungle Waorani community with little infrastructure...watching a movie about the Waorani.

While in New York at the U.N. meeting on indigenous issues, Manuela was given a copy of Keepers of Eden, a film that adeptly captures the modern challenges facing the Waorani. Anyway, it was interesting for me to watch the movie (narrated by Joanne Woodward) because I know almost all of the people that are featured in it (plus it had some unflattering footage of Puyo). Although I couldn´t hear all of the audio (it was hard to hear the small laptop speakers over the noisy generator and constant rain on the tin roof), what I did hear did not paint an overly-romantic and overly-simplistic characterization of the Waorani as other books and films have done. It also showed the ugly side-effects of oil and western cultural influences on the Waorani---including the alcohol problems and the paternalistic dependency on the compania that has been created. The sad part is, that although someone made this film and is undoubtedly profiting from the film, little benefit is being returned to the Waorani beyond some additional awareness of their plight. I am not aware of any profit sharing or other benefit to them besides giving them one lousy copy of the movie. The least the producers could do is give them a few hundred copies so that the Women´s Association could sell them in their store for a profit and reinvest that money back into projects to benefit them. Ahhh...but that would be too easy. Anyway, all blogstalkers should definitely