Rate this book

The Unconquered (2011)

by Scott Wallace(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

030746296X (ISBN13: 9780307462961)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Crown Publishing Group

review 1: I loved this book. It is a first-person account of the author's experience traveling into a remote section of the Amazon rainforest to track indigenous tribes living there. Contrary to what you might expect, the goal of the mission wasn't to actually contact the tribes; rather, the expedition sought to identify where the tribes lived so that the Brazilian government could later track the the tribe's movements and population by air. The book is great on several levels: First and foremost, it is a jungle adventure book. Accessing these tribes is a harrowing process by foot, since they are so deep into the rainforest. Along with the author (who was there as a reporter for National Geographic), there was a photographer, Brazilian citizens working for Brazil's department of Iso... morelated Indians, and members of several "contacted" indigenous tribesmen. The expedition itself was led by a bizarre man named Sydney Possuelo, who has made it his life's mission to protect indigenous tribes from deforestation and crippling exposure to new diseases. Possuelo is a weird man; I spent the entire book trying to figure him out. I alternated between being appalled by him and fascinated by him. Interspersed throughout the jungle tale is a history of the white man's contact with indigenous Amazonian tribes, a history of the department of Isolated Indians, and a history of the evolving theories on how to approach indigenous tribes. Where previously the government sought to "tame" wild Indians, the policy is now to avoid contact, since contact with the white man inevitably brings about loss of native culture and crippling epidemics of disease. (FYI, phrases like "wild Indians" sound extremely derogatory when I write them here, but the author is actually quite sensitive in his use of language throughout the book - whenever he uses words like "wild," "tamed," or "civilized," he is quick to provide historical context to explain his choice in language). The author's discussion of the issue of contact versus no-contact is even-handed and at times philosophical. He raises some interesting questions that genuinely made me think about both sides of the issue. The plight of the so-called "contacted" tribes is eye-opening, with applications to our own tenuous relationship with Native Americans in the US. I highly recommend this book. It is an adventure book, complete with monkeys and sloths and fire ants, but also a very eye-opening look at our culture of consumption and the havoc we have wreaked on all the inhabitants of the rainforest - plants, animals, humans.
review 2: It heartens me that there are a few tribes of people that choose to live in isolation. This book centers around a huge reserve set up in the amazon rainforest for some of those tribes and the man responsible for setting up FUNAI(Sydney Possuelo) - Brazil's office for uncontacted tribes. The author goes on a scouting mission with Sydney on a mission to determine the range of the Arrow people without contacting the people directly. Though Wallace paints Sydney as a person who is hard to get along with the work that Possuelo has done to preserve these people, after watching too many contacted tribes succumb to disease and poverty, is amazing. less

Download links for: The Unconquered

Advertising