Trinkets and Beads

In one of my last classes for ANTH 391: Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, we watched a slightly heartbreaking film called "Trinkets and Beads", which documented the devastating environmental and cultural effects that the international oil industry has had on the indigenous people of Ecuador.

I walked into class a minute late, the video was already running. When I entered there was a large fat American woman on the screen saying that when she got to Ecuador the tribes there were "all naked, though they didn't thing they were naked cos they were all wearing g-strings and they were living with demons in sin". Turns out she was an American evangelical Christian missionary who had given herself the mission of "civilizing" the heathen Indians?!

The name trinkets and beads comes from a comment made by an American oil worker after the President of Ecuador's daughter gave a young woman her earrings in exchange for an Indigenous head-dress and other regalia. She asked him jokingly "do you think it's a fair trade?", to which he replied, "that's how we got Manhattan, trinkets and bead" (as in we tricked the indigenous inhabitants out of their land with mere trinkets...UGH!)

It was a saddening film; to see the complete destruction and contamination for profit, profit which flowed mainly into North American corporations. Additionally, the sheer ignorance and bigotry of the Americans and oil companies involved was disgusting and the blatant continuation of less obvious colonial attitudes.

The most poignant part of film has to be when the audience is told that this complete and utter destruction of the land is to gain access to the oil beneath worth 1.5 billion dollars....

....enough to fuel cars in the U.S.A for 13 days! (What a massive %$&# You to the west!)

Film Bio
"After twenty years of devastating pollution by oil companies in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, a new kind of oil company - Dallas based MAXUS - promises to be the first company that will protect the rainforest and respect the people who live there. The film tells the story of how MAXUS set out to convince the Huaorani - known as the fiercest tribe in the Amazon - to allow drilling on their land. It is a story which starts in 1957 with the Huaorani massacre of five American missionaries, moving through the evangelization of part of the tribe by Rachel Saint, pollution of Huaorani lands by Texaco and Shell and manipulation and buying off of Huaorani leaders by MAXUS. Filmed over two years, “Trinkets and Beads” reveals the funny, heartbreaking and thrilling story of the battle waged by a small band of Amazonian warriors to preserve their way of life"

http://www.ucfilms.in/subject/culture/trinkets-and-beads/