As captivating as any "National Geographic" article, Joe Kane draws the reader into the lives of Huaorani, a native tribe living in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador.
Kane sets the tone of the book immediately, with his humorous account of walking the streets of Washington, D.C., with Moi from the Huaorani tribe.
Unfortunately, there are only about 1,300 Huaorani Indians and they have no political say in anything done in their homeland, where they still hunt and fish with primitive spears and blow darts. The Ecuadorian government is siding with big business, major players in the oil industry who want to tear down the rain forest to get at the oil reserves. Over the last several years, their destruction and pollution has shrunk the Amazon and, which the author believes, has created illnesses in the tribe. The major portion of land that developers want to destroy, called Maxus Block 16, is located in the eastern section of land designated as Huaorani Ethnic Reserve.
My question to anyone reading the book: Who is really the savage in this story?
c Waterloo Public Library 2007
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