''Secrets of the Tribe'' is a 2010

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

by director

José Padilha José Bastos Padilha Neto (; born 1 August 1967) is a Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the Brazilian critical and financial successes '' Elite Squad'' and '' Elite Squad: The Enemy Within'' a ...

Content

This documentary explores the allegations, first brought to light in the book '' Darkness in El Dorado'', written by Patrick Tierney, that anthropologists studying the

Yanomami The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Etymology The ethnonym ''Yanomami' ...

Indians in the 1960s and '70s engaged in bizarre and inappropriate interactions with the tribe, including sexual and medical violations. Scientists accused in this film are among others James Neel, Napoleon Chagnon, Kenneth Good and Jacques Lizot.

Release

Premiered at the

2010 Sundance Film Festival The 26th annual Sundance Film Festival was held from January 21, 2010 until January 31, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Award winners *Grand Jury Prize: Documentary - '' Restrepo'' *Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - ''Winter's Bone'' *World Cinema Jury Prize ...

, the film was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize.

Afterwards

Alice Dreger Alice Domurat Dreger () is an American historian, bioethicist, author, and former professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Dreger engages in academic ...

, an historian of medicine and science, and an outsider to the debate, concluded in a peer-reviewed publication that most of Tierney's claims (the movie is based on claims originally made by Tierney) were "baseless and sensationalistic charges". A detailed investigation of these charges by a panel set up by the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

found the most serious charges to have no foundation and others to have been exaggerated. Almost all of the lengthy allegations made in ''Darkness in El Dorado'' were publicly rejected by the Provost's office of the

in November 2000. Sponsel and Turner, the two scientists who originally touted the book's claims, admitted that their charge against Neel "remains an inference in the present state of our knowledge: there is no 'smoking gun' in the form of a written text or recorded speech by Neel."John Tooby, "Jungle Fever: Did two US scientists start a genocidal epidemic in the Amazon or was ''The New Yorker'' duped? ''Slate'', October 24th, 2000.
/ref> The American Anthropological Association has since rescinded its support of the book and acknowledged fraudulent and improper and unethical conduct by Tierney. The association admitted that "in the course of its investigation, in its publications, in the venues of its national meetings and its web site, tcondoned a culture of accusation and allowed serious but unevaluated charges to be posted on its website and expressed in its newsletter and annual meetings" and that its "report has damaged the reputations of its targets, distracted public attention from the real sources of the Yanomami tragedy and misleadingly suggested that anthropologists are responsible for Yanomami suffering".AAA Rescinds Acceptance of the El Dorado Report
Stephen Broomer points out that, "Tierney wrote a polemical, unscientific book that invoked a scandal. Padilha's film is more evenhanded than this, no doubt because it includes that scandal as a subject, allowing Chagnon an opportunity to defend himself".

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Secrets Of The Tribe 2010 films 2010 documentary films Brazilian documentary films British documentary films Films directed by José Padilha 2010s Portuguese-language films Anthropology documentary films Documentary films about crime Documentary films about indigenous rights Indigenous cinema in Latin America 2010s English-language films 2010 multilingual films Brazilian multilingual films 2010s British films