Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T03:35:40.466Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Subject 01: exemplary Indigenous masculinity in Cold War genetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2020

ROSANNA DENT*
Affiliation:
Federated Department of History, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Rutgers – Newark, University Heights, Newark, NJ07102, USA Email: rdent@njit.edu.

Abstract

In 1962 a team of scientists conducted their first joint fieldwork in a Xavante village in Central Brazil. Recycling long-standing notions that living Indigenous people represented human prehistory, the scientists saw Indigenous people as useful subjects of study not only due to their closeness to nature, but also due to their sociocultural and political realities. The geneticists’ vision crystalized around one subject – the famous chief Apöwẽ. Through Apöwẽ, the geneticists fixated on what they perceived as the political prowess, impressive physique, and masculine reproductive aptitude of Xavante men. These constructions of charismatic masculinity came at the expense of recognizing how profoundly colonial expansion into Mato Grosso had destabilized Xavante communities, stripping them of their land and introducing epidemic disease. The geneticists’ theorizing prefigured debates to come in sociobiology, and set up an enduring research programme that Apöwẽ continues to animate even four decades after his death.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to the late Professor Francisco Salzano and to Girley Simões for their openness and generosity of time. The meticulous work and insight of archivists, especially Charles Greifenstein, Andrew Lippert, Bethany Antos and Everaldo Pereira Frade, made this article possible. For their invaluable feedback and support I thank Susan Lindee, Robert Aronowitz, Seth Garfield, Adriana Petryna and the anonymous reviewers. This work benefited from conversations with many, including Eram Alam, Elaine LaFay, Jenny Bangham, Erika Milam, David Wright, Sandra-Lynn Leclaire, Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk and the CHSTM History of Biology Working Group. This research was generously supported by Fulbright IIE; the Social Science Research Council-IDRF and the American Council of Learned Societies, both with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at McGill University.

References

1 Although auto-denominated A'uwẽ or A'uwẽ uptabi, in interactions with outsiders members of this Indigenous group usually refer to themselves as Xavante. Following their lead, I use the name Xavante here. There are multiple orthographies for group names (e.g. Chavante, Shavante) and individuals’ names (e.g. Apöwẽ, Apewe, Apoena). For Xavante names, I use the orthography of the local school of Pimentel Barbosa village. I maintain original spellings when citing primary sources. I privilege Xavante names, but maintain the Portuguese when quoting or when commonly used by Xavante.

2 This methodology became influential through the World Health Organization: de Chadarevian, Soraya, ‘Human population studies and the World Health Organization’, Dynamis (2015) 35(2), pp. 359388CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Radin, Joanna, ‘Unfolding epidemiological stories: how the WHO made frozen blood into a flexible resource for the future’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2014) 47(Part A), pp. 6273, doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The use of the term ‘primitive’ by scholars from the human sciences has been widely critiqued. Foundational approaches to temporal othering include Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002; Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 (first published 1982). On the discursive linking of Indigenous peoples to the distant founding of the Brazilian nation see Tracy Devine Guzmán, Native and National in Brazil: Indigeneity after Independence, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013, pp. 63–104. Just at the moment when anthropologists were beginning to problematize the use of ‘primitive’, human biologists began to embrace it. See Joanna Radin, Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017, pp. 108–109. The term signified different qualities to different scientists: see Santos, Ricardo Ventura, Lindee, Susan and de Souza, Vanderlei Sebastião, ‘Varieties of the primitive: human biological diversity studies in Cold War Brazil (1962–1970)’, American Anthropologist (2014) 116(4), pp. 723735, doi:10.1111/aman.12150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 On scaling up, standardization and methods see Lindee, Susan, ‘Scaling up: human genetics as a Cold War network’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2014) 47(Part A), pp. 185190, 189, doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.018CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

4 Milam, Erika Lorraine and Nye, Robert A., ‘An introduction to scientific masculinities’, Osiris (2015) 30(1), pp. 114, doi:10.1086/682953CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also the other 2015 Osiris contributions.

5 Donna J. Haraway pioneered attention to mid-century research on aggression, family and human diversity in physical anthropology in her examination of Sherwood Washburn's focus on Man the Hunter in his ‘New Physical Anthropology’. See Haraway, Donna J., Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 186230Google Scholar. On the broad appeal of this work across lay and scientific readerships see Milam, Erika Lorraine, Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019Google Scholar. Aggression also became the focus of women scientists by the 1970s: on primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy see Rees, Amanda, ‘Practising infanticide, observing narrative: controversial texts in a field science’, Social Studies of Science (2001) 31(4), pp. 507531, doi:10.1177/030631201031004002CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 This includes work by animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz, archaeologists Louis Leaky and Raymond Dart, ethologist Desmond Morris and playwright Robert Ardrey. See Weidman, Nadine, ‘Popularizing the ancestry of man: Robert Ardrey and the killer instinct’, Isis (2011) 102(2), pp. 269299, 274, doi:10.1086/660130CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Milam, Erika Lorraine, ‘Men in groups: anthropology and aggression, 1965–84’, Osiris (2015), 30(1), pp. 6688, doi:10.1086/682966CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation was a particularly strong supporter of this agenda. Milam, op. cit. (5), pp. 79–88. The Wenner-Gren Foundation also funded related physical-anthropology conferences, including the influential 1966 Man the Hunter conference. See Haraway, op. cit. (5), pp. 221–223; Lindee, Susan and Radin, Joanna, ‘Patrons of the human experience: a history of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1941–2016’, Current Anthropology (2016) 57(S14), pp. S218–301, S265, doi:10.1086/687926CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter, Chicago: Aldine, 1968.

8 Milam, op. cit. (5).

9 On Sherwood Washburn and other leading figures between evolutionary biology and anthropology see Haraway op. cit. (5); see also Weidman, op. cit. (6); Milam, op. cit. (6).

10 Milam, op. cit. (5), pp. 129–167.

11 This was particularly the case for anthropologists and geneticists promoting what they saw as scientifically grounded anti-racist Darwinian interpretations: see John P. Jackson and David J. Depew, Darwinism, Democracy, and Race: American Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology in the Twentieth Century, New York: Routledge, 2017; Gil-Riaño, Sebastián, ‘Relocating anti-racist science: the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race and Economic Development in the Global South’, BJHS (2018) 51(2), pp. 281303CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, doi.org/10.1017/S0007087418000286. Likewise, W.D. Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness was informed by his concerns about social chaos and was prescriptive rather than simply descriptive: Swenson, Sarah A., ‘“Morals can not be drawn from facts but guidance may be”: the early life of W.D. Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness’, BJHS (2015) 48(4), pp. 543563, doi:10.1017/S0007087415000643CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 Lipphardt, Veronika, ‘“Geographical distribution patterns of various genes”: genetic studies of human variation after 1945’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2014) 47(Part A), 5061CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Radin, Joanna, ‘Latent life: concepts and practices of human tissue preservation in the International Biological Program’, Social Studies of Science (2013) 43(4), pp. 484508, 498CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Santos, Lindee and Souza, op. cit. (2).

13 These extractive practices have been strongly contested by Indigenous scholars. See TallBear, Kim, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsosie, Rebecca, ‘Indigenous peoples and epistemic injustice: science, ethics, and human rights’, Washington Law Review (2012) 87(4), pp. 11331201Google Scholar. Other critical perspectives include Gannett, Lisa and Griesemer, James R., ‘The ABO blood groups: mapping the history and geography of genes in Homo sapiens’, in Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg and Gaudillière, Jean-Paul (eds.), Classical Genetic Research and Its Legacy: The Mapping Cultures of Twentieth-Century Genetics, New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 117172Google Scholar; Radin op. cit. (2); Santos, Ricardo Ventura, ‘Indigenous peoples, postcolonial contexts and genomic research in the late 20th century: a view from Amazonia (1960–2000)’, Critique of Anthropology (2002) 22(1), pp. 81104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suárez-Díaz, Edna, ‘Indigenous populations in Mexico: medical anthropology in the work of Ruben Lisker in the 1960s’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2014) 47(Part A), pp. 108117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Deloria, Philip J., Indians in Unexpected Places, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004, pp. 1551Google Scholar.

15 On masculindians see Sam McKegney, Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014, p. 1. On Brazilians ‘playing Indian’ see Guzmán op. cit. (2), pp. 1–9.

16 Denetdale, Jennifer Nez, ‘Return to “The uprising at Beautiful Mountain in 1913”: marriage and sexuality in the making of the modern Navajo Nation’, in Barker, Joanne (ed.), Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 6998, 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the other contributions to the volume for current ongoing debates around Indigeneity and gender in North America.

17 Barker, Joanne, ‘The specters of recognition’, in Goldstein, Alyosha (ed.), Formations of United States Colonialism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 3356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 On structures of elimination see Wolfe, Patrick, ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research (2006) 8(4), pp. 387409CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On settler colonial possession as an important corrective that centers gender see Arvin, Maile, Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, esp. pp. 1619Google Scholar.

19 Moreton-Robinson, Aileen, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015, p. xiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reardon, Jenny and TallBear, Kim, ‘“Your DNA is our history”: genomics, anthropology, and the construction of whiteness as property’, Current Anthropology (2012) 53(S5), pp. S233245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Robert Alexander Innes and Kim Anderson, Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015; Barker, op. cit. (16); Morgensen, Scott Lauria, ‘Theorising gender, sexuality and settler colonialism: an introduction’, Settler Colonial Studies (2012) 2(2), pp. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKegney, op. cit. (15).

21 Jackson and Depew, op. cit. (11), p. 143. See also Cohen-Cole, Jamie, The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014Google Scholar.

22 Jackson and Depew op. cit. (11); Radin, op. cit. (2); Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty, ‘Humanizing evolution: anthropology, the evolutionary synthesis, and the prehistory of biological anthropology, 1927–1962’, Current Anthropology (2012) 53(S5), pp. S108125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Of relevance here are Suárez-Díaz's case study and her contention that connected (as opposed to comparative) histories of international projects of population-making can shed light on ‘the ways in which people, materials, and tools travel, and on the practices that make national boundaries selectively permeable and transnational histories possible.’ See Suárez-Díaz, op. cit. (13), p. 108.

24 I use the theoretical framework of settler colonialism because twentieth-century Brazilian state expansionism primarily sought Indigenous land. Settler colonialism is slowly gaining attention within the extensive literature on colonialism and coloniality in Latin America, and has potential to complement and complicate analytical frames that have centered processes of immigration and mestizaje, mestiçagem, or race mixing. It also has great potential synergies with approaches such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's work on internal colonialism – see, for example, her Violencias (re)encubiertas en Bolivia, La Paz: Mirada Salvaje, 2010. However, it should not be used indiscriminately. On the potentiality of a hemispheric approach see Castellanos, M. Bianet, ‘Introduction: settler colonialism in Latin America’, American Quarterly (2017) 69(4), pp. 777781, doi:10.1353/aq.2017.0063CrossRefGoogle Scholar and accompanying essays; Smallwood, Stephanie E., ‘Reflections on settler colonialism, the hemispheric Americas, and chattel slavery’, William and Mary Quarterly (2019) 76(3), pp. 407416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an analysis of the southern Atlantic coast of South America see Goebel, Michael, ‘Settler colonialism in postcolonial Latin America’, in Cavanagh, Edward and Veracini, Lorenzo (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 139151Google Scholar. For a compelling argument as to the urgency of integrating settler colonial theory and Latin American feminist decolonial praxis see Zaragocín, Sofía, ‘Gendered geographies of elimination: decolonial feminist geographies in Latin American settler contexts’, Antipode (2019) 51(1), pp. 373392, doi:10.1111/anti.12454CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 As de Souza Lima highlighted in his foundational analysis of Indigenist policy, Brazil expanded through a siege of peace, a bureaucratized accounting and territorial constricting of Indigenous groups. See Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima, Um grande cerco de paz: Poder tutelar, indianidade e formaçao do estado no Brasil, Petrópolis: Vozes, 1995. It was this expansionism that made Xavante villages the target of study. Like all those granted expeditionary licenses, the researchers were required to report back to the state on the condition of the communities they visited.

26 For an overview of discourses regarding Indigenous peoples under the Estado Novo see Seth Garfield, Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937–1988, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001, pp. 23–44. Also see Guzmán, op. cit. (2), pp. 124–130.

27 On Salesian attempts to pacify the Xavante in 1933 and on the killing of the SPI's Pimentel Barbosa and associates see Garfield, op. cit. (26), pp. 53, 55.

28 Specifically, Xavante lands stood in the line of the Expedição Roncador-Xingu, the ‘centrepiece of the March to the West’, which began in 1943 and crossed central Brazil, building roads and opening up airstrips: Garfield, op. cit. (26), p. 45. The subject of extensive media coverage, the risk of failure in the face of Xavante resistance represented a serious concern for the government. See Garfield, op. cit. (26), p. 57.

29 Garfield, op. cit. (26), p. 59.

30 Garfield, op. cit. (26), pp. 23–44. The masculine appeal of Xavante men and those explorers who dared contact them resonated with broader publics, and even found coverage in US-based publications. ‘Love conquers’, Time, 2 September 1946, p. 35.

31 Baldus, Herbert, ‘É belicoso o Xavante?’, Revista do arquivo municipal (1951) 142, pp. 125129Google Scholar; Maybury-Lewis, David, Akwẽ-Shavante Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974Google Scholar (first published 1967), p. xxii.

32 Maybury-Lewis travelled with his wife and baby in part to attenuate risks of violence. See Maybury-Lewis, David, The Savage and the Innocent, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988 (first published 1965), pp. 153154Google Scholar.

33 Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (32), p. 168.

34 Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (31), p. 37.

35 Neel, James V., Salzano, Francisco M, Keiter, Friedrich, Maybury-Lewis, David and Junqueira, Pedro Clóvis, ‘Studies on the Xavante Indians of the Brazilian Mato Grosso’, American Journal of Human Genetics (1964) 16(1), pp. 52140, 52Google ScholarPubMed. The National Research Councils of Brazil and Germany also offered support.

36 Cohen-Cole, Jamie, ‘Instituting the science of mind: intellectual economies and disciplinary exchange at Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies’, BJHS (2007) 40(4), pp. 567597, doi:10.1017/S0007087407000283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Cohen-Cole, op. cit. (21).

38 Salzano to Rockefeller Foundation, ‘Report of Francisco M. Salzano’, Folder 305E, Record Group 10.1, Rockefeller Foundation records, Rockefeller Archive Center. On the Rockefeller Foundation and genetics in Brazil, specifically, see Glick, Thomas F., ‘The Rockefeller Foundation and the emergence of genetics in Brazil, 1943–1960’, in Cueto, Marcos (ed.), Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 149164Google Scholar; de Souza, Vanderlei Sebastião, Dornelles, Rodrigo Ciconet, Coimbra, Carlos E.A. Jr and Santos, Ricardo Ventura, ‘História da genética no Brasil: um olhar a partir do Museu da Genética da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul’, História, Ciências, Saúde–Manguinhos (2013) 20(2), pp. 675694, 682, doi:10.1590/S0104-59702013000200018CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Papers of the Conselho de Fiscalização de Expedições Artísticas e Científicas, Livro 8, Ata 1537, Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins, Rio de Janeiro; Neel, James V., Physician to the Gene Pool: Genetic Lessons and Other Stories, New York: J. Wiley, 1994, pp. 122129Google Scholar.

40 James V. Neel to Francisco M. Salzano, 20 March 1962, Salzano Correspondence (1 of 10), Box 66, Papers of James V. Neel – Manuscript Collection 96, American Philosophical, Philadelphia (hereafter Neel Papers, APS).

41 Salzano to Neel, 8 March 1962, Salzano Correspondence (1 of 10), Box 66, Neel Papers, APS.

42 Francisco M. Salzano to James V. Neel, 8 March 1962; Neel to Salzano, 20 March 1962; Salzano to Neel, 11 April 1962, Salzano Correspondence (1 of 10), Box 66, Neel Papers, APS.

43 Radin, op. cit. (2); Santos, op. cit. (13); Santos, Lindee and Souza, op. cit. (2), pp. 723–735.

44 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 52.

45 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 52.

46 The 1968 bestseller predicted mass starvation and advocated aggressive population control. See Ehrlich, Paul R., The Population Bomb, London: Macmillan, 1968Google Scholar.

47 On eugenics and genetics, many of the techniques and tools for analysing human difference carried over from pre-war sciences of human classification. A rich literature explores continuities and disjunctions from eugenics to human genetics. A classic study is Kevles, Daniel, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998 (first published 1985).Google Scholar Alexandra M. Stern's Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 150–210, focuses on the post-war period in the United States. Recently Nathaniel Comfort has argued that the shift from focusing on human improvement to emphasizing relief of suffering defined the rise of medical genetics, but the field continues to be an essentially eugenic project. Comfort, Nathaniel, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Neel's pessimism: his knowledge of the suffering caused by the atomic bomb through his work with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission only accentuated his worries. See Lindee, M. Susan, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997Google Scholar.

48 Neel, James V., ‘Between two worlds’, American Journal of Human Genetics (1966) 18(1), pp. 320, 9Google ScholarPubMed.

49 Neel, James V., ‘The study of natural selection in primitive and civilized human populations’, Human Biology (1958) 30(1), pp. 4372, 43Google Scholar.

50 Milam, op. cit. (5), p. 6, original emphasis.

51 As Erika Lorraine Milam has shown, this exclusive focus on genetic contribution to the next generation at the expense of questions of health and vitality separated geneticists from organismal biologists. See her Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in Evolutionary Biology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, pp. 126–128.

52 Neel, op. cit. (49), p. 783.

53 Ullica Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 54.

54 Neel, op. cit. (49), p. 789.

55 Haraway, op. cit. (5), p. 213.

56 Francisco M. Salzano, Caderno de Campo #1, Personal Papers of Francisco M. Salzano, UFRGS, Porto Alegre.

57 Neel, op. cit. (39), p. 126.

58 Salzano described this as an intuitive decision. Francisco M. Salzano, interview with Rosanna Dent, 17 August 2015, Porto Alegre.

59 Francisco M. Salzano, interview with Rosanna Dent, 11 July 2012, Porto Alegre; Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 90.

60 Girley Simões, interview with Rosanna Dent, 10 December 2013, Porto Alegre.

61 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 110.

62 Neel, op. cit. (39), p. 150.

63 Neel, op. cit. (39), p. 150.

64 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 60.

65 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 60.

66 Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (31), p. 193.

67 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 53. Anthropologist James Welch later challenged Maybury-Lewis's assertion that moiety belonging mostly determined allegiance. See James R. Welch, ‘Age and social identity among the Xavante of Central Brazil’, PhD diss., Tulane University, 2011, pp. 324–326.

68 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 127.

69 Neel, op. cit. (49), p. 787.

70 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 94.

71 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 131.

72 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 100, emphasis added.

73 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 93.

74 Neel et al., op. cit. (35), p. 127.

75 Neel, James V. and Salzano, Francisco M., ‘Further studies on the Xavante Indians. X. Some hypotheses and generalizations resulting from these studies’, American Journal of Human Genetics (1967) 19(4), pp. 554574, 563Google ScholarPubMed.

76 Salzano, Francisco M., Neel, James V. and Maybury-Lewis, David, ‘Further studies on the Xavante Indians. I. Demographic data on two additional villages: genetic structure of the tribe’, American Journal of Human Genetics (1967) 19(4), pp. 463489, 469Google Scholar. See also Neel, op. cit. (48), p. 12.

77 Salzano, op. cit. (58).

78 Neel and Salzano, op. cit. (75), p. 557. Since the 1930s molecular biologists had drawn on techniques and language from physics as they sought prestige among the sciences. See Abir-Am, Pnina, ‘The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: a reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation's “policy” in molecular biology’, Social Studies of Science (1982) 12(3), pp. 341382CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Specifically, this theory supported Sewall Wright's work.

80 Salzano, Neel and Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (76), p. 464.

81 Salzano, Neel and Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (76), p. 469.

82 Neel and Salzano, op. cit. (75), p. 568.

83 Neel and Salzano, op. cit. (75), p. 569.

84 Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (31), p. xiii. Salzano also remembered tourists visiting Wedezé during their 1962 fieldwork. Salzano, op. cit. (59).

85 Coimbra, Carlos E.A. Jr, Flowers, Nancy M., Salzano, Francisco M. and Santos, Ricardo V., The Xavante in Transition: Health, Ecology, and Bioanthropology in Central Brazil, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004, pp. 82, 130Google Scholar; Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (32), p. 177; Garfield, op. cit. (26), pp. 45–65.

86 James V. Neel, R.A. Fraser Roberts, William Schull and Alan Stevenson, draft report, ‘Possible roles of the World Health Organization in research in human genetics’, pp. 11–13, folder WHO Genetics Primitive, Series I: Correspondence, Grants 12, Neel Papers, APS. Meeting held at University of Michigan from 28 April 1959 to 30 April 1959.

87 Neel to Salzano, 20 March 1962, Salzano Correspondence (1 of 10), Box 66, Neel Papers, APS.

88 World Health Organization, ‘Research in population genetics of primitive groups: report of a WHO Scientific Group’, World Health Organization Technical Report Series No. 279 (1964); WHO Scientific Group on Human Genetics Research, ‘Research on human population genetics’, World Health Organization Technical Report Series (1968) no. 387; James V. Neel, ‘Multidisciplinary studies on primitive populations in Latin America’, Advisory Committee on Medical Research, Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 9 March 1964; Neel, ‘The American Indian in the International Biological Program’, Advisory Committee on Medical Research, Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 13 May 1968. Radin, op. cit. (12), pp. 492–493, discusses the WHO meeting at length, including critiques that came from those unconvinced by the methodology.

89 Salzano to Neel, 14 April 1966, Salzano Correspondence (4 of 10), Box 66, Neel Papers, APS.

90 Salzano, Francisco M. and de Oliveira, Roberto Cardoso, ‘Genetic aspects of the demography of Brazilian Terena Indians’, Social Biology (1970) 17(3), pp. 217223CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

91 Ward, R.H., Salzano, F.M., Bonatto, S.L., Hutz, M.H., Coimbra, C.E.A. and Santos., R.V.Mitochondrial DNA polymorphism in three Brazilian Indian tribes’, American Journal of Human Biology (1996) 8(3), pp. 3173233.0.CO;2-X>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hünemeier, T., Gomez-Valdes, J., Ballesteros-Romero, M., de Azevedo, S., Martinez-Abadias, N., Esparza, M., Sjovold, T., et al. , ‘Cultural diversification promotes rapid phenotypic evolution in Xavante Indians’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011) 109(1), pp. 7377, doi:10.1073/pnas.1118967109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salzano, Francisco M., ‘The fission–fusion concept’, Current Anthropology (2009) 50(6), p. 959CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Napoleon A. Chagnon, The Yanomamö, 5th edn, Fort Worth: Wadsworth/Thomas Learning, 1997, p. 1. Neel, op. cit. (39), p. 134, comments on his support and funding of Chagnon.

93 Yanomamö: A Multidisciplinary Study, film directed by Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1980.

94 Chagnon, op. cit. (92), p. 150.

95 Borofsky, Rob, Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn from It, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 E.O. Wilson, ‘Preface’, in Napoleon Chagnon, The Yanomamö: The Last Days of Eden, 4th edn, Fort Worth: Wadsworth/Thomas Learning, 1992, pp. ix–xii, x.

97 Chagnon, Napoleon, ‘Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population’, Science (1988) 239(4843), pp. 985992, 986CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Chagnon, op. cit. (97) p. 985.

99 Milam, op. cit. (5), p. 230–232.

100 Borofsky, op. cit. (95). On Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and the objections of the Associação Brasileira da Antropologia see p. 35.

101 On the damage of stored blood samples as articulated by Yanomami see Borofsky, op. cit. (95), pp. 63–67. On both the historical–anthropological debates and the broader ethical issues at hand see Radin, op. cit. (2), pp. 168–170, 184–185.

102 Hünemeier et al., op. cit. (91), p. 76.

103 TallBear, op. cit. (13), pp. 149–176.

104 Maybury-Lewis, op. cit. (32), p. 168.