Latest / Drawn of History / Daniel Everett on Living With a Remote Tribe in the Amazon and Studying Their Language(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Daniel Everett on Living With a Remote Tribe in the Amazon and Studying Their Language(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: For the first time in their history, and they've been
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: living there, as far as I can tell, for almost
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: 300 years on this one river. For the first time
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: in their history, they can't be self-sufficient in protein.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. And how long ago did they build this dam?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I think it was about 10 years ago. But they didn't,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: when it first went into operation, then it flooded. the entire,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: lots of farmland, lots of settlements and things up on
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the Madeira. But what was shocking was that way down
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: river from the dam, it affected the water level so
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: much that when their river, the Maise, goes to its
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: lowest point in the dry season, there's still only a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: few places where you can see the bottom of the river.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Most of the places, even when it's at its lowest,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you can't see the bottom of the river. But in
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years, it's gotten so low you
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: can walk across.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And the fish don't stay there.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: So what are these people eating?
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Well, they go hunting, which they don't like to do.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: But of course, when the fish are gone and when
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the river's gone, you lose a lot of the game
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: from the jungle. So they have to go, instead of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: going a mile into the jungle, they have to go
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: many miles into the jungle. And they're still not successful.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So It's busting up communities. Some people are moving out
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: of their normal area to other areas to try to–
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: back on bigger rivers. But then that means they're surrounded
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: by Brazilians and they're no longer leading the life that
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: they used to lead.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So when they move into these civilization areas, are they
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: integrating or are they trying to like stay as a
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: tribe removed from urban society? Like how are they doing it?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Well, up until about five years ago, they would never
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: have thought about integrating. They would live in like ghettos.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: If they were out near some town, they would live
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in the jungle away from the town because that whole
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: part of Brazil is covered in jungle. Even the cities
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: are bordered by jungle. But nowadays, because there's no food anywhere,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: they're trying to integrate more and they're trying to learn Portuguese.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And it's a very unfortunate situation. situation for them right now.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: God, that's such a bummer. That sucks so hard. So
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: when you first got there, your aim was to try
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: to convert them to Christianity.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: That's right. I went there to translate the Bible and
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to plant a church and get everybody believing.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: And why Pitahah? Why did you go to those people?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Well, we were in our training, and the missionary organization,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the Wycliffe Bible Translators, offered us three areas. They said,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: you can go to New Guinea. We need people in
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: New Guinea. You can go to Mexico, or you can
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: go to Brazil. And in Brazil, there's this tribe called
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the Pitahá that we've had two teams assigned to, and
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: nobody's been able to figure out the language because it's
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: not related to any other known living language. And so
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: they said, if you're up for that challenge, and we
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: know you did well in linguistics, We'd be happy to
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: have you take that group. So I thought, well, sure,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I'm up for a challenge. So we took that.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And so this was 1977?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: 1977. We were assigned there in 76, and I made
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: my first trip in in December of 1977.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And so how much of the language did you know
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: before you got there?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Nothing?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: No. What do we know in terms of like before
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: you got there? Was it recorded? Was it something that
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: people understood?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In 1784, Portuguese explorers made contact and they didn't
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: take lists of words. They wrote a few descriptive things
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: about the language and about the people. And those things
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: still fit them today. And then in 1821, a German
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: explorer went there and he took a long list of words,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: which was amazing because he didn't have linguistics or anything
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: like that. And his list of words is pretty good.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: And then in 1920, another German who naturalized Brazilian, the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: founder of Brazilian anthropology, went there and took a much
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: larger word list, and that one is very good. And
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: so I had those little word lists. They're not much,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and there's no how does the grammar work or anything
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: like that. It's just lists of words. So I had
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: looked at those, but it's a tone language, and so
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: they hadn't written the tone, so I had no idea
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: how to pronounce the words. To give you an example
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: of what a tone language is, so if I want
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: to say friend, I say magiai. And if I want
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: to say enemy, it's magiai.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: What's the difference?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So if I whistle it, friend is whew, whew, whew.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And if I whistle enemy, it's whew, whew, whew. If
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: you can't hear the tones, you don't know what's going on.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So the word for me is chie. And the word
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: for shit is je. So, you know, you can be
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: talking about yourself and everybody starts laughing because you've called
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: yourself shit.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Because you have the wrong tone.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Because you have the wrong tone. So, you know, there
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: are a lot of tone languages in the world, Mandarin, tonal, Korean,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: somewhat tonal, and many languages of Africa are tonal. But
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: for those of us who speak European languages, this is
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: just really weird and it's hard to hear.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: A complete mind shift. Yeah.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: So you've got to be able to pay attention to
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: those tones. But the first thing you have to do
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: is start just collecting words. So I would point at
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: things my first day, my first hour. I was pointing
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: at things and writing down what they said, and that
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: was the basic linguistics I had had, phonetics, how to
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: write down sounds of the world's languages.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: And when you got there, so on day one, how
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: do you make a connection? Do you just show up? Hey,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: brought you the Bible. Everyone have a seat. How do
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: you do this?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I got off and I started handing candy to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the kids.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Good move.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That works. And the people were very curious because I'm
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: this white guy with red hair. At that time, I
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: had bright red hair and they found me curious to
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: look at. And so they came around. They could tell,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you know, at least I think they thought they could
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: tell that I was no danger to them. They know
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: how to deal with that very quickly if they sense danger.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: So then I would just start pointing at things. I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: had my pen and paper, and I would get a stick,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and I would say in English, you know, stick. And
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: they know that I'm trying to communicate something, so they
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: would say back, eh. And I thought, it probably means stick.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And I would write that down. And then I would
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: take the stick and drop it. And they would say, eh,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: he meke kaobi. And that means stick fell to the ground.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And that's what I thought it meant. So that's how
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: I started.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: That's what you thought it meant. This episode of the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by Blue Chew.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about Blue Chew Gold. It is
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: a four-in-one formula designed to bring some serious energy back
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: into your sex life. It gets you hard, boosts your arousal,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: and dissolves under your tongue for faster absorption. So you're
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: ready to go whenever the moment happens. The whole thing
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: is handled online, and right now, buy two months of
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Blue Chew Gold and get the third free with my
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: code ROGAN, plus free overnight shipping. Go to bluechew.com for
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: details and important safety information. Check it out. This ad
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: and the products being advertised are intended for a United
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: States audience. What is the reaction to this person coming
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: in and demanding that they teach the language?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't demand.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you have a requirement. You can't communicate,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: but you're there. So they're kind enough to welcome you. Yes.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Are you in the actual camp with all these people?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in the middle of their village. The plane
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: let me off on, you know, landed on the river.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I got out.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: You don't even ask? You just like wander into their camp?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: There's no way to contact them ahead of time.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: This is crazy. Yeah. And you're just assuming they're not
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: going to kill you. Is this you?
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: This is the Pitaha. This is a Pitaha village.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yep. And so this is what it looked like when
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: you showed up. You're like, hi, what's a stick?
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you land on the river, and you get there,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and that is, that's the pitahá.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And so they're very friendly, and they start talking. But,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of course, I don't know what they say. They just
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: see me as a.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Very— Guy's got a Ferrari t-shirt on. What's up?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they— riverboats go in and give clothes. If a riverboat
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: hasn't been there in a long time, they'll all be naked.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. And so like day one, they just accept
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: the fact that this redheaded dude just showed up and
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: is hanging out with us now?
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a couple of things that counted in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: my favor. I was all by myself. And so giving
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: out candy was a big factor. They like to chew tobacco.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And I had been told this by somebody who had
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: been there. So I took in a big, long horn
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: of tobacco. I don't know if it's a really old-fashioned way.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: A horn? Like an animal horn?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: No, it looks like an animal horn, but it's probably
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: eight feet, nine feet long, just rolled up tight, tobacco
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: wrapped in latex.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you just cut it off for them, and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: they chew it, and they like it. So I would,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the ones who would help me, I would
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: give them a little bit of tobacco or candy. And
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I also brought canned food for me. And I would
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: trade that to them for fish and other things that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they got. And they liked that.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: How long did you stay initially?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: The first time was just to see what it was
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: like before I brought my family. So I stayed 10 days.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: And then I came back with my family and we stayed.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: A year at that time. We just stayed there the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: whole year.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: When you say family, so your wife and how many kids?
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Three kids. There they are.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: How old were the kids when you got there?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Well, my oldest daughter, who there was about 12, was nine.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And the middle daughter was six. And then my son
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: was three years old. So this is around that time.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And so my kids grew up among the Pitahon. Both
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: my older daughters learned to speak the language fairly quickly.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's a risky move.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: You brought your little kids to the jungle. Yeah, so
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: my son got— What is that decision like? Was that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: a difficult decision?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Well, today it would be, but I was a Christian,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and I believed in miracles, and I believed God would
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: take care of us. And so I went there and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: figured he was in charge. He would take care of us.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So my son got meningitis. My two daughters got malaria.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I got malaria. In fact, after a few years, I
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: went to San Diego, and I came down with malaria.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: And in University Hospital San Diego, they were thrilled because
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I was the only person they'd ever seen with all
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: three strains of South American malaria at the same time.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Did you have a relapse of malaria? Because I have
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: a friend who got malaria in the Congo, and it
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: came back.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It can come back, and I've had relapses, but it's
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: been a long time now that I haven't had relapses.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I've taken so much medicine that supposedly it won't come
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: back anymore, but I can never give blood because it's
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: always in my blood.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: What do they give you? Like what medicine they give you?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Well, Daraprim, Primaquin, straight quinine. When my wife almost died,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: she weighed 115 pounds and then she got malaria and
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: almost died. She got down to 76 pounds. And, uh,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: And the doctor told me she's going to die tonight.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: We don't have any way to keep her alive.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: And they put her on blood transfusions because you lose
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of blood. It kills the blood cells. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: they put her on blood transfusions and also straight quinine,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: which caused her to be in agony for several days
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of just constant retching. And quinine is a really bad experience.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: But at the end of it, she pulled through.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: She pulled through.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: We all... pulled through you had to be like questioning
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: your decisions i mean this has to be a trialing
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you know very difficult time because you're you chose to
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: be there.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah and and so we were leaving the village to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: find help because my wife and daughter were dying of
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: malaria at this time where she got down to 76
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: pounds and my daughter lost a lot of weight too
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: she was just skin and bones and uh I'm getting
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: my boat out of there. And I had never been
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: out by boat. In fact, I didn't have a boat.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I had no idea how to get out of there.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So this Catholic priest came up to see what the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Protestant missionaries were doing. And I said, can I borrow
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: your boat? I got to get my family out of here.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: He had this very narrow aluminum canoe with a six
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: horsepower Johnson. And I got my whole family in there
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and he just stayed there in the jungle and let
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: my family take off in his boat. And, uh, I
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: didn't know where we were, but I was thinking, you know,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I've read all these books about missionaries and now I'm
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: having a missionary experience. But it wasn't fun. It was
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: really horrific. It was horrific experience. And I just didn't
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: know what was going to happen.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: So your goal was to convert these people. And how
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: long were you there for?
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I was there in 1980. I spent the whole
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: year there in 1980. In all the other years, from
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: 1977 to 2013, I was there for three to six
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: months every year. So I was there a lot. And
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: got sick every time I went. I had typhoid fever
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. But attacked by snakes and stuff
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: like that. But it was just a mind-altering experience. Things
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: didn't go the way I thought.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: The people started questioning me. They started asking me about,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: why do you believe in this Jesus you keep telling
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: us about? What's he like?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: And you're doing this also, you're translating these concepts from
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: English to Pidaha.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: From Greek to Pidaha. Going from the Greek New Testament,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: because I was translating the New Testament. So I'm going
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: from Greek to Pidaha, but I'm referencing English and Portuguese
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: at the same time.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm staying in there.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And you expect these people to understand what you're saying. Yeah.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So, you know, if you're in the middle of the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: jungle and Jesus does something out in a desert, how
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: do you describe desert?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Isn't their language a completely different language than ours? Like
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: in terms of like they have no words for color. Right.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: They have no words for direction. They don't have a
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: left or a right. Right.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So— And this all takes time to find out because
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: when I went there, I thought everybody had words for colors.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Everybody had words for numbers. Everybody had a concept of God. Right.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: They don't have words for numbers. That's so crazy.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't have.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Do they have numbers?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: No, no numbers.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: So how many fish did you catch today, Mike?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: A lot.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: A lot or a little.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: A lot or a little.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Or a good amount.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.