Near the end of the field school session, students hike into a nearby jungle preserve for an overnight stay. Local guides teach about traditional uses of plants native to the area. The Upper Amazon of eastern Ecuador is known to be one of the most diverse ecological zones in the world in terms of plant species, many of which remain unclassified. Photo provided by Andes and Amazon Anthropology Field School.

by PHILLIP WYATT
Intern Lifestyles Reporter

Sixteen students visited the Amazon to participate in an ethnographic field school study through Appalachian State University’s Overseas Education Program this summer.

Assistant anthropology professor Tim J. Smith led the excursion, which took place June 5-30.

It focused on “indigenous activism in Ecuador surrounding the introduction and maintenance of an oil pipeline,” he said.

Students were divided into four research teams, each focusing on one theme, including history, oil, identity/activism and gender.

Each group worked with an indigenous citizen, a member of an ethnicity with the earliest historical connection to a particular location, and conducted a research project, traveling to homes with translators and guides and interviewing local families. 

In the afternoons, students underwent extensive study of Kichwa, Ecuador’s native language, spoken by nearly 11 million individuals throughout the Andean and Amazonian areas of South America, Smith said. 

“It was only until I asked an indigenous man when the bus was coming, in his own language, that I realized how much I had learned,” Charlie D. Webster, senior Latin American studies and Spanish major said.

Webster, who is fluent in Spanish, served his group as a translator.

When the group interviewed a native who only spoke Kichwa, another translator translated Kichwa to Spanish and Webster then translated Spanish to English.

The students learned that in the 1970s, a number of foreign oil companies struck a deal with the Ecuadorian government to allow the creation of infrastructures to subtract oil, Smith said.

In exchange, Ecuador received a percentage of the oil profits through tax revenue and oil companies purchased new textbooks to support local education.

Because of oil extraction, several infrastructural changes were discovered, including the construction of a highway in the early 1980s. 

Members of the Andes and Amazon Anthropology Field School stand on the shores of the Napo River in eastern Ecuador. It is one of the 10 major tributaries that create the upper Amazonian watershed and the Amazon River itself. Photo provided by Andes and Amazon Anthropology Field School.

Oil companies finance Capirona’s indigenous festival, annually celebrating Ecuadorian culture and citizenship and supporting ecotourism, using the environment to attract visitors.

Students were invited to the festival, which required a 30-minute truck ride into the rainforest, a canoe ride across a swollen river and a 30-minute hike into the jungle.

At the festival, traditional meals were served, including soup made from plantain sauce and watasu, a jungle rodent similar to a guinea pig.

Mashed and fermented Yuca, plants with clusters of white flowers, provided the students with bowls of chicha, a white, milky liquid, were also served.

“You sit around and have a beer with people around here, they sit around and drink bowls of chicha,” Liz D. Stabler, senior anthropology major said. “I think it’s disgusting. It tasted like starchy old socks.”

The community in Ecuador desires students to share their findings, letting the world know how oil has affected their home.
A public outreach event will take place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Table Rock Room of Plemmons Student Union Nov. 23.

Representatives from each research group will present their research, answering questions at the end of their presentations.

“You can learn from books and in classes about anthropology or whatever your major is, and until you go out and actually do it, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stabler said.

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