“Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?”
That’s the subtitle of an article in Foreign Policy. It describes traditional but still-existent customs of many Amazon tribes in Brazil that dictate killing handicapped children and even those one might define as transgendered, and a controversy in Brazil over whether a law should be passed that bans such practices (it already has passed one legislative body in that country and is being considered by the other):
The Kamayuré¡ are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins ”” whom some tribes, including the Kamayuré¡, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”
One would think the answer to the question in this post’s title, and the article’s subtitle, would be “of course”—unless it’s being answered by cultural and/or moral relativists:
The Brazilian Association of Anthropology, in an open letter published on its website, has called the bill an attempt to put indigenous peoples “in the permanent condition of defendants before a tribunal tasked with determining their degree of savagery.”
Indigenous people around the world have been increasingly assimilated during the last century or more, but the Amazon remains one of the last holdouts to the process, for rather obvious reasons connected with their environment. Even if the law were to be passed, it might be somewhat moot if Brazil doesn’t exercise all that much influence over its indigenous Amazon tribes at this point. And in fact Brazil doesn’t exercise that influence over all its tribes:
In 1973, Brazil passed the Indian Statute, which groups indigenous individuals into three categories: those who live in complete isolation, those in limited contact with the outside world, and those who are fully integrated into mainstream society. The statute states that tribes such as Kanhu’s are only subject to federal laws depending on their degree of assimilation into Brazilian life. It is thanks to this language that indigenous people do not face prosecution for child killing…
If the bill passes the Senate, it will be tacked on as an amendment to the Indian Statute and require the government agencies that oversee indigenous communities to take a series of proactive measures. One will be the creation of an up-to-date registry of certain pregnant women so that the government can keep an eye on those (such as single mothers or women carrying twins) whose newborns might be targeted for death by their tribes. Another measure will require that the public prosecutor’s office be notified immediately of reports of human rights violations committed against newborns or any other stigmatized members of indigenous communities, including the elderly. The amendment also stipulates that any citizen who learns that an indigenous person’s life or safety is at risk but does not report it to the authorities will “be penalized under the applicable laws.”
So as I see it, the real subject matter of the law is how assertive the prevailing culture in Brazil is going to be in extending its legal reach to the indigenous peoples who have not really been part of it up till now.
It goes almost without saying—although I suppose it’s necessary to say it—that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.
You may have already heard this relevant story from the days of British colonialism in India:
…[W]hen told of an actual Sati [widow-burning] about to take place, [General Sir Charles James Napier] informed those involved that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests complained to him that this was a customary religious rite, and that customs of a nation should be respected. As recounted by his brother William, he replied:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
This story pits the customs of the victors against the customs of the vanquished, in an era in which the victors had the courage of their convictions. That’s no longer as true in the west as it used to be, but there is also the following:
…[T]he Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, ratified by Brazil in 2002…stipulates that indigenous peoples “shall have the right to retain their own customs and institutions, where these are not incompatible with fundamental rights defined by the national legal system and with internationally recognised human rights.”
According to [human rights lawyer] Barreto, under international law the way forward is obvious. “Certain cultural practices here are incompatible with human rights,” she says. “They need to be thwarted. There’s no middle ground.”
There is no contradiction between recognizing that the custom originally had utility and saying that the time has come to end it, and that the latter is the right thing to do. The real question is whether Brazil has the courage of its own convictions and a commitment to universal human rights, and the will to actually back the law up in practice, if passed.
Didn’t Iceland “cure” Down syndrome by identifying fetuses with the syndrome and then aborting them. As someone who knows a family with a child with this I can only think of the hole in this family if this child didn’t exist. He has been a real blessing to them. But on the other hand I don’t want to put myself in a position to question someone’s painfully worked out decision.
Despite what is often reported about Amazonia and New Guinea, there exists only one truly uncontacted group of humans anywhere in the world. These are the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, who have lived, totally ignorant of and uninfluenced by, the outside world for perhaps 50,000 years. They represent what the ancestors of all members of our species were like, once upon a time.
My up bringing tells me all human life deserves protection. But I don’t live my life as a member of a tribe of hunters and gathers in a rain forest. However, I do live in a society that condones killing babies in the womb and selling the choice parts for profit. No moral high ground in America.
This seems like a distinction without a difference. In the United States, a female can kill her unborn baby and must not be questioned as to motive. A whim, a desire, anything can be used to justify and terminate the baby’s existence. Who are we, to impose our warped sense of morality on these people?
Well…I’ll aim for consistency.
Since I believe that all human life is created in the image of God, and therefore bears an inherent integrity, dignity & holiness, I am equally repulsed by the pro-abort-at-will crowd AND by tribal customs that slaughter the weak, infirm, aged, disabled etc for tribal survival when we know there are other solutions.
But the whole “white guilt” post-truth crowd will surely shout otherwise.
Pro-Choice, including selective-child… selective-fetus, offspring, conventionally known as “baby”, is a progressive (i.e. monotonic) philosophy with liberal (i.e. divergent – simulating tolerance) roots.
#HateLovesAbortion
Didn’t Iceland “cure” Down syndrome by identifying fetuses with the syndrome and then aborting them
Life deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or, perhaps, profitable (e.g. recycled-child), for social progress, no less. A wicked solution, a final solution, to an albeit hard problem (i.e. wealth, pleasure, leisure, narcissism, democratic leverage, and taxable commodities).
#PrinciplesMatter
That said, when, and by whose choice, does a human life acquire and retain the right t life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
A human life evolves from conception to a natural or elective abortion. The only humane justification for the latter is in self-defense, and then there is still a choice and striving to save the life of the mother and child. Women, in fact, with two exceptions (involuntary and superior exploitation), actually have choice, choice — two choices — and choice — a third choice — followed by Choice (i.e. abortion rite). That said, the progress of abortion rites and after around one month (sentience): torture, of a wholly innocent human life, represents an unprecedented violation of human rights and civilized norms.
We can do better. We must do better. In order to avoid progressive corruption and a dysfunctional convergence.
That this is even a question to be asked is rather sad.
There would be no conflict it instead of killing the child, the tribe that rejected the child was required by law to simply hand it over to a charitable organization for adoption or foster parenting.
They can keep their barbaric customs, we’ll keep the child. Problem solved.
My only question is:
Is abortion legal or illegal in Brazil?
The author seems to have adopted a form of moral relativism based on a cultural evolution hypothesis. In fact, people can frequently do evil for no good reason at all. We contribute to that evil when we stand by and do nothing.
I do think the question is a little more complex.
Generally in the west we have decided that the ‘white man’s burden’ and forcibly imposing our way of life on indigenous people is a bad thing. And indeed often it has been, and certainly it has been done it bad ways.
The thing is, without our culture and way of life and the immense wealth that it has generated (i’m not talking about just 21st century wealth, but even enlightenment era wealth was immense to what came before) some of the things that we hold as necessary are simply unaffordable.
For poor hunter gatherer tribes, that can at times include keeping your kids alive. If trying to do so would just mean that more would die, then choosing to kill one, so the others have a chance, might be the best of bad choices.
Basically, this means it comes down to three choices.
1) Force these tribes into the modern world.
2) Let them remain primitive with all that entails.
3) Somehow substitute them killing their children with instead giving them to others to raise (this has monetary costs and even in America children in ‘the system’ end up abused)
Like the primitive tribesmen it seems to me we don’t really have a good and easy choice here, it is pretty easy to just these hunter gatherers as being ‘barbaric’ but I think it harder to create a solution.
Another case of the well fed telling the starving how to live.
The practice of killing “the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins” are in place because culturally it was REALLY hard to feed everyone. These were the least likely to survive anyway. Tough life means tough choices. Just because it’s been a millennia or so since such choices were faced by your ancestor doesn’t mean that others are exempt from such choices.
Cultural norms evolve for a reason. In this case such norms that in the well-fed West we consider abhorrent. In other places they’re called survival
@Hangtown Bob
My understanding is that abortion is only legal in cases of rape and if it’s the only way to save the life of the mother.
I find myself genuinely conflicted on this. Please let me explain.
While it is true that these tribes live in Brazil, they are essentially autonomous. Out of both choice and logistical necessity, the government long ago decided to let these tribes maintain their traditional lifeways, including no doubt, many practices that are barbaric. How many tribes still display their enemies heads on pikes?
Since these tribes are living as hunters and gatherers in a harsh and unforgiving environment with little or no contact with the national government, the practices they developed to deal with their situation are still relevant. They simply do not have the luxury of keeping around people with disabilities, who consume resources but cannot contribute to the tribe’s wellbeing.
Someone mentioned above that the tribes should simply hand over their unwanted children to the state, but Brazil’s orphanages and slums are already overflowing with unwanted and feral children. There is almost no chance of adoption for any of them, particularly those who are defective in some way.
It seems to me that Brazil faces a choice here: Either leave the tribes alone and let them do what they will in all its savagery, or forget protecting their lifeways and try to assimilate them. They can’t really be lukewarm about this.
High school teachers are still assigning Shirley Jackson’s classic horror story, “The Lottery” in which — spoiler alert — each year a member of a small town is selected by lottery then stoned to death by the townsfolk.
However these days millennial students are not so quick to condemn the town’s “custom” just as they are reluctant to condemn female genital mutilation in cultures which practice that.
The thought that immediately came to mind when I read this was God’s (or the human authors’, if you prefer) horror in the Torah at the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. Only tribes who practiced it were to be extirpated. Other tribes, such as the Midianites and Ishmaelites, even if warred against, were not.
P.S. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American couples who are trying to adopt but are blocked by the lunatics in Social Services departments all over the country. They would love to have the opportunity to adopt a Brazilian child.
Indigenous tribes are vanishing from the earth at a prodigious rate. Many have populations in the low hundreds. Allowing them (or encouraging them) to kill their own is a bad way to help them survive. And killing children because they are disabled, their mothers are single, they’re a twin, or someone thinks their life will be a failure is a “value” that is not different from our culture’s but identical to it.
Ishmael:
I don’t think that word “identical” means what you think it means.
@ huxley: I’m surprised. You’d think some teacher or administrator would comb through the classics and eliminate such works, after all it’ll be a matter of time before someone declares it sexist (spoiler: mother is chosen and her children assist in her death). But maybe one might interpret it as a fine example of a patriarchal, backwards society and therefore it must be retained and taught through these lenses.
….It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible…