
US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe - Sambdala
http://nypost.com/2014/05/24/son-finds-his-lost-mother-in-a-stone-age-tribe/
======
jameswburke
If anyone has any questions, I'm close friends (roommates actually) with David
and serve on the board of directors for The Good Project.

He just left for Costa Rica on a service learning trip, but I'm happy to
answer what I can.

~~~
phpnode
Is the article factually correct? And if so, does he have a strong
relationship with his father?

~~~
jameswburke
Which aspects are you questioning? It's not my favorite piece I've seen
published — I don't think it covers some areas in enough detail and leaves
room for insinuation (e.g. Yarima was young when they met, but it wasn't until
years had gone by that a relationship occurred. They (David's parents) have
spoken as recently as ~7 months ago on a satellite phone, and Yarima has
expressed interested on returning to America to visit on multiple occasions.
She misses David's father and the relationship they had.)

David's relationship with his Dad is still strained from when he was young,
there's no denying that (from my perspective). But as David's interest in
Anthropology has grown, so has their ability to find common ground as
individuals. I've seen him on the phone talking with Dad for hours, just like
any other son.

~~~
phpnode
thanks for your reply! I wasn't questioning anything in particular, but wow
this article makes his dad sound like a terrible person.

~~~
jacquesm
Is this the right place to divulge information about a third party? I realize
there is an article about him posted here and that it already contains lots of
details that would normally be considered private, however I feel that somehow
if you have questions about this it might be better to take it off-line.
Especially parts about his father and mother's relationship in the present, it
has absolutely no business being in a public forum like this. We're not
exactly discussing people that have been dead for 50 years.

~~~
ScottBurson
'jameswburke claims to be his friend. I think we can leave the question of
what to reveal to his discretion. What he's said so far doesn't seem to me to
be particularly sensitive, nor any more private than what was in the article.

------
mherkender
Wow, his father sounds like a piece of work.

He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who
was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. Then his long absences put her at risk of
being brutally gang-raped, which happens. She ends up in the US, and
eventually goes back without her kids. He tells his kids nothing about her,
why she left, who she is, but still has his son beg her to come back in front
of a video camera. His son thinks she abandoned him and becomes an alcoholic
by 14. The guy says “We weren’t a touchy-feely, talk-about-things kind of
family".

~~~
DanBC
Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world.

[http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html](http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html)

[http://tooyoungtowed.org/](http://tooyoungtowed.org/)

~~~
phaus
>Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world.

There are quite a few shitty people in the world. As much as many of us hate
to admit it, there are also quite a few shitty cultures. Any 36 year-old man,
from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a
9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any
culture or individual that condones such behavior shouldn't exist anymore.

~~~
fallinghawks
> Any 36 year-old man ... that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old
> and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit

I would assume she fully expected to have sex with her husband, 13 years old
or not. To suggest this was rape, against her will, is a bit preposterous and
an incorrect usage of the word. At the same time I find it reprehensible that
a 36 year old American, whose culture says underage is below 18, would get
involved with what we'd consider a child.

~~~
phaus
>To suggest this was rape, against her will, is a bit preposterous and an
incorrect usage of the word

There are different kinds of rape. It doesn't really matter if a 13 year-old
consents. How many 13 year-olds do you know that are mature enough to make
such a decision?

~~~
mistermann
I know plenty of 30+ year olds who aren't mature enough to make such a
decision either. The age of 18 is just an arbitrary choice to plant a legal
marker, because it's not practical to judge on a case by case basis.

Not that I'm condoning the behavior in this case....I'd think the intent of
age of consent laws would be to protect those not yet able to protect themself
with their own judgement - it should be obvious in this case, _especially_
considering his age at the time, that taking a ~13 year old "wife" and
proceeding to have sex with her when you had no intent to move there
permanently was an incredibly wrong thing to do, by any moral compass.

~~~
phaus
I agree that SOME 30 year-olds aren't mature enough to make adult decisions,
but on the other hand almost every single 13 year-old on the planet is too
immature.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a fascinating story, because there's obviously a hidden narrative that
the reader is supposed to play along with: rich, sophisticated asshole of a
grad student takes advantage of a terribly young girl. Heartache ensues. One
child suffers alcoholism. A ton of emoting going on.

As I take this apart, however, I'm at a loss to where the story is. Is it
wrong to study other cultures? No. Is it wrong to take a wife of 13? Perhaps
in the western world, but not there, so I gotta go with "no" on that one.
Should the kids have stayed in the Amazon? Once again, I think both parents
made the safest choice for the children in the long term. I also think it's
great the writer is getting re-connected with his mom.

If anything, I'm disturbed by the idea that the mother is just another cookie-
cutter ignorant primitive. I see no indication that she was forced into a
marriage. It appears she wanted things to happen as they did. She decided to
move to the states and she decided to move back. In fact, the father's
explanation that it was a divorce looks to me like a clearcut explanation of
what happened. Older man marries younger woman, kids arrive, much heartache,
story ends with grown man finding his mother. It's a great story, no doubt,
but not a very unusual one. I'm not sure what the "Isolated Amazon Tribe"
brings to the table that isn't already there. Just a gimmick to attract more
readers?

I hope this guy continues reconnecting with his mother's side of the family.
As he says, his story is just beginning. I bet it's going to be an interesting
one. It's the interaction of cultures that's the interesting thing here, not
the all-too-common tragedy of marriages gone bad.

~~~
emiliobumachar
As someone else pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Yanomame do not travel to
work and leave the wife. The man took two _very_ different cultures and
combined actions that are common in each but not the other. The combination
was explosive.

------
loup-vaillant
> _Once admitted [to the hospital, Yarima] sprung herself out of bed and
> attempted to give birth by squatting in the corner of the hospital room._

That one was probably highlighted to emphasize the weirdness, or scandal, or
ick factor, just like the first excerpt. But this is most probably one thing
the Yanomami got right, as a simple matter of physiological fact.

I have recently learned from my manual therapist that lying in the back like
we do in the west by default is the _worst_ possible position for giving
birth, for various reasons, the most obvious being that gravity doesn't work
with you in that position. Apparently, this position is widespread in our
countries because it is more convenient for the doctor.

Squatting on the other hand is one of the best positions, leading to less
pain, much faster birth, less risks for both the baby and the mother… Even if
you're a cold heart cynic, this would be one easy way to reduce health
expenditures.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions)

[http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/birth-
positions.html](http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/birth-positions.html)

~~~
chockablock
>...this position is widespread in our countries because it is more convenient
for the doctor.

Another reason is because they have received epidural anesthesia which stops
them from being able to move around safely.

Even with the advent of lighter 'walking' epidurals, many hospitals (including
the quite progressive one in SF where my daughter was born last year, with a
doula in attendance) still insist on the mother staying in bed after receiving
the epidural as a matter of policy (for liability reasons).

>Squatting on the other hand is one of the best positions, leading to less
pain, much faster birth, less risks for both the baby and the mother…

Well, 'less pain' except for the epidural thing. I have nothing but respect
for women who choose 'natural childbirth', but I think it's a hard sell to
many moms.

------
dang
All: The coincidence of an HN user being personally close to this story is so
remarkable that we have put James' comment [1] at the top of the thread, using
the same method we occasionally use for moderation announcements. This is very
rare—I don't think we've ever done it before.

It does occasionally happen that one commenter is uniquely close to a story,
or knowledgeable about it, in an HN thread. I've thought for some time that
the HN software should support this somehow, because those moments (e.g. when
Peter Norvig shows up to comment on his own work) are among the most valuable
here. If we had that feature today, we'd certainly have applied it to James'
comment.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797013)

~~~
jacquesm
Except for one little detail, it's not the subject of the article that shows
up but a close friend.

If one of my close friends would show up in a thread about me and would start
to distribute present-day details about my private life and about my family
members that are not currently public I would be less than happy. Maybe
jameswburke has full support of the subject(s) about these disclosures but for
all we can see here he does not.

The whole affair looks like a tragedy for all involved to me and I think it
would be much better to just stick to the information already in the public
eye (assuming we have to discuss this sort of thing at all) until all subjects
involved (such as David's sister) indicate that they are on board with having
this stuff divulged.

~~~
dang
It doesn't have to be the subject or author of the article. Someone unusually
close to or knowledgeable about a story (compared to the rest of us in the
thread) also counts.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I give jameswburke the benefit of the doubt, and think
the thread is much better with his contribution at the top. (The top comment
otherwise would be
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796987.](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796987.))

You're right that the story is personal in a very messy and unpleasant way. It
also seems obvious that it has historical and cultural significance. On the
other hand, the thread (sadly) isn't exploring that, so we're going to demote
it.

------
omegaworks
>They also have no word for “love.”

This is the kind of thing that makes the article unambiguously Western-
ethnocentric. They obviously know the concept of love. His mother wept tears
of joy at the arrival of her son.

~~~
quotient
I agree. That single sentence irritated me immensely. It was a ham-fisted and
misguided attempt to emphasize the 'exoticness' of the Yanomami.

~~~
unreal37
They don't hug either. A mother can't hug her son. The example does imply they
are not an affectionate people.

------
sixQuarks
If the facts of this article are correct, the father seems to be clinically
psychotic

~~~
wwwwwwwwww
> the father seems to be clinically psychotic

i dont think you know what this means

~~~
sixQuarks
Actually, I meant psychopath. Psychotic has a different meaning - I stand
corrected.

~~~
wwwwwwwwww
sorry, in that case I didnt mean to be pedantic

~~~
sixQuarks
no, glad you brought it to my attention

------
anishkothari
A few links from the BBC:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23758087](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23758087)
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018qzzp](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018qzzp)

------
dang
We changed the url from [http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/son-finds-
his-los...](http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/son-finds-his-lost-
mother-in-a-stone-age-tribe/story-e6frfqcr-1226930876923), which was copied
from this.

~~~
peterkelly
You should add a regex for that your submission page. Everything on
news.com.au that isn't about Australian politics or sport is "syndicated" from
US media.

~~~
meej
Both news.com.au and nypost.com are owned by News Corp, so it makes sense that
they share content.

------
arjie
Good grief, both the anthropologists described in the article sound like
disagreeable people. The father with all his marrying of a child and then
abandoning her, and the other female anthropologist who was mean to the kid.

~~~
anotherevan
> the other female anthropologist who was mean to the kid.

Not that I didn't find her behaviour reprehensible, but in the interests of
accuracy, she was "the wife of a very prominent anthropologist."

------
chrissyb
This story featured on the Snap Judgement podcast last year.

[http://snapjudgment.org/yanomami-mami](http://snapjudgment.org/yanomami-mami)

------
epynonymous
was i reading the onion or something like that, this is completely outrageous,
"i was 36... she was 9-12."

------
stefantalpalaru
Here's an interesting documentary about the whole affair:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Tribe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Tribe)

~~~
jacquesm
FTLA:

"Alice Dreger, 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".

~~~
stefantalpalaru
See the documentary and judge for yourself.

------
frik
Reminds me a bit of the movie _Jungle 2 Jungle_ (1997)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119432/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119432/)
and _Krippendorf 's Tribe_ (1998)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120725/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120725/)

(the screenplays are different, but from a similar timeframe between '85 and
'94)

------
eagsalazar2
Kenneth must have committed a crime in there somewhere. The dude is a
pedophile and cruel and hopefully someone will figure out way to bring him
down.

~~~
brazzy
Thank you for taking all of 5 minutes of your precious time to speak justice
and pass judgement based on a magazine article. I am sure future generations
will marvel at your wisdom, O Solomon.

------
deadslow
Yes, HN is the appropriate place for this type of posts.

~~~
vyrotek
_On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
frozenport
I don't feel gratified, this belongs on TLC. Why can't we downvote articles?

