Dirty Savages

Anthropologist Lucas Bessire, writing for The Revealer, skewers the recent evangelical propaganda film “End of the Spear”. The film (and accompanying documentary) purports to tell the true story of missionary “martyr” Nate Saint who was killed along with his companions by the Huaorani indians of Ecuador in 1956. The problem is that the film demonizes the “pagan” tribe, makes saints of the missionaries, and glosses over the real history of exploitive and abusive evangelical efforts in South America (efforts that continue to this day).

“The missionizing endeavor among the Huaorani, as for many groups, was possible because of the convergence of corporate and state interests in taking possession of territory and resources that belonged to native people; in this case, rubber and oil. Missionaries were given exclusive state license to “contact,” round up and sedentize particularly troublesome groups who were not sufficiently terrorized to surrender. All of this is erased from End of the Spear…The movie replaces the all-too-human fallacies of the missionary heroes with grotesque European imaginings of indigenous savagery. This is a widespread colonial fantasy of indigenous nature that has consistently been used to legitimize violence and savage behavior by “civilized”? populations against native peoples.”

Missionaries of this period often utilized captive and enslaved translators, would deny medicine and aid to conversion hold-outs, and often worked in collusion with the interests of government and corporate power. Hardly the saintly agents of peace and love portrayed in films like “End of the Spear”. We should never forget the sheer arrogance of these conversion efforts. They exist to glorify and empower the Christian faith, they do not exist to enrich or “help” the “savages”.

“One missionary who continues in Huaorani territory is Stephan Saint, the son of Nate Saint, who grew up with the Huaorani but has adopted an attitude of superiority toward them. He has established himself as the leader of a small community of Huaorani, where he, like his aunt before him, makes all of the rules. He is the minister of the church in the community, and does not seem to have made any effort to establish indigenous church leadership. In his community, he has stressed the importance of capitalist relations of production and distribution. He has established his own store and sells everything in it….” – Larry Ziegler-Otero, Department of Anthropology at SUNY Plattsburgh

Something to keep in mind when you see someone wearing “spear gear”.

Tags: Paganism