Achuar

And so to be thrust into this environment was, like, the, the perfect extremity of experience.

Like, you couldn't get to a more connected, more relational system than we were suddenly [chuckles] dumped into because the Achuar tribe has been, like the many other hundreds of different nations and tribes that exist throughout the Amazon, have been there for roughly 30,000 or 40,000 years.

And they have, at no point, seen themselves separate from the nature that they live within.

And so that's ultimately what we mean when we say there was an, an indigenous people or culture, is this is a people that have not lost the context of nature as their home.

It's an ironic kind of, um, background to that.

But at...

in 1996, no roads anywhere, and today, you can go today, and there's still no roads to the Achuar.

You're on this journey, bus to plane to ultimately canoe.

I joined the Peace Corps in 1968 'cause I opposed the Vietnam War, and I was sent into the Amazon to, to, to live with and work with the Shuar and the Achuar, these indigenous people deep in the Amazon.

And I remember doing some research before I went in, and the research said that these are the, some of the poorest people in the world.

They're totally impoverished.

Like, what is a shithole country? It's whatever you define it to be.

I remember when I first...

I joined the Peace Corps in 1968 'cause I opposed the Vietnam War, and I was sent into the Amazon to, to, to live with and work with the Shuar and the Achuar, these indigenous people deep in the Amazon, and I remember doing some research before I went in, and the research said that these are the, some of the poorest people in the world.

They're totally impoverished.

They have no money.