Moments: Learning From the Amazonian Wai Wai Tribe

And they were having none of it.

We took five YY guys, their YY warriors, they call them, with us upstream to find the source of the river.

And they just thought, no, their traditions were very, very different.

I think this is where we had a wake-up call as to culture and respecting other people's culture.

Yeah.

Because we came in there thinking, well, we want to learn.

So you're going to teach us because of course you would, because we're from the Western world and, you know, women are wishing and getting, you know, in the forefront of many industries, which they historically didn't have very much access to.

And so we just assumed that they were a part of that thought process, but of course not.

And they have this beautiful tradition which works absolutely incredibly for them where the women have their roles, the men have their roles, and it's really harmonious.

And there's not very much hierarchy there.

So it's, yeah, it's a wonderful setup for them.

And the women do go foraging.

They do go fishing.

They do a little bit of local hunting.

But really it's the guys that go on these huge three-week-long expeditions in these dugout canoes upriver to find the meat to bring home for everyone, the entire community.

And so, yeah, it took a little while for them to understand.

And we kind of broke that down for them by being very, very persistently, Sitting at the edges, watching them.

My tactic was just to watch.

And if they were doing something, I would literally copy it.

Yeah.

Keep doing it.

And if they said to us, you know, we want to clear out this area to make our camp, I would start at the edges and I'd just get closer and closer and closer and start heavy lifting logs.

And, you know, eventually they turned around and they're like, wow, actually we see how passionate you are about this.

We've just never come across it before.

We've never had a woman want to just do what we do.