Description: This vivid ethnographic account of the first peaceful encounters between the Wari Indians of western Brazil and missionaries and government workers emphasizes how the Wari perceived the interactions.
Review Quotes: "Thanks to the excellent anthropological work of Aparecida Vilaça and colleagues studying Amazonia and Melanesia, it becomes increasingly apparent that the incorporation of otherness--in practices ranging from marriage and shamanism to warfare and cannibalism--is an essential condition of human being. It follows that the relationship between societies is an essential condition of their respective cultural orders as well as their historical development. Now Vilaça has produced a landmark ethnography of these processes, with an unparalleled documentation from the inside of the assimilation of the outside, highlighted by a stunning analysis of the cultural reciprocities of the colonial encounter."--Marshall Sahlins, author of The Western Illusion of Human Nature