Camino a la Escuela
Peru 2004 | 18 Min. | DVD, OmeU

Director José Padilha’s eyeopening new documentary centers on the popular field of Yanomami Indian studies, but they aren’t the tribe in question. The secrets being exposed are those of the tribe of intellectuals and academics who have built their reputations and careers by studying the Yanomami. Anthropologists descended on the remote tribe beginning in the 1960s, believing them to be the perfect example of a pure, untouched, primitive society. But the career making opportunities that the research provided quickly led to decades of petty squabbles which escalate from accusations of academic fraud to shocking allegations of medical, ethical, and sexual transgressions. As the severity of the accusations increases. Padilha skill-fully interweaves archival footage and ever-increasing amounts of testimony from the Yanomami themselves to confirm or debunk the anthropologists’ statements. Using this clever technique to reveal the anthropologists’ egos and inconsistencies, SECRETS OF THE TRIBE challenges the viewer to question the subjectivity and colonial nature of indigenous research without offering any easy answers.