The Polyglot Forest by Bruce Albert, anthropologist For those who grew up in the silence of the forest, the city noise is painful. Davi Kopenawa he Amazon rainforest is a continent­ biome spanning an area of some 6.5 million square kilometers (ten times the size of France) that over­ laps nine Latin American countries and represents almost half of the remaining rainforests on earth. This vast region encompasses a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and contains the highest percentage of the world’s known biodiversity. Today however, it is seriously threatened,1 in particular due to the expansion of agricultural activities (livestock and soybean farming). The Amazon has been inhabited for at least eleven thousand years by a complex mosaic of indigenous peoples who, in spite of several centuries of spoliation and decimation, still represent a little over 400 indigenous groups speaking approximately 240 diferent languages.2 The Amazon thus has a long cultural history that, in contributing over time to changes 1. Some experts predict a 40 percent loss of forest cover by 2050; see Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho et al., “Modelling Conservation in the Amazon Basin,” in Nature 440, no. 7083 (March 23, 2006), pp. 520–23. 2. See Eduardo Góes Neves, Arqueologia da Amazônia (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2006); Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica, coica.org.ec; Francisco Queixalós and Odile Renault-Lescure (eds.), As línguas amazônicas hoje (São Paulo: ISA-MPEG, 2000). 320 in the distribution of the forest’s lora and fauna, has profoundly inluenced its natural history.3 The Amazon is not (or rather, has never been) a virgin forest. Studied and transformed by its native inhabitants for many thousands of years, it has always been an inhabited forest. As a result, its extraordinary biodiversity is inherently interconnected with the history of its socio-diversity. According to the present state of our knowledge, which is far from complete, the Amazon forest is home to 1,300 species of birds, 427 species of amphibians, and 425 species of mammals.4 These animals, in spite of their large diversity, mainly depend on plant-based food sources,5 which are unevenly distributed and subject to wide seasonal variation. As a result, the animal population is both low in density and highly mobile, while a large part of the game sought by native hunters is nocturnal and/or arboreal.6 All of these features make hunting in this region a complex and very challenging activity whose outcome is always unpredictable. Moreover, as one would imagine, the thick tangle and great diversity of vegetation in the forest—50,000 species of plants and trees7—create a vegetal screen that, beyond a very short distance, is impenetrable to the eye. This means that hunters are only able to discern or, at best, glimpse their ever-elusive prey, after observing possible clues as to their presence on the ground. Consequently, it is mainly through the experience of listening to their environment that they are able to detect the presence or movement of game in the undergrowth or up in the treetops. It is thus understandable that Amazonian hunters not only acquire an extensive knowledge of the sounds of the forest from a very young age, but also that the concert of animal sounds that constantly surrounds them deeply informs the language and the cosmology of their people. The acoustic culture of the Yanomami Indians in northern Brazil, with whom I have had the privilege of communicating for several decades, is 3. See William Balée, Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People and Their Landscapes (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013); Charles R. Clement et al., “The Domestication of Amazonia Before European Conquest,” in Proceedings of the Royal Society 282, no. 12 (August 2015). 4. See Russell Alan Mittermeir et al., “Wilderness and Biodiversity Conservation,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, no. 18 (September 2, 2003). 5. Seeds and fruit fallen from trees or directly foraged in the tree canopy. The layer of fallen leaves on the ground is poor in nutrients. 6. See Leslie E. Sponsel, “Amazon Ecology and Adaptation,” in Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (October 15, 1986). 7. See Kenneth J. Feeley and Miles R. Silman, “Extinction Risks of Amazonian Plant Species,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 30 (July 28, 2009). a good example of the inluence of the biophony of the tropical rainforest in the lived knowledge of the Amazonian peoples.8 As a tribute to the work of Bernie Krause, I shall provide a few examples here, that include hunter communication with the voices of the forest, the learning of ceremonial and shamanic chants, and the myth of the origin of animal languages. Yaro pë heã: The Voices of the Forest W hen out hunting or gathering, the Yanomami, as they make their way through the forest, maintain an ongoing dialogue with its many diferent voices. Their attention is thus continuously turned toward and listening to the biophony of the forest, and they are always quick to use mimicry to respond to their nonhuman interlocutors. Moreover, in addition to this ever-attentive acoustic focus, they are constantly involved in decoding an elaborate system of sound associations connected with the notion of heã. This is the term hunters use for the songs, cries, and calls of many birds (as well as of amphibians and certain insects) that they interpret as acoustic clues indicating the possible presence of the prey, fruits or plants associated with them. As one hunter laconically summed it up for me, “When there are many animal voices talking in the forest, we say there are sound signs of game among them.” In this system of sound associations, the cooing of a fasciated antshrike is perceived as indicating the presence of a tapir, while the undulating song of a black-tailed trogon signals a herd of collared peccaries. Approaching spider monkeys are hailed by the two strident tones of the small blue-headed parrot, a passing red brocket by the staccato trill of the plain-brown woodcreeper, and the lute-like whistling of the wing-banded wren betrays a nine-banded armadillo somewhere in the vicinity. In terms of plants, the melodious song of the cocoa thrush reveals the presence of mombin plums, and the loud, halting whistles of the yellow-green grosbeak signal that of the fruit from the Pseudolmedia laevigata tree. The trills and humming 8. We owe the concept of biophony (nonhuman biological sound production) to the remarkable work of Bernie Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012). of the golden-headed manakin are the heã for the Lonchocarpus utilis liana, which is used as an asphyxiant in poison ishing, while the heã for the fruit of the cabari tree is found in the melancholy notes of the common potoo,9 and the ripened fruit pods of the Brazil nut tree are heralded by the song of the little pearl kite. The etymology of the term heã probably comes from he, “head,” which refers to the tip or “endpoint” of something, and ã associated with sound and voice. The intransitive verb heãmuu means “to mark one’s presence by a sound.” When approaching a friendly collective house, for instance, the act of whistling to announce one’s arrival is called husi heãmuu. The term can thus be linked to the idea of a “sound marker.” With its complex network of associations between indexical animal voices and the presence of game or useful plants in the forest, the Yanomami heã constitute a permanent and lexible acoustic positioning system that, inculcated from a very early age, can always be relied on to guide hunters and gatherers through the “great animal orchestra” of the forest.10 As the Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa explains: The animal voices of the forest that we know, the heã calls that we talk about among us, are the words we have heard from our elders, and they left them to us, saying, “This song is the heã of this game animal or of those fruits!” And we’ve kept them inside of us from our childhood up until now.11 Furthermore, some of these calls are also considered to be acoustic clues for climatic and ecological events.12 Thus, the two low notes followed by the full-throated call of the screaming piha are considered to be the heã of thunderstorms, while the blue-crowned motmot’s gloomy, repetitive morning song presages the “time of the fat monkeys” (the peak of the rainy season, from June to August), and the silver-beaked tanager’s sharp bursts of chirping indicate the beginning of the “time of the peach palm fruits” (January to March). Finally, the vigorous 9. Its poisonous fruits, cut into strips, are made edible by a long process of soaking them in the river and extensive boiling. 10. A sound installation inspired by this theme (Heã, by Stephen Vitiello) was presented as part of the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2003. 11. This quote, as well as most of the information above, comes from a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen Vitiello in the collective house in Watoriki in January 2003. 12. Heã sound signs can also be associated with events created by humans (the approach of sorcerers, guests, warriors, white visitors) as well as with mythical or shamanic events and characters. Finally, the term heã applies to propitiatory chants connected with the ceremonial foods of the big reahu feasts. chirring of the large cicadas announces the arrival of Omoari a, the being of the dry season. This constant attentiveness to the voices of the forest is complemented by an equally zealous concern for communicating directly with the animals. Hunters are thus accustomed to imitating the calls speciic to many animals, their mates, and ofspring in hopes of luring them within range of their arrows. This huge repertoire of simulated animal voices generally involves various types of whistle calls (huxomuu) or onomatopoeiabased phonic imitations.13 The only wild game decoy I have seen the Yanomami employ is a T-shaped wooden whistle used for mimicking the call of the tapir. There is indeed quite a large number of forest animals that the Yanomami are able to “call” (nakai) and “make answer” (wã huamãi). During our conversations, it seemed to me that, depending on the difering talents of my interlocutors, these sonic decoys could be applied to most of the game commonly hunted by the Yanomami: from toucans, aracaris, macaws, trumpeters, guans, curassows, quails, big and small tinamous to tapirs, peccaries, deer, jaguars, agoutis, spider monkeys, red howler monkeys, black saki monkeys, and white-fronted capuchins. Moreover, this capacity for phonic imitation covers not only game animals, but very nearly all of the fauna in the forest area known to and traveled by hunters (most Yanomami names for birds, game or not, in fact come from onomatopoeia based on their songs).14 The aim of such call hunting methods is to make game “run up” (rërëmãi) in front of the hunter, while he conceals his human appearance under a sound mask in order to be perceived, at least in voice, as a fellow animal, a mate, or an ofspring. They are thus strategies designed to attract, entice, or provoke a sense of caring in the animal that will induce it to become docile and available, waroro, a word that is also used to describe the open, generous feelings associated with friendship, love relationships, or parenthood (the verb waroroai means “to let oneself slide”). Ultimately, however, the expression used to describe the result of this sound trick is the same as the expression that refers to the ploy that is sometimes reserved for disloyal allies, who are lured to an intercommunity reahu celebration by phony demonstrations of friendship and then shot with arrows (nomihirimãi). Let us hear Davi Kopenawa’s story about the decoy hunting of a tapir: When a good tapir hunter is on the trail of a tapir in the forest and wants to arrow it, he imitates its voice, and as he approaches it, he makes it answer his call. That is what he does when the tapir’s traces are still fresh and the animal is nearby, lying in the undergrowth. Then we act like a tapir by imitating its voice in order to lure it. We talk to it: “sharp, two-toned whistle.” And it answers back: “ẽẽẽẽiii” Then it comes out of the tangle of vegetation. We do not move and we call it again: “whistle.” It answers: “ẽẽẽẽiii!” and comes closer: “tëk tëk tëk!” (imitating the sound of its feet). Then we talk to it from a very close distance: “series of aspirated doubleclicks.” To deceive it we remain hidden, otherwise it will run of immediately. After that, we start all over again: “series of aspirated clicks, series of sharp whistles.” If it gets suspicious and turns around, we have another go: “two long whistles.” Then it comes back and runs toward us thinking it hears its little one calling.15 Although they may take the form of a dialogue, the communication that the sonic decoys attempt to establish is not of course a real interchange. The message, though it may briely create a sense of familiarity, is an interspeciic artiice that does not seek any other response from the animal than that it succumb to its fate, which, as game, is to satisfy the cannibal “hunger for meat” (naiki) intrinsic to humans: cannibal because, as a descendant of the animal ancestors from the primordial time, present-day game are considered by the Yanomami to be a human people endowed with a diferent appearance (body): In the primordial time, animals were humans, but they became game. Although they are still human, they now have the false appearance of game and are the inhabitants of the forest only because that is where they were transformed in the past. This is what they think of present-day humans: “We are the same people as them, but they have such a great desire for our lesh that they seem to us to be evil beings! Yet they are not. They’re our fellow beings!” That’s right. We are people who are of the same kind as the animals and yet we eat them!16 13. Simple whistles (made by blowing out or sucking in air) or whistling with the ingers, with hands cupped into a conch, by pinching the lower lip or cheek, or with the use of a folded leaf. 14. The Yanomami distinguish between animals that can be “made to come by imitating them” (haxamãi) from those for whom “we make do with simply imitating the voice” (wã uëmãi pio), for example in a hunting tale or a mythical story. 15. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003. 16. From conversations between Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Watoriki, 1997. 321 Davi Kopenawa ends his description of the tapir hunt with a series of onomatopoeia related to the killing of the animal: “Thaiii (the snap of the bowstring)! Kosho (the impact of the arrow)! Uwooo hoo hoo hoo (the tapir whimpering in pain)! Tëk tëk tëk (its feet running away)! Kurai (sound of the animal falling)!” The narrative art of the Yanomami makes pervasive use of onomatopoeia and ideophones, demonstrating once again the inluence of the acoustic environment of the forest in Amerindian forms of linguistic expression. But in addition to the usual panoply of phonic mimetisms, when storytellers want to emphasize the dramatic intensity of certain episodes in their narrative, as is the case here, they may amplify this tendency toward acoustic iconicity to the point of substituting the entire descriptive narration with sequences of coded onomatopoeia. In doing so, they are seeking to completely break away from the formal constraints of describing the events in order to create, via a succession of sound simulations obvious to the audience, a shared acoustic experience that comes as close as possible to the sensual world of the forest.17 Amoã hi ki–: Song Trees T he Yanomami language has a verb to describe the “choruses” of cicadas, amphibians, or red howler monkeys: herii. This word also refers to the collective singing of humans. When allied houses get together for the big reahu funeral feasts, Yanomami men and women alternate in singing songs (amoã pë18), night after night, in order to celebrate the abundance of ceremonial foods from their gardens (manioc bread, plantain soup, peach palm fruit soup), along with game hunted and smoked for the occasion. In the central plaza of the collective house, the women line up in one or more rows and sing as they move back and forth, stomping the ground with their feet.19 One behind the other, the men either walk or move around the circumference of the central plaza in a kind of running dance. These groups are led by a male or female singer, who is recognized for his or her voice and repertoire, and is thus given the role of 17. See Eduardo O. Kohn, “Runa Realism: Upper Amazonian Attitudes to Nature Knowing,” in Ethnos 70, no. 2 (2005). 18. From amo, “center,” “interior,” and , “sound” or “voice.” 19. The Yanomami metaphorically associate this “stomping” with the stamping of deer (haya mahasimuu). 322 TH E PO LY G L O T F O R E S T a soloist. The tune is irst sung out alone by this soloist, who is called a “song tree” (amoã hi). To heighten the resonance of the singer’s voice, the mouth is placed in the crook of the right arm, which is bent, with the hand placed on the shoulder. Immediately afterwards, the rest of the group takes up the song in unison —which, as the euphoria increases, is often put to the test by bursts of laughter or the mimicry of mischievous youths. The amoã pë consist of very short musical phrases, certain parts of which are rhythmically repeated. Exchanged by singers during the reahu, they circulate between allied groups over vast distances within the Yanomami territory. They are highly popular tunes whose content is generally made up of brief descriptions of movements and sounds observed in the forest (animals, fruits, breezes, streams), similar to free-form haiku, supported by a simple melodic line: Keakeamuu keakeamuu a-ëëë! (twice) Wixa xina a ka keakeamuu keakeamuu a-ëëë! [It goes up and down, up and down! The tail of the black saki monkey goes up and down!] Reiki reiki kë-ëëë! (twice) Mõra maki uxuhu a ka reiki reiki kë-ëëë! [They hang, they hang! The ripe fruits of the Dacryodes burseraceas tree hang, hang!]20 The origin of these songs is attributed to Yõrixiamari a, the mythical ancestor of the cocoa thrush. Commonly heard along the riverbanks, where the males lock together in the evening to sing in concert, the cocoa thrush’s melodious warble consists of a set of alternating musical phrases. According to the myth, Yõrixiamari a unexpectedly arrived one day at a reahu celebration given by female toads and was so horriied by their ugly croaking that he ended up teaching them his own way of singing. However, the amoã pë songs themselves, which are never attributed to human authors, are said to come from distant “song trees”(amoã hi ki) that were created by the demiurge Omama on the edges of the urihi a forest-land, with each tree corresponding to one of the regional Yanomami languages. Yanomami shamans see these vocalizing trees in the form of huge trunks adorned with dazzling white down and covered with vibrant mouths that let out an endless stream of harmonious songs. As Davi Kopenawa further explains, the amoã pë songs that are struck up during reahu festivities “are images of the amoã hi ki trees’ melodies. The guests who like them keep them in their chests 20. The two examples that follow come from the Rio Catrimani region and date back to the 1970s. A recent CD produced by the Yanomami association Hutukara contains twenty of these songs, which are transcribed and translated: Reahu heã. Cantos da festa yanomami. so they can sing them later, during the feasts they hold in their own homes. This is how they spread from house to house.”21 Learning the songs of the xapiri helper spirits is the alpha and omega of the initiation process for every Yanomami shaman: If we try hard to answer the spirits, the images of the yõrixiama a thrush and of the reã hi song tree quickly come down to help us. They lend us their throats and reinforce our tongues. This way, the words of the xapiri’s song rapidly increase within us just as in a tape recorder. We drink the yãkoana22 with our eyes ixed on their presentation dance and lose all fear of singing before the people of our house.23 The songs that the xapiri spirits sing via the intermediary of their shaman “fathers” have the same name, amoã pë, as those of the herii “choruses” and are believed to have originated from the same “song trees.” It was said in the past that the spirits had to go and cut the branches of the “song trees” in order to obtain their melodies,24 and because of this the harmonicas that the irst napë pë (foreigners, “whites”) to visit the region gave to the Yanomami were also called “song trees.” More recently, this expression (along with yõrixia kiki, “cocoa thrush objects”) was also applied to tape recorders. The description of how the xapiri get their songs follows the same semantic shift: The spirits of the yõrixiama a thrush and the ayokora a cacique—but also those of the sitipari si and taritari axi birds—are the irst to accumulate these songs in big sakosi baskets. They gather them one by one with invisible things similar to the white people’s tape recorders. Yet there are so many of them that they can never come to the end of them! Among these bird spirits, those of the yõrixiama a thrush are really the songs’ fathers-in-law, their true masters.25 The birds that are mentioned here are all, like the cocoa thrush, outstanding vocalists. However, this distinguishing quality is actually due less to their songs themselves than to these birds’ astonishing ability for mimicry. Among them, the 21. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 59. The “song trees” are sometimes also referred to as yõrixiama hi ki, “cocoa thrush trees” or by the shamanic name, reã hi ki. 22. Hallucinogenic powder. 23. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 90 (for a general description of the shamanic initiation process, see chap. 5). 24. See chap. 4 of Maria-Inês Smiljanic’s thesis, “O corpo cósmico: O xamanismo entre os Yanomae do Alto Toototobi” (Brasilia: University of Brasilia, 1999). 25. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 58. yellow-rumped cacique stands out in particular for its beauty and visibility, as well as for its extraordinary talent as a “polyglot.” It lives on the edge of the forest in large colonies and is able to imitate over forty diferent species of birds, as well as mammals, amphibians, insects, and even sounds that come from human dwellings (screaming, crying, barking), alternating between these imitations and its own calls and songs.26 The yellow-rumped cacique is thus an emblematic singer, a meta-singer able to reproduce most of the animal songs of the forest. It is probably for this reason that the xapiri spirit of this bird is endowed with a very special signiicance in Yanomami shamanism: it is the only spirit that allows shamans to regurgitate, in front of everyone, the sorcery plants or the evil objects that they extract from the bodies of the sick. The yellow-rumped cacique’s talent for sound mimicry would thus seem to give it this privileged shamanic role as an emblem of the ontological mimicry practiced by shamans in their sessions. As a matter of fact, the latter must identify with the “images” of the animal ancestors from the primordial time, whom they “call,” “bring down,” and “make dance” as helper spirits; and doing so they successively adopt their subjectivities and their vocal expressions.27 In general, there are two ways that this “becoming image” and this identiication with the xapiri spirits may occur during the shamanic sessions. The irst involves a presentation dance which is performed by the shamans and which mimics,28 in a generic way, the dance of the spirits that are being summoned. During this dance, the shamanic songs describe, from a distance, and with a great wealth of aesthetic detail, the appearance and movements of the xapiri, along with the diferent mythological situations and cosmological settings in which they are involved.29 The second way is often brief and sporadic, with the shamans’ bodies suddenly becoming caught up in a very close and literal 26. Thiago V. V. Costa, Christian B. Andretti, and Mario Cohn-Haft, “Repertório vocal e imitação de cantos em Cacicus cela na Amazônia central, Brasil,” in XV Congresso Brasileiro de Ornitologia (Porto Alegre: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2007). Lawrence’s thrush is probably the most talented “polyglot” bird in the Amazon. However, its elusiveness (it sings up in the canopy, is visually unremarkable, lives in closed primary forests and only in the westernmost part of the Yanomami territory) is what probably led it to be eclipsed by the yellow-rumped cacique in the shamanic world of the Yanomami Indians (Mario Cohn-Halt, personal communication). 27. Shamans are called “spirit people” (xapiri thë pë) and performing shamanic activities is “to act as a spirit” (xapirimuu). 28. This presentation dance is the dance that the guests reproduce at reahu celebrations between collective houses. 29. Several examples of these narrative songs translated by young Yanomami scholars can be found on the CD by the Hutukara Association mentioned in note 20. identiication with the speciic animal spirits that they are successively calling down. Their gestures and vocals—which become onomatopoetic sequences of animal sounds—then refer explicitly to the gestures and vocals of the particular game ancestors being presentiied. It is this mimetic practice of “becoming a xapiri imagebeing” (xapiripruu)—whose purpose is to restore the dual humanand-animal state of the primordial ancestors, in a reversal of the mythological tribulations of speciation—that is the primary aim of the young shaman’s apprenticeship. In this experience of ontological regression, which is the main challenge of the initiation process, sound is a crucial element, as Davi Kopenawa explains to us here: When we inhale the yãkoana powder, we no longer see humans very well. They take on an alarming appearance, they stink of smoke and the noise they make becomes frightening. When the power of the yãkoana starts to grow inside of us, we become very agitated and it becomes impossible for us to remain lying in our hammock. Only the forest seems pleasant to us and we only feel good when we are listening to it. This is because the xapiri only want to be heard when the humans are silent. They hate the racket we make and take of as soon as they hear it. Once we have died as a result of the yãkoana, we see the trees become human beings, with eyes and a mouth. We also hear the voices of the forest animals speaking just like I am doing now. We understand them very clearly. People who have not taken the yãkoana cannot see them. They only hear their voices through our songs, the songs in which the spirits name themselves, and then they think that these words are truly beautiful. In these songs, the xapiri describe the unknown places from which they come; they describe places inhabited by other human beings, faraway hills and forests they have visited. When we die as a result of the yãkoana, our heads and mouths shrink. The xapiri reveal themselves to us and we hear nothing but them. We see them as an illuminated cloud of downy feathers or bees. They constantly appear and disappear. When they dance together, their songs are truly beautiful. First we hear their voices coming to us like the humming of lying beetles. Then we gradually start to make out their mouths, their eyes and their adornments. And that’s when we can really respond to them by imitating them.30 – pëã: Yaro pëã hwaiwii The Origin of Animal Languages M ost of the “stories from the primordial time” (hapao tëhëmë thë ã) that the old Yanomami tell are about the inal upheavals of a time in which humans and animals were still one and the same. As a result of a long series of misunderstandings and transgressions recounted by these stories, the primordial ancestors, the Yarori pë,31 lost their original “humanimal” state. Although these happenings are often told with much exuberant humor, this loss is nonetheless considered to be an unfortunate founding event. The period that these stories describe is thus that of a regrettable ontological separation between humans (predators) and animals (edible food).32 It is literally “the ancestors’ becoming-bad time” (në pata pë xi ka wãrirãeni tëhë) or “the ancestors’ becoming-game time” (në pata pë ka yaroprariyoni tëhë). In the process of undergoing these successive transformations, the ancestors lost their human language and bodies, and took on the many diferent animal “skins” (pei siki) and “voices” (pei wã)33 that were presaged by the virtuality of their original zoonyms. In addition, their inner images (utupa pë34) also spawned as many classes of shamanic spirits as the ancestral names contained in this zoonymy:35 “The Yarori pë ancestors from the 30. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003. 31. “Humans with animal names,” the Yarori pë are, literally, the “game people from the origins.” 32. The word translated as “animals” in this text actually means “game” (yaro pë) in the Yanomami language, as opposed to “domestic animals” (hiima pë), which are inedible. The primordial “humanimals” were cannibals, humans then became hunters. Since the game animals have kept their original human interiority, the savage cannibalism of the primordial time has been replaced by this derivative, and thus mitigated, form of cannibalism, which is hunting. 33.The word wã (or ã) means “noise,” “song,” “voice,” and “speech.” The verb wã hai can thus be translated generically as “to emit a sound” or more speciically “to talk.” 34. The concept of utupë a (pl. utupa pë) refers, among other things, to the bodily image of every human or nonhuman as a vital identity principle, as well as to the original ontological form of every existing being from the “primordial time.” Thus, as a component of the person, it is also conceived as a sort of inner remnant of this primordial ontological form. B Y B RU CE A LB E RT 323 primordial time changed into xapiri spirits and animals. Their images became xapiri and their skins have become game.”36 In a reversal of our naturalistic evolutionism, what we have here is thus animals descending from humans.37 Animality and its divisions emerge from an original humanity that combined the attributes of both of these orders, and which still constitutes their common core. From this point of view, there is no past “animal nature” of which the humans would represent the apex, or external “animal kingdom” of which they would be destined to become the “masters and owners.” Rather, they are, much more humbly, just one of the many existing peoples that inhabit the vast world of the urihi a forest-land and that, all together, make up its interlocutory and cosmopolitical environment. The Yanomami thus consider the diferent animal species and the individuals within them to be peoples and persons endowed with as much subjectivity and sociality (primary qualities) as the human race (in its diferent variants). The only things that distinguish the former from the latter are their difering corporeal forms and their vocalities (secondary qualities). From this perspective, the colors and patterns in the feathers and fur of the animals are considered to be painted body decorations, their cries and calls to be natural languages, with all of these distinctive characteristics being the result of the metamorphoses undergone by the irst “humanimal” ancestors. There is a myth about the primordial time that tells the story of how the animals got their colors and their languages.38 Its anti-hero is the lazy, foul-smelling Opossum (Narori a) who, after being pitifully rejected as a suitor, invents black magic in order to get revenge on his more fortunate rival, the master of honey.39 After slaying his adversary, Opossum takes refuge in 35. The xapiri pë have retained the human appearance of the animal ancestors from which they originate, but in a minuscule form. In addition, each spirit name constitutes a class of entities (species) which covers an ininite number of identical image-beings (individuals). 36. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Watoriki, 1997. 37. On this subject, see Claude Lévi-Strauss quoting Tastevin on the Kaxinawa in the introduction to The Jealous Potter (Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 7. 38. Several Yanomami versions of this myth can be found in Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau, Folk Literature of the Yanomami Indians (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1990), pp. 229–68. This particular story was recorded in 2003 with Davi Kopenawa’s father-in-law. It broaches a classic theme in Amerindian mythology: see Claude Lévi-Strauss, “L’Origine de la couleur des oiseaux,” in Comme un oiseau (Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain/ Gallimard, 1996). The originality of this version, however, is that it deals on the same level with the usually less prominent theme of the animals choosing their languages. 324 TH E PO LY G L O T F O R E S T the hollow of a tree, and the other ancestor animals kill him by crushing him with a huge rock. They then smear their bodies with his blood, his brains, and his bile in order to acquire the distinctive designs and colors that are found in their feathers and coats (this is also the origin of the present-day practice of human body painting): Then, after they had inished, they wanted to start talking in their own language. At that time the forest was still new and raw, and it smelled very good. The game people gathered together in large groups and some of them, who were becoming macaws, began to say: “Those of us who are here will try out our words irst! But how are we going to talk? No! We mustn’t ask ourselves that! We’re going to talk in macaw! We will make ourselves understood like this: ããã ã ã ã ã!” The others answered them: “Yes! Go ahead, you try irst!” “Are our words beautiful like that?” “Yes, they’re beautiful!” “Very good! Then let’s all talk like this! ããã ã ã ã ã!” They immediately shouted out joyfully: “Hi! wẽ wẽ wẽ wẽooo!” and lew of in noisy locks to the tops of the trees, which is where they have been feeding ever since.40 This same discussion was then repeated by many other groups/species of ancestors from the primordial time who, having each become game, then took of to settle in the diferent forest habitats where they live today. The Yanomami thus consider animal vocalizations to be linguistic forms equivalent to those of “human people” (yanomae thë pë), and the terms used to describe their forms of communication are often the same as those used to describe human communication (conversations, ceremonial dialogues, songs, lamentations). Moreover, describing the biophony of the forest by putting animal conversations “into sound” in the form of a mixture of onomatopoetic sequences and human words is also a common narrative device in Yanomami stories about the forest, such as those that describe, for example, the rich diversity of animal calls and songs that gradually come to life at dawn. 39. Opossum is a famous character in Claude Levi-Strauss’s Mythologiques and it would be interesting to analyze his rather surprising presence in this type of myth. The opossum is a small marsupial, solitary, nocturnal, and omnivorous, known for its unpleasant smell and poor hunting skills. It has a long, hairless tail, its fur is a mix of dull yellow and black, all of which gives it, according to Bufon, “an ugly look.” Opossum’s rival is often associated with the lavorful and much-loved honey of the yamanama naki (Scaptotrigona sp.) bees. 40. Story told by Lourival Yanomami to Bruce Albert, recorded by Stephen Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003. In contrast to our anthropocentrism, the Yanomami consider animals to be former human beings who have taken on the appearance (the “skin”) of game in the eyes of presentday humans (who were later created by the demiurge Omama) while, at the same time, maintaining their original subjectivity. This premise leads them to consider that, in spite of this corporeal diference, animals still see humans as their own fellow creatures (except that they are “house dwellers”). So whenever the subject came up among us, the Yanomami would insist on telling me that, in this regard, humans are without any doubt also animals, or rather, that they are “another of the same” animals (ai yama ki hwëtu).41 And they sometimes complete this statement by explaining to me that the xapiri, who come from the images of the irst ancestors, consider humans to be ghosts, and that, in addition, these xapiri spirits are “fathers” (yaro pë hwiie pë) to the animals, who are merely their imperfect “representatives” in the forest. It is therefore not very surprising that, in the end, an ontological cosmopolitanism with such closely intertwined human and nonhuman points of views should be associated with an equally complex “humanimal” polyglotism. For the Yanomami, it is this polyglotism that gives such a resonant texture to the “silent calm” of the forest (tisi ã wai) and opposes it to the “disorderly racket” (tisi ã thethe) of the city. This confrontation between, on the one hand, the silence that gives order to the polyphonic voices of the forest and, on the other, our industrial cacophony, which seals up all thoughts by illing them with darkness (in the words of Davi Kopenawa), is in fact the focal point of the work of Bernie Krause—one of the very few people who has been able to make indigenous peoples his masters in the art of listening. Paris, December 201542 Translated by Jennifer Kaku 41. A Yanomami variant of “standard animism,” to use Philippe Descola’s expression from Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 140. 42. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Stephen Vitiello (artist) for kindly allowing him to consult his recordings with the Yanomami from 2003. He also wishes to thank Helder Perri Ferreira (linguist) and Mario Cohn-Haft (ornithologist) for their patience and their detailed answers to questions during the writing of this text, as well as Uirá Garcia (anthropologist) for providing information from his work in progress on the ethno-acoustics of Awá Guajá hunting (see Uirá Garcia, “Karawara. A caça e o mundo dos Awá-Guajá,” PhD thesis, São Paulo: University of São Paulo, 2010, chap. 7). B Y B R U CE A LB E RT