Study abroad program takes students deep in the Amazon

This article contains material that has been corrected.

You might call it an academic version of TV's Survivor, except without the snarky alliances and million-dollar jackpot.

But for 14 students this summer, living among an indigenous Amazonian tribe in the rainforests of South America definitely had its payoffs. Whether it was fishing with bows and arrows, body painting or competing in an Olympics-esque sports ceremony, the trip offered a rare look into tribal society that few outsiders get to see, said Barbara Zimmerman, a project director for Conservation International, the organization that sponsored the trip.

"This course is very special," Zimmerman said. "It's a very limited number of people who get to go there" and live with the ancient Kayapó tribe because the Kayapó reserve is a restricted area.

Conservation International has a stated mission to preserve biodiversity through the empowerment of local communities living on endangered land and who have a rainforest-dependent way of life.

Anthropology professor Janet Chernela, the students' faculty supervisor, said the organization's approach is a "win-win situation" for the Kayapó tribe.

"Conservation organizations realize that this is a very efficient way for them to work," Chernela said. "Instead of trying to convince people [of] the value of the rainforest… they are more and more working through indigenous peoples who already value the rainforest and monitor their own territories."

Students work and live right alongside the tribe and stay in tents. During the day, the students work on projects with the Kayapó. They even found something in common while they were there: A love of turtles. Although there are no diamondback terrapins in the Amazon, the Kayapó are intensely interested in land tortoises.

"One of the most interesting similarities between the Kayapo and Maryland students is that of physically touching the turtles," said Charlotte Sanford-Crane, a junior animal and avian sciences and anthropology major. "The Kayapó believe that touching the Yellow-Footed Tortoise with your elbow leads to joint trouble. We at Maryland, however, believe that touching Testudo - especially upon the nose - leads to good luck."

Chernela added that the turtle project helped students learn how Kayapo understand nature.

"We had one Kayapó draw beautiful paintings of land tortoises for us," Chernela said. "We were able to exchange a lot of information that conveyed the different ways in which they see their world which includes their understanding of tortoises."

The Kayapó first gained attention in 1989 when the group successfully garnered international support against a hydraulic dam development by using forceful and persuasive demonstrations. They have also successfully defended their territory, spanning more than 27 million acres.

Conservation International helps the Kayapó to patrol its more than 1,200 miles of borders with the donation of boats, gas and radios. It also promotes sustainable development and an alternative source of income, such as assisting the Kayapó farms to sell Brazil nuts, so farmers will be economically mobile enough to resist ranchers and loggers, Zimmerman said.

"There will be more in the future as the environmental community understands that these partnerships will be critical to saving the Amazon," she said.

Despite the Kayapós' success so far, teaching assistant André Aquino said it was clear to students that the Kayapó are still threatened because of increasing demand outside the rainforest.

"As a consumer, you have to judge the inherently harmless consequences of consumption," Aquino said. "This is going to be a really important step in answering the problem, because as long as there is a big demand for meat, for soy beans, for wood, there's going to be deforestation."

Still, Chernela said students are often awestruck when they see the vastness of the Kayapó territory and are told they've been able to protect it so long.

"As you fly … you look down and you can actually see the line of the border of the reserve and inside you see intact rainforest below you," Chernela said. "It's very impressive. The Kayapó have been able to protect their borders that no other indigenous people have been able to."

Chernela, who first worked with the Kayapó in the late 1980s, led the effort in the program's creation. Beginning with the first trip in summer 2004, it took three years to put this year's trip together, although the roots of the program stem from over two decades of friendship between Chernela, the Kayapó and Zimmerman.

Chernela and Zimmerman were co-faculty members in Brazil in the 1980s and Chernela became acquainted with Payakan, a Kayapo leader she worked with around the same time.

In addition to connections, federal government authorization is needed to enter the Kayapó reserve, which can often be a long and difficult process.

"It's very hard to get authorization into the Kayapo territory in time enough to be able to offer a course," says Chernela. "The study abroad schedule and the authorization schedule don't necessarily work together well."

Chernela hopes to offer to the course again as soon as possible.

At a total of 16, twice as many students went on the 2007 trip than in the 2004 trip. The number of professors also increased, and Chernela said the Kayapós' reception was more enthusiastic this time around.

"It's like revisiting old friends who now recognize you and … trust you more because you have returned," says Chernela. "We were very welcome."

When the trip ended, students said left with much more than just in-depth knowledge of our mascot and of the Kayapó.

"I think in any experience in which you find yourself thousands of miles … outside of anything you have ever known … you come in contact, first-hand, with the power of perspective," said Rebecca Kisch, a senior philosophy and English major. "You get to see at least one more way in which the world you've constructed is malleable and ephemeral."

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Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misspelled Janet Chernela's name.