Tonight, my daughter asked me for the “Yanomami Homecoming” video I purchased long ago. Then we all (she and her husband, my wife and I) decided to watch the extremely well done documentary. Many years ago I exchanged meaningful correspondence with your father after reading his book. Now, time lapsed and you are a full grown man with a gifted mind. I appreciate very much your writing. Please, say Hello to Ken and your brothers. My best wishes to your Mom and her new family. You can see some of my efforts on Facebook where I have some of my projects including a page on .

I would like to keep in touch with all of you. Right now I am in the USA but my home is in Venezuela.

Love to you all,

Hector Perez Marchelli

I’m not here to directly engage in or rebut any individual’s blogs or opinions. I appreciate all of your concerns and comments. I realize how hard it is to make an unbiased opinion using cultural relativism. So commonly people discredit the Yanomami culture as if it is negligible, null, and void. I also understand that no one will ever know all the details of my family’s history. One can only make inferences based on limited facts, rumors and personal life experiences. But I appreciate them anyway since it shows that this subject is important enough for someone to write about and openly discuss. I would like to send out some updates and make a few points:

I’m currently in the Amazon and have reunited with my mother after 19 years of being apart from her. She’s healthy and as beautiful as ever. Yarima and the rest of my Yanomami family are building a new home closer to the river so that they can obtain, more easily, modern goods (machetes, fish hooks, fish line, axes, and medicine). Things they need for survival. Though there is a cultural barrier between my mother and me, it did not stop us from expressing our love for each other nor did it dissolve the bond a mother has for her child. It was a beautiful moment for the both of us.

I’m 24 years old and just graduated with my Bachelor’s in Biology. I battled life growing up without my mother, but I understand now why she had to go back home. When she was here in modern civilization she did her very best to adapt and learn English. My father did all that he could to ameliorate the effects of culture shock. My mother and father loved each other immensely and the decision for them to start a life in America was a decision made as a couple; a couple that battled all odds with the support of each other. I have many memories of my mother (going to malls, riding the rollercoasters, attending festivals and fairs, dancing to music, wrestling playfully with my father, on and on) and we were a happy family. Unfortunately, the unrelenting, aching despondence she felt being apart from her Amazonian life and family forced her to go back home. This I completely understand.

My father loved and cared so much for the Yanomami. He spent years and years with them. And after I’ve spent some time with them I know why he did. After all these years, the Yanomami came up to me and told me, straight from their mouths, their absolute gratitude for all that my father has done for them. They consider him a brother, a father, a son, and a friend.

While I’m sure such discussions as this will continue on forever, I look forward to focusing on the contemporary issues surrounding the Yanomami. There are many good people here fighting with blood, sweat, and tears for the Yanomami, my family. They want to better their lives and it is their human right to do so.
I want to thank you all for your input, comments, remarks, criticisms, diatribes and praises. I welcome them all. I am proud to be a Yanomami-American and connecting with my indigenous roots has been a life changing event.

I want the world to know, understand, and embrace the humanness of the Yanomami irrespective of the radically different lifestyle. Because when we do, the better and more accurate we can relate to them as fellow human beings. And that is my goal.

Best wishes to you all,

David Good

I have often wondered about Yarima, David and Vanessa and what became of them. I hope Yarima is at peace and that her children will come to understand with compassion why Yarima chose to stay in Venezula, she loved them so much.

Obviously, Yarima was ill-prepared for such a cultural shock, being ‘yanked’ out of her homeland to America. And with all due respect to Asst. Prof. Good, I don’t think it was right for him to marry a child bride, uproot her out of her homeland with little preparation for her life in the United States. Being Asian myself, and being born in Borneo (where we have a similar tribe called the Penan), I do find it rather offensive that he never taught her English before bringing her to the United States and leaving her to live in a ‘cubicle (compared to the jungle)’ all by herself.

I would not entirely discount Mr. Dusenberry’s claim that it was for monetary gain, although that might have been said out of jealousy. However, being a woman, I DO agree with what Mr. Dusenberry said that there should not be any sexual involvement between anthropologists and (third-world) children. Third world being in parenthesis because he would never be able to marry a 9-year-old bride in any developed country, without being legally persecuted. Although, coming from a ‘third-world’ country myself, I do agree that sometimes child marriage is the only way out of poverty, I find it extremely offensive that someone from a country that is supposedly more developed in almost every sense would use anthropology as an excuse to indulge in a child marriage.

In most countries, including, currently, some ‘third-world’ countries, it is legally an offense to marry child brides. Rightly so. There are many repercussions to child marriages. It may be the lesser of two evils (hoping, at least that the child bride would not starve to death, etc.) but being the lesser of two evils does not make it right. Many child brides die in childbirth because their bodies are biologically ill-prepared for motherhood.

I am glad that this article is more balanced than some I’ve read, but in my personal opinion, Kenneth Good should NOT have agreed/ asked to marry Yarima (depending on the version of events and/ or reports/ interviews), and taken her out of the jungle completely unprepared. I think both actions were extremely irresponsible and disappointing, coming from a world-class anthropologist. He should have known better. I hope no other anthropologists would ever do the same.

Just as the study of psychology has progressed in terms of ethics regarding test subjects and experiments, I hope the study of anthropology would as well.

You, on the other hand, have a really bad rap among the students. Read your ratings here: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=326718&page=1

You need to stop being envious of Dr. Good’s life and try to make yours better. Start by making your classes interesting and actually teach something.