Kayley Nguyen
Dr. Lee
IHSS
September 16, 2016
    Life on the River
On Tuesday our IHSS group went to the HMNS exhibit. We separated into two different groups and we talked about “Life of the River”, “Out of the Amazon”. I enjoyed this exhibit very much and found it extremely interesting. The Amazon is located in South America and spans across Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, and many others.
The Amazon can fit around Texas four times and also has the biggest tropical rainforest in the world. The Amazon river is the second longest river in the world. The population of tribes have been slowly decreasing due to the outside world and European encounters. The tribes move above land to avoid flooding during wet seasons and less during dry seasons.Not all of the Amazon rainforest although you might think it is it's really becoming a big deal with deforestation. Cultural ion is also a big deal that is causing disappearance to artifacts in which tribes are now living in poverty. When Europeans made contact it was usually violent and disruptive, by bringing diseases and poaching their animals.
The shura was really interesting to me specifically because they were very paranoid about everything and were very clear about what and what not they cannot do in the tribe. The sugar tribe were famous for shrinking heads to make sure their enemies can no longer harm them. And by taking their heads it showed that they accomplished something and it also was like a trophy to them. They did this by separating the skin from the bone. They bury the bones so they can always have a part of their enemy with them to show pride. Just like preserving leather the head are preserved and then they sewed up their mouth and their eyes closed with a small sharp palm peg. The skin is put into a boiling pot of water for a hour to two hours. The water that is used to boil the head contains herbs like tannin and other things that would help preserve the skin better. The timing of boiling the heads were very important because if you boiled it for a short amount of time the head would not shrink properly. If you put it in too long the hair on top would fall off. Once the head is done shrinking it should be a rubbery texture. If any flesh remained on the head it would be scraped away and sewn back together again. The heads continue to shrink during the drying process, and is turned upside down. The tribe places hot rocks in the head to maintain the facial features. It was really important for the warrior who killed them made sure the the skulls resembled the enemy or victim. After days of the heads remolding the pegs are removed and are replaced with cotton cords. They are later on attached to a cord through the scalp so it could be worn on the neck of a warrior. Once this last step is finish the tribe celebrates the revenge of the enemy.