Living with the Wayapi, and their charismatic leader Waiwai, is a serious adventure. It is demanding, and can turn dangerous in a moment. The environment is a difficult one, but beautiful and baffling in its richness. And the job of learning about the people is like a journey without end. Alan Campbell tells the story of these people, and of the time he spent with them, in an imaginative, beautifully written account which looks back from a century into the future to relate a way of life that is being destroyed. In doing so, he addresses important and complex issues in current anthroplogical theory in a way which makes them accessible without sacrificing any of their subtlety.

... classic ethnography about a group of people called the Wayapi...Campbell appropriates verses from Thoreau, Blake, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare...one of the last anthropologists to experience such an untouched culture in the face of the increasing transnationalism and western materialism. Salient issues of forced development, modernization, and assimilation are presented in a well organized and lucid monograph. Its descriptive content (even with its romance ) is refreshing in a generation where many contemporary studies have become preoccupied with global transculturalisms..
- Chicago Anthropology Exchange

Alan Tormaid Campbell teaches Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University. He is the author of To Square with Genesis: Causal Statements and Shamanic Ideas in Wayapí (Polygon, 1990) and has been involved with the Wayapí Indians since 1974.