Connor Phelps
Dr. Lee
IHSS
15 September, 2016
On tuesday I went to an exhibit called out of the amazon. It was about amazon tribes. We were told to pick an object to study. I chose the Shuar shrunken head.
The Shuar are a tribe in the Amazon. They are a very cautious trybe. They do not live in a village. They live far apart from each other, in single-family dwellings that are placed on top of a hill for tactical advantage in case of a rade. The homes have to walls surrounding the house to stop projectiles. They build escape tunnel leading from inside the house. Both genders are separated and have different entrances and sleep in different rooms.
The Shrunken Heads    
The Shuar are most famous for their shrunken heads. The reason that the Shuar shrunken heads is that they believe that if they don't the spirit of the person they killed will come back and have revenge. To prevent this the Shuar sew the mouth and the eyes shut to trap the souls in the head. They also believe that when they wear the shrunken heads it gives them more power, but they are only can have two each.  How they are made is first the heads is removed. Then they remove a piece of skin from the chest and a piece of skin from the back. Then they cut up from the nape of the up to the back of the head and the skull is removed. Next the eyes and lips are sewn shut. Then the skin is put in a cooking gar and boiled for 90 minutes. After the skin is boiled the slit at the back of the head is sewed up. Next  a hot stone is put in the head through the neck. This shrunks it even more. After that hot sand is placed in the head and shrinks the head even more. After that any excess hair is burnt off.
Relating to the cannibals tour
One thing that was talked about in the cannibal tours was the how the people who wrote the information about the people they were studying. It was that the people the exhibit is about do not have a say what goes to the exhibit. When I was walking through the exhibit I was looking to see if they were talking about the natives or the natives were talking about themselves. In my opinion they did have a say in what goes in on the exhibit. Especially in one section where a video was playing. It was about some of the native rituals. The thing that I liked was that they interviewed some natives in the video. Also all of the items they had in the exhibit had no more cultural value because the tribes believed once an object was used it had no more powers so it is not hard to get the items.