Panare, The: Scenes from the Frontier

Synopsis: In Venezuela today 2000 Panare Indians continue to live in much the same way as they have done for centuries. They depend for their survival on the game and fish they hunt daily, and they live a communal life ‘from each according to his hunting ability, to each according to his hunger’. No individual has any authority over anybody else. Although the Panare dress in traditional loin cloths and hunt with blow pipes and poison darts, they are starting to use shot guns to hunt alligators and wild pigs. Their steel axes come from the the USA, their machetes from England, their radios and cassette recorders from Japan and their beads from Czechoslovakia and Italy. The question now is whether the Panare’s relative isolation and independence can last. Unless they are protected by legal title to their traditional hunting grounds they may soon become just one more group of the country’s original inhabitants to fall victim to the development of highways and bauxite mines.
Series: Worlds Apart, Series
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Film; Film. 16mm. sd. col. 55 min.
Technical information: Black-and-white / Sound
Year of production: 1982
Availability: Hire
Uses: Undergraduates. *RAI
Subjects: Anthropology
Keywords: Indians of North & South America; Panare; Venezuela

Name: Royal Anthropological Institute Film & Video Library, c/o Concord Media
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