My Yąnomamö Mama

By Steve Sailer

09/03/2013

Yarima, formerly Mrs. Kenneth Good,
and her son David Good.

The Yanomami of the South American rain forest are one of the most famous tribes in the history of anthropology. One of the numerous controversies involving anthropologists and the Yanomami is the story of Dr. Kenneth Good, who over the course of 12 years studying the forest dwellers, married one, Yarima, and took her back to New Jersey. They had three children, but Yarima found suburban living lonely:

"I live in a place where I do not gather wood and no-one hunts. The women do not call me to go kill fish. Sometimes I get tired of being in the house, so I get angry with my husband. I go to the stores and look at clothing."

Wearing clothes for decoration might seem like a concept that would be foreign to her, but shopping for clothes had been the outside world idea that she had grasped fastest of all.

"It isn’t like in the jungle. People are separate and alone. It must be that they do not like their mothers."

So, she went back to the Amazon, leaving Professor Good to raise their three children in New Jersey.

The couple’s oldest son, David, now 25, recently visited his mother for the first time in a couple of decades or so:
Return to the rainforest: A son’s search for his Amazonian mother

There’s nothing too exciting in the story, but it’s interesting to follow up on these individuals who got dragged into the history of anthropology. And it’s nice to know that the son found his mother healthy and happy.
Crouching David is 5'5." The village elder kept offering him the
two girls on the right as his brides.
One interesting fact is that Yanomami men don’t go bald — everybody, male and female, has these haircuts like Moe of the Three Stooges, with black hair that looks permanently nailed in. So, when the son set up a Skype connection with his father back in America, the tribespeople were freaked out by their old buddy’s bald head.

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