thiago, thanks for your detailed response. here is an interesting bit from bodley which addresses some of the points you raise:
reproduced from victims of progress pp16-18:
--------------------------------
It now seems appropriate to ask the obvious question: How do autonomous tribal people themselves feel about becoming participants in the progess of industrial civilization? Because of the power at their disposal, industrial peoples have become so aggressively ethnocentric that they have difficulty even imagining that another life style - particularly one based on fundamentally different premises - could possibly have value and personal satisfaction for the people following it. Happily arrogant in their own supposed cutural superiority, many industrial peoples assume that those in other cultures perhaps realize their obsolescence and inferiority and eagerly desire progress toward the better life. This belief persists in the face of abundant evidence that independent tribal peoples are not anxious to scrap their cultures and would rather pursue their own form of the good life undisturbed. Peoples who have already chosen their major cultural patterns and who have spent generations tailoring them to local conditions are probably not even concerned that another culture might be superior to theirs. Indeed, it can perhaps be assumed that people in any autonomous, self-reliant culture would prefer to be left alone. Left to their own devices, tribal peoples are unlikely to volunteer for civilization or acculturation. Instead:
Acculturation has always been a matter of conquest...
refugees from the foundering groups may adopt the standards
of the more potent society in order to survive as individuals.
But these are conscripts of civilization, not volunteers.
Diamond, 1960
<...>
Those who glibly demand choice for tribal peoples do not seem to realize the problems of directly instituting such a choice, and at the same time they refuse to acknowledge the numerous indicators that tribal peoples have already chosen their own cultures instead of the progress of civilization. In fact, the question of choice itself is probably ethnocentric and irrelevant to the peoples concerned. Do we choose civilization? is not a question that tribal peoples would ask, because they in effect have already answered it. They might consider the concept of choosing a way of life to be as irrelevant in their own cultural context as asking a person if he or she would choose to be a tree.
It is also difficult to ask whether tribal peoples desire civilization or economic development because affirmative responses will undoubtedly be from individuals already alienated from their own cultures by culture modification programs, and their views may not be representative of their still autonomous tribal kin.
Other problems are inherent in the concept of free and informed choice. Even when free to choose, tribal peoples would not generally be in a position to know what they were choosing and would certainly not be given a clear picture of possible outcomes of their choice, because the present members of industrial cultures do not know what their own futures will be. Even if tribal peoples could be given a full and unbiased picture of what they were choosing, obtaining that information could destroy their freedom to choose, because participation in such an "educational" program might destroy their self-reliance and effectively deny them their right to choose their own tribal culture.
<...>
At this point we will again ask the question posed earlier regarding whether tribal people freely choose progress. This question has actually been answered many times by independent tribal peoples who, in confrontations with industrial civilization, have (1) ignored it, (2) avoided it, or (3) responded with defiant arrogance. Any one of these responses could be interpreted as a rejection of further involvement with progress.
Many of the Australian Aborigines reportedly chose the first response in their early contacts with members of Western civilization. <...> Among contemporary tribal peoples who still retain their cultural autonomy, rejection of outside interference is a general phenomenon that cannot be ignored. The Pygmies of the Congo represent a classic case of determined resistance to the incursions of civilization.
<...>
Direct avoidance of progress represents what is a widespread, long-established pattern of cultural survival whose implications should not be ignored by those who promote culture change.
Throughout South America and many other parts of the world, many nonhostile tribal peoples have made their attitudes toward progress clear by choosing to follow the Pygmies' game of hide-and-seek and actively avoiding all contact with outsiders. In the Philippines, a term meaning "those who run away" has been applied to tribal peoples who have chosen to flee in order to preserve their cultures from government influence (Keesing & Keesing, 1934).
Many little-known tribal peoples scattered in isolated areas around the world have, in fact, managed to retain their cultural integrity and autonomy until recently by quietly retreating farther and farther into more isolated refuge areas. As the exploitative frontier has gradually engulfed these stubborn tribes, the outside world periodically has been surprised by the discovery of small pockets of unknown "Stone Age" peoples who have clung tenaciously to their cultures up to the last possible moment. <...> In South America throughout this century, many different groups, including the Xeta, the Kreen-a-kore in Brazil, various Panoan speakers such as the Amarakaeri and Amahuaka in headwater areas of the Peruvian Amazon, and the Akuriyo of Surinam, have been found using stone tools and deliberately avoiding contact with outsiders.
<...>
After [a] brief encounter the Akuriyo remained out of sight for nearly thirty years until American missionaries began to find traces of their camps. The missionaries were determined to make contact with them in order to win them for Christianity, but it was three years before they finally succeeded with the assistance of ten missionized Indians, shortwave radios, and airplanes. <...> The Indians allowed the missionary party to remain with them only one night. <...> The mission Indians sang hymns and tried to tell them about God, but the Akuriyo were unimpressed. According to the missionaries:
The old chief commented that God must really be good. He said
he knew nothing about Him, and that he had to leave now to get
arrow cane.
Schoen, 1969
Obviously these people were expressing their desire to be left alone in the most dignified and elegant terms.
<...>
Whereas the Akuriyo are an example of a group avoiding contact in a remote area, many other examples can be cited of small tribes that have survived successfully on the fringes of civilized areas. One of the most outstanding of such cases was the discovery in 1970 that unknown bands of Indians were secretly living within the boundaries of the Iguazu Falls national park in Argentina (Bartolome, 1972).
Some observers argue that these cases do not represent real rejections of civilization and progress because these people were given no choice by their hostile neigbours, who refused to share the benefits of civilization, and so they were forced to pretend that they didn't desire these benefits. Critics point out that such people often eagerly steal or trade for steel tools. This argument misses the real point and represents a misunderstanding of the nature of culture change. Stability and ethnocentrism are fundamental characteristics of all cutures that have established a satisfactory relationship with their environment. Some degree of change, such as adopting steel tools, may well occur to enhance an ongoing adaptation and to prevent greater change from occuring.
--------------------------------
--ravi