Today’s podcast is based upon J. P. Linstroth’s encyclopedia entry, “Field Research” (2008, 2012). It should be known today that all field researchers must be aware of their role in the field and of their effects on their subjects in both informal and formal contexts. Therefore, reflexivity is an important aspect of the researcher's work. Field research is guided by past experience and informed by the mistakes of previous research when ethical guidelines were not as strict-for example, in U.S. the Tuskegee Syphilis Project, in which unnecessary harm was caused when the treatment for syphilis was withheld from study participants even when penicillin became available; the U.S. Department of Defense's Project Camelot, a U.S Army program that was designed to evaluate the causes of warfare, but in actuality was used to undermine revolutionary movements in places like Latin America; psychologist Stanley Milgram's studies of behavioral aspects of authority and obedience, studies that were highly controversial because of the ethical concerns raised by his use of deception in experiments using electric shock; or even the most recent controversy involving anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James Neel about the Yanomami peoples of Brazil and Venezuela. Ethics review boards of universities, especially those in the United States, were created to guarantee against unwarranted deception and to ensure informed consent as well as the privacy and confidentiality of the study participants (as appropriate). Such ethical requirements for the study of human subjects involve the respect for all persons and their well-being and provide a framework for moral standards to follow during field research.

The purpose of this essay, “The Mayan People and Sandy (Shelton) Davis: Memories of an Engaged Anthropologist”, by J. P. Linstroth is to honour my late friend, anthropologist, Sandy (Shelton) Davis (1942-2010). The article will highlight the activism of Shelton Davis and his involvement with the Mayan people during the 1980s. Of particular importance is the portrayal of an immigration hearing of nine Kanjobal Maya defendants in 1983 and the circumstances surrounding the problems of immigration in the state of Florida at that time. The article also explores how Shelton Davis helped save a village of Kaqchikel Maya in the Department of Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Of importance is how to represent varying narratives from three close colleagues of Shelton Davis to an overall conceptualization of the epistemology of narrative formulations. One finds that dispersed memories and aspects of synchronic trauma provide some avenues of forming a picture about Davis’ activism with the Mayan people. Likewise, it is significant to realize that histories and memories are not confined to specific structural agencies but rather may be regarded as multi-faceted expressions of pastness through an individual’s memories and narratives.

This article, “History, Tradition, and Memory among the Basques” by J. P. Linstroth explores the historical commemoration, the Alarde of the Spanish-Basque town of Hondarribia re-enacted for almost 400 years. It is a social account of the past portrayed through a history of local militarism and a history of commemorative performance. Since 1996, controversy has divided local inhabitants concerning wider female-inclusion in the male-dominated event, separating the town into factions, traditionalists (asserting traditions remain the same) and feminists (advocating broader female involvement).Theoretical concerns include examining traditions and their gradual transformations over time, rather than as episodic change; that interpreting the past can be competitive over rights of belonging; that history may be influenced by different agencies of gender, kin ties, memory, politics, and social experience; that people do not purposefully ignore the passage of time but may be protecting communal harmony; that commemorative rites are more than embodied performances; and that history can be a multiple, contested, and lived experience. Today, as of 2026, the Alarde controversy in Hondarribia continues and there are two parades held there every September 8th, one for so-called “traditionalists” and another held on the same day for those supporting the “feminist cause”.

J. P. Linstroth’s book chapter, “Brazilian Nationalism and Urban Amerindians: Twenty-First Century Dilemmas for Indigenous Peoples Living in the Urban Amazon and Beyond” (2015), examines a reflection on at least two significant points: the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault 1980) and “invisible histories” (Linstroth 2005). These two notions are intertwined. First, by "insurrection of subjugated knowledges," Linstroth claims that indigenous peoples have for centuries been subjected to destruction, oppression, and marginalization as minorities within nation-states through enslavement, epidemics, eradication schemes, forced settlement, debt peonage, massacres, proselytization, rape, and numerous other abuses, and other untold atrocities. Moreover, to understand this J. P. Linstroth examined the forceful seizure of the National Health Foundation (Fundação Nacional de Saúde, FUNASA) in Manaus in June 2009 by hundreds of urban Amerindians and Indians from reserves in the interior. He argued that the appropriation of the FUNASA buildings was more than a call for the acknowledgment of Native health rights but rather was also directed at white society and its control over governmental organizations such as FUNAI and FUNASA. The urban Amerindians were making a stand against their invisibility to Brazilian governmental organizations like FUNAI and FUNASA, which did not recognize them because urban Indians are considered to be "civilized" or civilizados, a pejorative entirely removing their Indianness.While such political indigenous struggles are well-known in the city of Manaus, Brazil, in the middle of Brazilian Amazonia, they are less known beyond Manaus. Thus, these events are mostly invisible to the world and even the Brazilian nation. Urban Amerindians such as the Sateré-Mawé have been campaigning for years for their rights for better health care but also just recognition as true Indians and not as civilizados. Likewise the Munduruku have been in conflict with the Brazilian government for the legal demarcation of their lands in order to suspend hydroelectric dam building and to prevent illegal mining activities. These are largely “invisible histories.” Therefore, states’ relations with indigenous peoples are like the Brazilian saying about the jaguar: Năo cutuque a onça com vara curta—"Never poke a jaguar with a short stick” because to state governments such as that of Brazil, Indians are continually poking the stick at them and thus statist retribution often ensues against indigenes as it has for the past five-hundred years, evidence the Sateré-Mawé and Munduruku cases.

This book chapter by J. P. Linstroth, titled: “Conflict Avoidance among the Sateré-Mawé of Manaus, Brazil’, and Peacemaking Behaviours among Amazonian Amerindians” (2016), there is a general discussion of Amazonian Amerindian practices of peacemaking and then analysed different aspects of Sateré-Mawé culture, mythology, and ritual. This led to an interpretation of urban Sateré-Mawé conflict avoidance behaviours in Manaus, Brazil. As such, the urban Sateré-Mawé of Manaus, Brazil, are different from other Amazonian peoples and even the Sateré-Mawé in the interior because they have lost many of their traditions by living in the city, such as the tradition of the cultivation of guaraná. Like their Christian Sateré-Mawé Protestant crentes (believers) in the interior, the urban Sateré-Mawé Seventh-Day Adventists (adventistas), because of their Christian beliefs, have altered the meaning of the tucandeira ritual. In Amazonian societies, conflict avoidance behaviours are often about ontological states of personhood and socialization of learned emotive con- duct whereas such states of being are less likely among urban Sateré-Mawé because of their life in the metropolis and therefore forgetting a traditional way of life. Hence, I analysed some Sateré-Mawé leaders (tuxauas), Paulo of the CA, Waldir of the AM, and Soraya of the AMIA, but concentrated on Paulo for his conflict avoidance behaviours because of his psychological perspective in doing so. I believe much of Paulo's disposition has to do with his Seventh-Day Adventist faith and Christian beliefs developed from the New Testament as he avoided conflict as much as possible. Modern day Sateré-Mawé tuxauas like Paulo no longer rely on the cult object, the puratim, to resolve conflict based upon Sateré-Mawé moral codes. They handle and avoid conflict through their own leadership skills and what they know from the Christian message in the New Testament. Urban Indians like the Sateré-Mawé are not unlike other Amazonian Indians in the interior as they supposedly do lead more harmonious lives than white people in the city. They reiterated to me on several occasions how different they are from white people and that they care for one another, in other words, their form of "conviviality."ll! As such, even though urban Satere-Mawé in general have lost many of their traditions, they are still Indians all the same and try to live harmonious lives in the city,

In J. P. Linstroth's book chapter, "Urban Amerindians and Advocacy: Toward a Politically Engaged Anthropology Representing Urban Amerindigeneities in Manaus, Brazil" (2015), my political engagement in advocacy for urban Amerindians in Manaus, Brazil may be characterized as more by accident than not in the sense of not knowing a priori that my fieldwork should follow some Brazilian anthropologists' leads in advocating for Indian rights. Prior to fieldwork I did not know about the indigenous politics in Manaus or for that matter not much about Indian groups living in Manaus as little is known about these city dwelling Indians outside Brazil. Also, I did not know of the many years of activism and advocacy of anthropologists in the Department of Anthropology at the Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM) who had been working for the political rights of urban Amerindians and Amerindians throughout Brazil for years. I was a novice by comparison. To many Indians I encountered I was an oddity from North America but with the possibility of being strategically important to them in their indigenous politics for reaching a wider English-speaking audience. In this manner, as with other anthropologist acquaintances, I became a "political object' to them in a positive sense. I was someone who might prove to be politically useful to them over time. Anthropologists who become political objects to Indians serve as an example of what engagement might entail for the interethnic relationship of anthropologists with politically mindful Indians. In my view political engagement with indigenous peoples not only entails advocacy but also evokes a multiplicity of relations between anthropologist and Indian. It implies an interethnic and intersubjective relationship, which is also reciprocal. Indians, on the one hand, use Brazilian anthropologists for their advantage in gaining access to governmental organizations, NGOs, and addressing health and economic needs and in navigating judicial issues. (In this sense, I fit in with a model of a type of a professional they were already accustomed to dealing with.) Anthropologists, on the other hand, seek empirical data in which to theorize anthropologically about Indians. Engagement is therefore a mutual dialogue and may involve indigenous peoples determining the direction of anthropological inquiry and its outcomes (as in my case). In my particular study the urban Indians of Manaus were most concerned with my promulgating their politics to a broader audience and my propagating their memories of racism and discrimination from the mistreatment of Brazilian society and Brazilian government agencies. The reason for writing this essay is thus in support of urban Amerindians living in Manaus and to demonstrate to others the discrimination and racism they have experienced. Writings such as this chapter may add to the dedication and work of Brazilian anthropologists who have successfully advocated for the rights and recognition of urban Indians in Manaus, a continual process, and especially in negotiating with governmental agencies such as FUNAI and FUNASA. This writing contribution however attempted to move beyond mere recognition of the Indians and their causes. Rather, it also analysed the indigenous trauma experienced through discrimination and racism and how trauma may be regardedas a catalyst for overcoming interethnic strife while at the same time defining indigeneity in juxtaposition to Brazilian society.