Transcript

Derek Smith:

Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors and we're discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith and our guest today is Alan Schultz. Dr. Schultz is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Baylor engaged in ongoing work in Bolivia that has drawn national attention for its insights in the market-based living, cultural change, nutrition and more. The Tsiname', an indigenous people group in Bolivia who have lived a traditional preindustrial forager farmer lifestyle and demonstrated remarkable cardiovascular health are dealing with the encroachment of modern society and diet and other facts. Schultz's National Science Foundation funded research to analyze that change through ethnographic field work and survey research with recently published findings in the journal Obesity and Plus One. He joined the Baylor faculty in 2014 and he is here with us today on Baylor connections. Dr. Schultz, great to have you on the program. Thanks so much for joining us.

Alan Schultz:

Thank you so much for having me.

Derek Smith:

Let's start by immersing ourselves in the world that you study a little bit. Could you take us on a little bit of a mental tour of the Tsiname', where they live and what life is like with them?

Alan Schultz:

So, the thing that always stands out to people when I tell them what I do and the people I work with are the obvious things. So there's the natural environment difference. These folks live in the Amazon rainforest. There's the lifestyle difference, the livelihood difference. They are foragers. They are horticulturalist farmers, their day to day life looks very different than ours. But when I think about it and I think about the difference in what it is to be a Tsimanian, what that feels like, what stands out to me after doing what I've done, spending the time I have working with them, getting to know them is how different social life is. When I say that, I mean the social environment is just so different and it can be hard to even sort of imagine for us because we come from a world where most of our day, most of our time, especially once you're an adult and you're in the working world is interacting with acquaintances. It's seeing a lot of strangers around you. Maybe in your workplace you get to know the folks there. But so much of our day, if it's shopping, if it's driving around, it's always being surrounded by people we don't necessarily know. The Tsiname' almost never have a day like that. Every day is surrounded by relatives and friends and people you have known since birth and everyone's doing a very similar set of things. You could wear something, you could be flashy, you could try and stand out, but it would be the same as your mother doing that for you or me. Mom wears something interesting, well, Mom's wearing something interesting, but it's still Mom. You see a stranger doing that and maybe it stands out in a different way. And so to think about what it is to be Tsiname' and what it is to live their life. For me, it's what is it to have those social connections that are so strong and so long term. So in your daily life you're not thinking about that neighbor that has a really nice car. Well that neighbor is also the person you grew up with who's probably a cousin and you know everything about them. Whatever they do, it's not going to stand out in that way, but you're also going to care about them more. So it's imagining that world in an Amazon jungle, in a different livelihood, but also in that social world that's so different than our own.

Derek Smith:

About how many people are we talking about when we talk about the Tsiname'.

Alan Schultz:

So I think the latest population estimates, and these are, they vary a little bit, but we think it's about 16,000. The census has some interesting numbers, but more or less about 16,000 yeah.

Derek Smith:

You've spent a lot of time with them, different summers. So what's that process like? How long does it take or how much observation does it take to pick up on some of these things?

Alan Schultz:

Yeah, the first time I went was 2010 and it was part of a field school with the National Science Foundation. Great experience because I realized that I could manage to do the work with the Tsiname' in that natural environment, overcome some fears about that. But then you come to realize just how much work and how long it takes to acquire the ability to start to see some of those things. And so with the Tsiname' it means 85% are monolingual in their own language, which is an isolet language also called Tsiname'. So I had to start learning Tsiname'. So I spent two long years learning Tsiname' in Spanish, which is my second language to begin with. And of course when you're learning Tsiname' you're learning from a native speaker whose Spanish might not always be so good. So you learn Tsiname' via an interesting version of Spanish and it takes a long time and that's your starting point for starting, for beginning to be able to understand the culture and communicate in a way that that helps you detect that subtlety. And then the next step is living in the community. And that means finding a place to live and building a place to live, having the community agree that you can be there and where you will be, where you will reside and do they trust you and building all of those connections slowly but surely. And of course to get to a community means having a canoe or renting a canoe that you can get there with. And having a motorista, someone who can take care of the canoe motor and get you there.

Derek Smith:

This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting with Dr. Allen Schultz, assistant professor of anthropology, talking about his research with the Tsiname' people. And you've done a great job painting the picture of them, but maybe in different ways, but like all of us who are dealing with the encroachment of changes in modern life. Whether it's here in the States or elsewhere, things are changing rapidly and they're dealing with this. Now I want to ask you about, they have remarkable cardiovascular health, something that they have become noteworthy for, for study and noticed for. But before we dive into that, I want to ask you what it looks like as we talk about in this next half of the show, what it is when we talk about that encroachment of modern society, what that looks like for them.

Alan Schultz:

Sure. So, the brief history of that is: somewhere in the late seventies, the first road into the region. So this is Bolivia. This is a country that is now landlocked by other countries. There's the Andean mountains in the West that create a significant barrier. And then there's the Piedmont into the Amazonian jungle and the [inaudible] and what have you as you go East. And then eventually you're in Brazil and there's jungle and there's everything else. And so you're in an environmental space where there's lots of geographic barriers. So for a long time that provided many challenges for outsiders to ever come in, to justify coming in. So there was a rubber boom in parts of Bolivia and mostly in Brazil, but the forest that the Tsiname' are in don't really support as many rubber trees. And so when that was a boom, it wasn't such a threat to them. So they missed that one. And that was a big way in which indigenous groups that live in what is now Brazil were exposed to outsiders and similarly in Ecuador and Peru and parts of Bolivia. But for the Tsiname', it wasn't, there was some Catholic missionaries that initially were there but as a group, the Tsiname' have long been very mobile and so they move their communities sometimes seasonally, but also entirely depending on what's going on. That ability to move and that sort of just default of being able to move meant that when they did face challenges from outsiders, if that was loggers or miners or ranchers coming in threatening them or pushing them to do something and they didn't want to do it, well then they just escaped into the forest and they could always do that and they didn't have the same material or specific geographic preoccupations as some other groups. So they weren't as tied to a specific place, which meant doing that wasn't such a burden on them. Certainly it could be a burden. And I don't mean to imply it wasn't ever, but it also meant that to pick up and to go was usually the path of least resistance and one that they chose, which is a big reason why we still have the Tsiname' around to understand and to learn from.

Derek Smith:

So what are some of the changes you've seen? We can look at it through the prism of some of your recent work on their cardiovascular health and food, cooking habits. But what can we glean from the changes that they are dealing with and maybe even extrapolate it further into our own lives here.

Alan Schultz:

Yeah. So, ultimately this work is supposed to help us understand the way that we're living and where our health and our wellbeing comes from. How are the Tsiname' changing? Well, what we've seen is little by little tiny things changing. So one of the big first changes is lots of communities deciding to stay put in one place, which then allowed the establishment of schools. So once there was a logging road into the region that that gave some access to outsiders, eventually some new sets of missionaries came in, they wanted to establish schools, well the Tsiname' needed to be in one place if they were going to build schools. So that became something that they started to encourage folks to do and little by little that happened. So you have the schooling, you have learning Spanish little by little. Once folks have that, they have a way to better communicate with the outside world. So if someone asks them to collect a certain forest product or they make a Palm leaf, what they call [foreign language 00:11:39]. These panels are highly sought after by folks in the region and elsewhere. Most of them actually get exported internationally at this point, but they get used for palapas and for outside gazebos and things. Well, the Tsiname' makes some of the best ones and they have some of the best quality leaf to make it. And so once that was realized, it became a big product for export. And so then they would get something in return for it. Maybe it's money, maybe it's another thing in trade. And so those relationships slowly started to build to the point where they are today, where we see more and more Tsiname' gaining access to things like motors for their canoes, which means that you're not pulling down the river with your tiny canoe, you can get a bigger one and you can put a motor on it and you can go up and down the river, which is a dramatic change. So all of a sudden going to market and maybe selling some platanos, or plantains, isn't a big deal. And you could go and do that, you could sell it, you could get some money, you could buy some things and you could return back to your village. And so, people slowly start to develop these new patterns, which means then they see brand new things and they start to want brand new things. And so that's like you were saying, the food, and you try something new and you want that thing, and you might even have money now to buy it and bring it back. And so it's been a very slow process with the Tsiname' but it's continuing to speed up and new material items that appear allows it to become faster and faster.

Derek Smith:

So I'm assuming you think about the lifestyle they once lived, it was what they could grow, what they could find and now they have access to some things that may be a little more processed or fattening.

Alan Schultz:

Sure. So, traditional diet is you go and find it, the foraging portion or you grow it and that's what you eat and you're not really growing anything more than you need. You're going to grow some excess, but that's just for safety and just in case. And nowadays, not only are they changing that portion, so they're growing even more so that they could maybe sell it, but they're also starting to gain a taste for a very different foods. And of course it's the things that, that we're so familiar with. So whether that's they tried fried chicken or it could be something very simple like bags of sugar. When I first started in 2010 just having a bag of sugar and bringing that back from the market, that was it. That was the bee's knees. So you just having sugar water mixed with what you would usually be drinking. So rather than the regular water or having some sort of fruit that is really high in water content, people start choosing to have a glass of water mixed with sugar. It seems very simple to us, unless you drank a lot of Kool-Aid as a kid and then it's pretty much exactly what you had as a kid. So those things start to become almost a staple of life and then it builds.

Derek Smith:

What are some of the findings that, when you look in the academic world, have been most interesting? Whether you shared it in Obesity or Plus One or others?

Alan Schultz:

Sure. Yeah. So you mentioned the cardiovascular health and for folks who don't know the rates of, looking at the highest rates of mortality in the world what's causing those, something right around a third of all mortality in the world is caused by cardiovascular disease. Most of that comes from coronary artery disease, which leads to strokes and heart attacks. And so for the Tsiname', other researchers who work with the same group found that they have essentially no coronary artery disease or the precursors to that. So when folks talk about atherosclerosis, and the building up of plaques in our arteries and what eventually leads to so many problems, when they went about actually measuring the Tsiname', do they have these factors that predict it? The lowest levels that anyone has ever documented. Cardiovascular disease or documented cases of heart attacks, they basically couldn't find any. So blood pressure is exceedingly low. We recommend typically 120 over 80 or maybe 115 over 70 depending on your age and health, the Tsiname' average, the entire population, 115 or below over 80. It's incredible cardiovascular health. And on top of that, then you have the dietary content that plays into it, the level of physical activity. That one's interesting, we can talk about that a little bit, but more or less the health outcomes that that are so extraordinary have to do with that side of things. The chronic health problems that we see in other groups of people, we just don't find them in the Tsiname' and that's despite the fact that median age of death. So folks who survive past zero to five years of age typically make it to something like 72 years, which is not so bad considering all things. If you average it out, the number looks different. But once you get past that zero to five risk ages, then all of a sudden their life expectancy is quite good.

Derek Smith:

How have you seen their lifestyle change in terms of maybe more sedentary lifestyles or how has modern society changed that?

Alan Schultz:

So in that regard, not as much has changed and that has to do with if they're going to take on a new job and try to earn cash because they're working with a rancher or they're working to sell like the roof panels, or they have a logging contract, something along those lines. They're all physically really strenuous sorts of things, but it may well change how much the partner of a man who takes that contract, she might all of a sudden have more material wealth, more ability to buy products from the market. She can buy her rice, she can buy oil, and that might mean that her physical activity level is not as high as it used to be. She doesn't need to go forage as much, but his activity level may actually increase. So we have changes in livelihood that physical activity is not affecting people in exact same ways. If you want to go visit the market, you can go more often now because you have a canoe motor. But in the past you probably just wouldn't go as much, or you wouldn't take trips that were so long and if you did you would take many fewer things. And so the physical activity actually seems to be fairly well balanced. What's changing is everything else that surrounds it. So if you're doing lots of physical activity now you might be completely apart from your community. So those social connections are starting to wane and if you're doing lots of preparation of food at your home and you're using these market products, well you might not need as much help from your extended family and so you're doing more of that on your own as well. And so are they. And so little by little these consumption changes also start to change that social fabric of their lives.

Derek Smith:

Visiting with Dr. Alan Schultz and Dr. Schultz, as we hit into the final couple of minutes here on the program want to ask you what further questions for steady to some of these things we've talked about lead and what in particular finding that we've discussed that really is most interesting to you as an avenue to explore next?

Alan Schultz:

Folks always want to know what the silver bullet is. You've researched this group, they have the amazing health, what will do it? What do I need to do? And of course the real answer is: There's no one thing. It's the entire lifestyle that does it. So it is the social world, but it's also the diet and it's also the physical activity level. So, for me in the future, it's putting that together in the most comprehensible way so that folks understand what the real lesson is and essentially that ends up becoming what it is to be a social animal and how much that matters to our health and wellbeing. We tend to focus so much on our individual responsibility. How much our own personal responsibility in our own individual work ethic is supposed to predict our wellbeing. The Tsiname' don't think about things in that way. Wellbeing and being healthy and having a good life is almost always going to be explained as the family around you, the connections that you have. Are you supporting them? Are you taking care of them? Do you have the right number of children? Do you have status in the community? Do people respect you? And that's what matters. Now we seek those things too, but we seek them from this very individual sort of perspective. It's all on you. If you just work harder, it's going to happen. Well, there's a lot of truth to the way the Tsiname' live that actually applies to our lives. And so much of the research on health and wellbeing, the modern research tells us that exact thing. If you're socially isolated, you will be less healthy. If you don't have those connections, you will suffer and it's impossible for you to have the happiness and the good health you're looking for. So my continued work here is trying to better sort of frame the exact sets of components, the way that these things fit together that can then inform, well, how do we work to, to reconstruct or reconfigure our lives to better take advantage of what it is to be a social animal, to need those things. And yet to have the current sort of perspective we have, which is it's only on you. How do we get to that point of cooperating and supporting and understanding it not just as being nice, but as a fundamental necessary thing to our health and wellbeing.

Derek Smith:

I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us as you continue to tie these threads together. And really fascinating stuff. I thank you for telling us more about the Tsiname' and sharing your research with us. Dr. Alan Schultz, assistant professor of anthropology, our guest today here on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this and another programs online, baylor.edu/connections. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.