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efuted all claims, once more saying it borders on
media sensation (in a letter to the weekly Time
magazine).
A visual anthropologist named Peter Biella studied
the `Axe fight' and could find nothing wrong which
would harm the integrity of the late Tim Asch. He in
fact claims that Asch always remained critical of
Chagnon's obsession with YanomamoÈ violence.
Gregory Finnegan (Harvard University) a close
colleague and former student of Tim Asch at Brandeis
University, and who knew most of Asch's films on the
YanomamoÈ , concludes as follows: `Everyone in the
YanomamoÈ -studies communities is working with
notions of human nature and global systems that
affect how they view each other's portrayals of the
YanomamoÈ . Since there is no answer without a
question, and theories, even implicit ones, determine
questions, Chagnon and all of us necessarily ``cook''
our ``raw'' data in the act of acquiring it. But that's not
the same as ``cooking the data'' in the ways that
Tierney is said to allege'.
From his home base university at Ann Arbor,
Michigan University officially defended the late Dr
Neels's academic scientific integrity and could find
nothing to support the Tierney accusations.
In the same vein historian Susan Lindee, anthropologist
Alan Fix and Jeffrey Long (a student of Neel)
have sought to refute most of the allegations against
Neel.
Thus, the last word has not been spoken. One can
only assume that once the book is on the market more
responses will magnify and more `cans of worms' will
be opened. The problem is that neither Neel nor Asch
is alive to tell their stories.
68 ISSN 0256±6060±Unisa Lat. Am. Rep. 16(2) 2000