Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

80 The Sirionó in Bolivia
bartering goods for chickens or for honey when it
is available. Domesticated animals are rarely
eaten but are held in reserve as a source of emergency
cash. Some community members own a
horse or two and a few cattle, or keep saddle
oxen to get around during the rainy season.
Finding outside work to earn cash is not difficult.
Most surrounding ranches hire Sirionó
men as cowhands or as day labor for building
fences or clearing land. A cowhand takes his
family to the ranch that employs him, leaving
behind children still in grade school to board
with other families. About one-third of outside
work is on cattle ranches, while agriculture and
construction split another third (CIDDEBENI
1996). The remaining third comes from work in
sawmills, palm heart factories, and assorted
other activities. There is also the beginning of
an internal labor market from the influx of NGO
projects and the creation of a municipal district.
At times the heavy demand for certain skilled
people requires the Sirionó to hire others to help
tend their garden plots.
Yet despite these activities the Sirionó still consider
themselves to be hunters, and leadership is
still linked to hunting prowess. The hunting has
changed considerably, however. No longer do
the Sirionó employ the world’s longest bows and
arrows as described by Holmberg. Now more
than half the game is killed by firearms, and
three-quarters is taken using weapons unavailable
before Columbus. Although fishing is still
secondary, it is a regular source of protein for
some families. Boys spend afternoons using
hook and line to bring in 5 to 10 kilograms of as
many as 50 small fish. This may soon be a
memory, however, because the road dike constructed
across the nearby lake blocked flows
and is building up sediment. What was once
open water is becoming a peat bog.
During 1991–1992, hunting supplied over twothirds
of the animal protein in the Sirionó diet
(Townsend 1995, 1996). Wildlife comes from
both savanna and forest. If one considers all the
fish as savanna products, approximately 100 kilograms
per square kilometer per year are extracted
from this habitat. In addition to fish, the considerable
harvest of savanna biomass includes marsh
deer, nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus),
gray brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira),
and various marsh birds. In a year, the
Sirionó extract 134 kilograms per square kilometer
of game from the forest, including tapir, two
species of peccary, red and gray brocket deer,
coatimundi, and two large rodents, the paca and
the agouti. Hunting is practiced year-round and
harvest composition varies seasonally. Over 90
percent of game biomass taken in 1991–1992
was mammalian, and 75 percent of that came
from ungulates. If the extracted biomass is averaged
across the population of Ibiato, it averages
about 55 grams of protein per capita daily. This
corresponds to the average daily intake of wild
animal protein by other Latin American indigenous
groups, which has been estimated at 59
grams per capita (Townsend 1995, 1996). It is
also nearly three times the recommended adult
minimum daily allowance of 20 grams of protein
(FAO/WHO 1973).
Game harvests have fallen in recent years, perhaps
because the number of domesticated animals,
overseas food-aid efforts, and jobs from the
influx of NGO projects have risen. But it is the
decline in game supply reported by Sirionó
hunters that has sparked interest in producing a
wildlife management plan. That interest dovetails
with the desire to earn income, since the
Sirionó also sell skins and hides when there is a
buyer. One game hunt has been monitored
(Stearman and Redford 1992), and the harvest
was judged to be sustainable.
The Sirionó also harvest various wild honeys produced
by the native meliponid bees. They have
an elaborate identification system for 15 different
bee types based on the taste of their honeys
(Montaño 1996). Although most are too acidic
for sweetening, each honey has a medicinal use.
The Sirionó barter the honey in Ibiato but prefer
to sell it in Trinidad, where the women offer it
door to door for higher prices. The revenues are
used to buy household utensils, school supplies,
oil, sugar, flour, and other necessities.
There is also some interest in marketing crafts.
Some of the women fashion simple necklaces of
seeds, feathers, and porcupine quills to sell in
Trinidad and also to the numerous visitors to
Ibiato. Traditionally women have made string
hammocks from Cecropia fibers, but the
women’s club has learned how to weave hammocks
and some members are now producing
them. Sirionó baskets—usually rudimentary and
unfinished—are not an inspiring tourist item.