By Carrie Rowe
Hoax or authenticity? The history of the Tasaday, a primitive tribe discovered in the Philippines during the Vietnam War, is explored in 'Invented Eden,' a novel that combines investigative journalism and creative storytelling.
Robin Hemley, author of the novel and a professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Utah, discussed the much-debated tribe Friday, Jan. 30, as part of the English Reading Series in the HBLL.
The Tasaday were originally discovered in 1971 in the rainforests of Mindanao, the second largest island of the Philippines, and became a worldwide phenomenon quickly. The small tribe appeared in news programs, TV specials and the most popular issue of National Geographic ever. The tribe received visits from aviator Charles Lindberg and other popular celebrities, and at times, there were more reporters with the group than tribesman.
'It''s hard to imagine how much the Tasaday captured the public imagination worldwide,' Hemley said. 'They were considered not only the stone-age people -- they lived in caves, they dressed in leaves, they were isolated, they only had stone tools -- but they were also gentle.'
The Tasaday, whose language had no words for 'war' or 'enemy', knew nothing of the outside world, Hemley said. For Americans stuck in the middle of the Vietnam War, these Stone Age people, who hugged strangers, seemed like a primitive version of hippies. The ancient life of the Tasaday was seen as an antidote to the modern, war-faring nations.
'The story of the Tasaday is as much about us, the industrialized world, who we perceive ourselves to be, as it is about a band of 27 or so souls in the Philippines who became stand-ins for the world''s hopes, dreams and fears,' Hemley said.
Eventually, a 45,000 acre reserve was declared around the Tasaday and the tribe fell out of the public eye. After the fall of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, two reporters entered the area and found the tribe in western clothing, claiming they had been pressured to appear as a primitive people. When reporters visited a second time, they found the tribe reverted back to their Stone Age ways. Fierce debate of the Tasaday ensued, though no conclusion has been reached as to the tribe''s authenticity.
'The Tasaday story is a very ambiguous, interesting story,' Hemley said. 'The ambiguities about whether there was a hoax or not, I find more interesting than answering that question.'
Though Hemley said his book comes to some conclusions, those who are looking for a simple answer should look elsewhere.
'One of the things I''m most interested in conveying is that one should always look behind the headlines and not necessarily trust that a simple answer is all that simple,' Hemley said. 'Because of the nature of journalism, sometimes things get oversimplified in ways that don''t really convey the complexities of life. There are a lot more gray areas in life than there are black and white. In this book, I try to convey life in all its complexities.'
Nate Graves, a pre-media arts student from Boston, said although he was born after the spectacle of the Tasaday, he found Hemley''s open approach to the subject intriguing.
'One thing that I appreciated is that he didn''t give a standpoint on it,' Graves said. 'I appreciated that he presented facts, but left it up to us to come to our own conclusions, which a lot of people don''t do.'
Spencer Green, a senior from Provo, majoring in English, said the book helped him realize that history is subjective and related it to wave-particle duality.
'If you look at light as a wave, it acts as a wave; if you look at it as a particle, it acts as a particle,' Green said. 'It''s kind of the same way with history. If you''re looking at history as a hoax, then you can see ambiguities that cause you to view it as a hoax. But if you look at it descriptively and look for truth in it, you''ll see something completely different.'