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THEY\'RE NOT CELEBRITIES. THEY WALK PAST YOU ON THE STREET, BRING YOU YOUR FOOD AT A RESTAURANT, AND LIVE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. THEY\'RE EVERYDAY PEOPLE. JUST LIKE YOU.
PRINT ISSUE #8: WILLIAM JAMIESON
AFTER SPENDING TIME WITH THE HEAD-SHRINKING SHUAR INDIAN TRIBE IN SOUTH AMERICA, SELF-PROFESSED HUMAN TROPHY COLLECTOR WILLIAM JAMIESON DECIDED HE WANTED A SOUVENIR SHRUNKEN HEAD OF HIS OWN. HIS NEW INTEREST IN ODDITIES LED TO BUYING CANADA’S OLDEST MUSEUM THAT JUST HAPPENED TO BE HOUSING THE REMAINS OF EGYPTIAN PHARAOH RAMSES I. AFTER SEEING A NOVA SPECIAL ABOUT RAMSES, NIGHT WATCHMAN CONTACTED JAMIESON TO FIND OUT HOW HE GOT INTERESTED IN COLLECTING, AND WHAT LEAD TO HIS UNUSUAL HOBBY.
Night Watchman: What led you to collect tribal artwork and shrunken heads, and travel to places that are so off the beaten path?
William Jamieson: About fourteen years ago I owned a construction company, and I had done LSD, mescaline, and mushrooms-- just a variance of hallucinogens when I was younger in the Seventies. I always had an interest in them. Even now, once a year I might still do magic mushrooms out in the country, but it’s always planned. Because I owned this construction company and we didn\'t work during the winter, I used to take off on excursions and travel around South America. I got to know an anthropologist in Iquitos, Peru named Daniel Aizenstat. He had spent a lot of time researching a drug called ayahuasca, so we would travel around and sit in on ceremonies and try different drugs with different shamans. We met a fellow named Tukupi from the Shuar tribe, which is also known as the Jivaro, which is Spanish slang for \"heathens\". But you don\'t call them that because they get pissed off.
NW: Right.
WJ: The Shuar were the only tribe in the world that actually shrunk human heads to the size of a baseball. I visited the Amazon five times-- four times with Tukupi-- and probably spent a total of four months in the region. I\'d take gifts into the village, and he\'d let me sit in on his healing ceremonies. We’d break bread and do ayahuasca. As a matter of fact, if I found out today that I had cancer, I\'d trust myself with him rather than with a Western doctor.
Both: (laugh)
WJ: The Shuar believe that the soul is located in the head, and that by shrinking the head and sewing the eyes and lips shut, it traps the soul. The dead are unable to go to the next world-- a fate worse than death. He had a rival shaman from the Ashuar tribe named Mukumpi. They had both killed friends and relatives of the other. Tukupi, in one case, had gone to avenge the death of a good friend and his wife who were murdered as they slept by a riverbank. When he arrived at the killer’s hut, the guy wasn’t there, so he killed his wife. When asked why he did so, he responded, \"He took my friend and his wife from me, so I took his wife from him.\" The Ashuar don’t shrink heads, but they are still involved in warfare. The custom of head-shrinking disappeared because of missionaries and other outside influences. I went back and forth between the two tribes-- they were about fifty miles apart-- and I interviewed both of them on camera. I wanted to bring them together because they were both really powerful, elderly shaman warriors. Once you kill a couple of people you get a power called \"arutam\" which, in their sense, makes you invincible. Therefore you can go on and kill and kill and kill, and the fear and superstition that you cannot be killed will travel with you. In some of these cultures there is no such thing as a natural death, so when someone died, someone had to be blamed. As bizarre as that sounds, the usual suspect that was blamed was the shaman from a surrounding village. So the shamans tended to be pretty serious warriors, and their life expectancy isn\'t high. Warring was a part of life. If someone killed a relative of yours when you were a child, it was pounded into your head that this person\'s family killed your relative. So as soon as you got old enough you\'d kill one of theirs. It’s almost like the hillbilly feuding of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
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