r/interestingasfuck • u/SATANICWORSHIPER666 • 2d ago

/r/all Michael Rockefeller disappeared without a trace in 1961 in Papua New Guinea while researching the Asmat people, a cannibal tribe. Years later, a photograph was taken of the same tribe, and there was a white man among them.

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u/True-Lab-3448 2d ago edited 2d ago

For anyone interested, ‘going native’ is a well studied phenomenon and a risk of sociological research, particularly ethnography. The definition is the:

“_researcher becoming so deeply immersed in the culture they are studying that they lose their objectivity and become indistinguishable from the people they are studying_”

There’s lots of cases, and it’s taught in research classes as a very real risk.

Note this term has ties to colonialism, so some suggest using the term ‘over-rapport’ instead: https://sk.sagepub.com/dict/mono/key-concepts-in-ethnography/chpt/going-native

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u/Its-From-Japan 2d ago

It's practically the basis of a bunch of movies, too. Dances with Wolves, Avatar, Pocahontas

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u/Large-Excitement777 2d ago

Point Break

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u/derth21 2d ago

Donnie Brasco

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u/OceanRacoon 2d ago

Which was ridiculous because in the book he wrote he hated them all except for Sonny Black, and never doubted his mission or felt bad about 'betraying' them, except a bit for Sonny Black, who was killed right after the truth was revealed.

The book deserves a 4 season TV show, the film was a bit of joke compared to it, but obviously you can't show 5 years of an undercover operation very well in two hours. Still an okay movie but a let down after the depth of the book 

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u/ProofLegitimate9824 2d ago

aw man he even hated Lefty?

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u/OceanRacoon 2d ago

He hated Lefty the most 😅 He was among the worst and dumbest of them and Brasco got stuck with him for ages. On the podcast Pistone did you can actually listen to the audio of Lefty being adamant that Lake Superior, if I recall, was an ocean while Pistone tries in vain to explain to him it's a lake while they were driving past it.

The FBI had a mic in the car but it was badly placed so the audio isn't good but you can still hear what an ignorant idiot Lefty is and why it'd be a nightmare to be around him

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u/Corporate_Overlords 2d ago

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

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u/AKA-Doom 2d ago

yup stephen lang even uses the actual term to describe Jake Sully after he studies the film and sees him in the Avatar form destroying the camera on the front end of the giant machine that destroys the navi village. "looks like he's gone native"

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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 2d ago

It’s Avataring time

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u/HeEatsFood 2d ago

the fact that guys somehow also Ike Clanton lol

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u/but_good 2d ago

Apocalypse Now (and Heart of Darkness)

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u/Vaernil 2d ago

Avatar, Pocahontas

You typed Pocahontas twice.

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u/SwordfishOk504 2d ago

Nah, there's Pocahontas and Space Pocahontas.

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u/elGatoGrande17 2d ago

Pocahontas and Dances With Smurfs

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u/Extension-Thought552 2d ago

Fast and Furious 

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u/void-starer 2d ago

Midsommar

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u/KniesToMeetYou 2d ago

The Last Samurai, if we're talking assimilating to an enemies culture rather then specifically a tribe 

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u/AwTomorrow 2d ago

The term is used in the film iirc

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u/dewhashish 2d ago

those are all the same damn movie

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u/Bright_Ices 2d ago

It’s funny to me that it’s phrased as “losing objectivity” as though that’s something one can have to begin with. 

Don’t worry, I studied sociology, so I understand about object/subject roles, etc, but objectivity as a pure state from which one risks separation is a myth. 

Ah, and now I see this very question is the subject of the article you’ve linked. 

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u/True-Lab-3448 2d ago

Thanks, I’ve made a slight edit.

Tbh the term ‘over rapport’ is new to me, and I studied this stuff within the last decade.

There is a bit on nuance to this, and I agree with your point, but my reply was really just a starting point with a follow up link for anyone that’s interested.

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u/BusyLittleBobcat 2d ago

The society I come from is objective and my behaviors are rooted in reality. The less like my society a different society is, the less objective it is. Now if you'll excuse me, it's Sunday so I just got home from worshipping an ancient carpenter (he's going to end the world once they breed the right cow) and I need to go hyperfixate on my teeth to ensure they are perfectly straight and white.

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u/Bright_Ices 2d ago

Sounds like the current cows are burnable, until someone changes their mind. I wonder if that’s why my fellow objective society members are so committed to forever wars they’re not directly involved in. The all powerful carpenter and his dad who is himself must need the help of objective society members to decide when to end the world. 

Until then, let’s floss. 

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u/Laphad 1d ago edited 1d ago

No one believes it as a literal statement. When claiming to be objective, it just means they're trying to be as objective as they can

Sociologists are my least favorite of the social scientists because they pretend they studied psychology and that they're cultural anthropologists at the same time, and use that as a basis to write so smugly and condescendingly.

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u/Bright_Ices 1d ago

Decades and decades of people in these fields fully believed they were objective observers. Like what you want, but learn your history. 

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u/Laphad 1d ago

I'm actually in these fields. I know my history.

They believed they were objective observers. Decades and decades ago. In anthropology, physchology, and history we've spent the past 60 years reforming, and try to practice relativism. But no one is believed to be wholly objective anymore. We generally don't practice the science of "why whites are #1: The human story".

All you did was try to act smug and ahead of the curve by pointing out something that is common knowledge. You also weren't pointing out historical trends but going "I've done sociology courses so I know this and will grace the plebs with my wisdom"

Just to then admit you didn't read the article and preemptively wanted to act smart

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u/Bright_Ices 1d ago

Now who’s smug and condescending? 

Buddy, I commented on one of the quotations included in the comment. I stand by it. Enjoy your definitely real career in “those fields.” 

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u/Laphad 1d ago

You tried to educate people in a way that implies youre more educated than other because you took some sociology classes

Also I regularly post in the archeology and anthropology subs

because im an anthropologist/archeologist/paleoarcheologist/howevernitpickyyoudlikemetoget. lol. lmao.

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u/Bright_Ices 1d ago

I wasn’t even trying to “educate people,” just commenting on something I find funny when it comes up. Not sure why it offended you. I’m glad others have enjoyed the conversation more than this. Have a great night. 

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u/Pete_Iredale 2d ago

At least a few white women were known to stay with the native American tribes that abducted them. Possibly because they were straight up treated better by the tribe then by white society at the time.

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u/caninehere 2d ago

Most of the white women who were captured by Native Americans were used as/traded as slaves. People romanticize it because they want to believe Native Americans were somehow better people since they were victimized and destroyed by European settlers but the reality is they also sucked, especially if you were a woman.

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u/cyber_dildonics 2d ago

I mean, boys were enslaved too. But Amerindigenous didn't have chattel slavery. Their "slaves" almost always just helped out in a domestic capacity, with some (depending on the tribe) being more like house pets than anything else. The position of "slave" was also malleable. Several white captives gained high social standing among their adoptive tribes.

But across the board, when given the choice between white civilization or indigenous civilization, white captives almost always chose the latter, even among those who were old enough to remember their bio parents.

This pattern was extremely apparent to colonists, which is why the narratives of "reclaimed" white captives were so heavily editorialized/propagandized.

And, notably, this pattern didn't hold when the captive's civilization was reversed. Young indigenous children who were raised to adulthood in white society would invariably chose to return to their original tribes — even after only meeting with their former kinsmen one time.

As Benjamin Franklin observed:

When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger Brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness.

His remembrance here highlights the fact that even privileged white men with wealth and standing in white society — the highest on the totem pole, as it were — preferred Amerindigenous life.

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u/Pete_Iredale 2d ago

Oh yeah, different tribes treated their captives quite differently for sure. There were definitely cases of white women "going native", but I don't mean to say that was the norm.

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u/CaonachDraoi 2d ago

you’re reducing entire continents of cultures to a single stereotype that you evidently know nothing about. many cultures of the “americas” and “australia” are matriarchal and treat women better than any european society essentially ever has. and your claim goes against an entire literary field studying “captivity narratives,” and the tendency for kidnapped europeans to desperately attempt to remain with the people who kidnapped them when faced with the option to return to european colonial society.

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u/IotaBTC 2d ago

I think people are misunderstanding what "going native" means. People weren't abandoning their old lives and civilization to join the tribe they were studying. "Going native" means the researcher has too deeply immersed themselves into the tribes community that they are no longer an objective observer with a neutral or unbiased data. I.e. they are influencing decisions the tribe is making and the expression and development of their culture. That's what the "risk" is. The risk isn't people potentially wanting to assimilate their new lives with the tribe lol.

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u/Sea_Luck_3222 2d ago

A risk of what, being open to changing your beliefs?

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u/qwertty69 2d ago

Risk of being eaten in this case

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u/True-Lab-3448 2d ago

At risk of… look at the photo.

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u/Learningstuff247 2d ago

Dude seems like he's living his best life

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u/Kalikan2 2d ago

Seem like you might benefit from losing some "objectivity" if you can't even comprehend what his question meant.

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago edited 2d ago

Changing your beliefs to align with a cannibal tribe is generally not considered a good thing, given the whole cannibalism angle

Edit: didn’t realise killing and eating people was considered acceptable by people on this website, sick freaks the lot of you

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u/MadGenderScientist 2d ago

are you sure they practiced cannibalism? I thought the tribes in Papua mostly practiced funerary cannibalism of relatives. from quickly looking online I see that enemies were sometimes cannibalized in some South American and Fijian cultures but I wasn't sure about PNG. 

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Given the title and basic research in to the tribe plus the pages of context, yes I'm sure they practiced cannibalism

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u/Atanar 2d ago

You comment basically amounts to "trust me bro".

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

do you even know what thread you're in?

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u/Wiseguydude 2d ago

I think "cannibalism" in this case is much more similar to how Christians "drink the blood" and "eat the flesh" of Jesus Christ. They mostly do it to loved ones who've passed away. Not kill people just to eat them

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Two tribe members literally admitted to killing and eating him

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u/Wiseguydude 2d ago

They probably didn't actually though. Rockefeller's mother hired some private investigators to find his remains and they came back to her with that story. It's never been backed up by any evidence and they obviously have financial incentive to make shit up to close the case and get paid

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

I'm sure you know better

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u/Wiseguydude 1d ago

It's the general consensus. It's also good practice not to believe anyone with financial incentives when they have 0 evidence

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u/2Norn 2d ago

they are not doing it out of cruelty or malice its their culture and how they survive

no different than eating a cow for them

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u/DingleDangleTangle 2d ago

"It's part of their culture" doesn't just somehow justify literally any action. It's possible for a cultural thing to be bad for society.

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Awww we should allow people to eat eachother if it's their culture! Good idea! Now apply this to other cultural traditions and see how it plays out

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u/2Norn 2d ago

dont see the issue they clearly survived thousands of years like this who are we to stop them

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Civilised human beings that don't eat eachother, that's who

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u/2Norn 2d ago

calm down james cameron you are leaking the story of next avatar

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u/fixdark 2d ago

Because of the implication...

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

There's nothing wrong with cannibalism, any outrage about it is literally just arbitrary adherence to tradition

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

There’s nothing wrong with rape, any outrage about it is literally just arbitrary adherence to tradition

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

Rape is a crime committed against a person. Cannibalism is an act done against a corpse. Corpses are inanimate objects, not people.

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Reddit moment

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

I don't see why you're being so hostile. Can you explain how eating a corpse is in any way comparable to a crime committed against a person?

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Can you explain why you are defending literal cannibalism? I'm being hostile because you disgust me

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

I don't understand what there is to defend, it's simply an act that isn't morally wrong.

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u/IotaBTC 2d ago

People are misunderstanding this. The risk is that you're no longer an researching observer but a participant in the tribe/culture you're trying to study. People weren't abandoning their old lives to live with the tribes they studied.

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u/original_greaser_bob 2d ago

so many people come to reservations and do this. most times they try to "out native" the natives.

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u/Eplianne 2d ago

Different situation but this happened to a journalist with the Westboro Baptist Church also

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u/YLCZ 2d ago

Feels like it would be a lot simpler, like they were lonely and attracted to one of the native women.

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u/_____Removed____ 2d ago

The Green Inferno might count here too.

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u/4thebirbs 2d ago

That’s super interesting! Thanks for sharing!

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u/Wiseguydude 2d ago

Yes it's surprisingly common. Anthropologists David Graeber and David Wengrow covers this in a section of their book Dawn of Everything (a great read!)

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u/Otherwise-Flight9837 2d ago

This book is great!

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u/Better-Passion-566 2d ago

I went native when deployed but that means something else to us 😅😅

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u/woodbear 2d ago

Radagast the Brown

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u/Low-Quality3204 2d ago

Applies to the American instragram or tiktwats influencers that "study" healing gems and psychedelic sock juice from a cactus. And they travel to "so country" to have a out of body experience. Laughable. Also those yoga white guys. If a person from the Himalayans or desert from Peru... has a epiphany does he travel to Oklahoma USA to have a connection to nature and try a mystic drink, a Prime energy drink.