(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, August 13, 2013 ) Cusco, Peru -- Assistant professor of art at the University of Delaware, Jonathan Cox and Sarah Driver, a summer scholar, recently spent seven days in Peru learning firsthand about the Ese’eja Nation. The Ese’eja live in three remote wilderness locations of the South American country: Sonene, Palma Real and Infierno.
Jonathan Cox has just recently returned from Tanzania, where he completed a highly acclaimed “cultural mapping project” that documented the Hadza hunter-gatherers of the region. He seeks to work with the native Peruvian community on a similar project. “They are really taking the initiative to tell not only their children and their grandchildren but the world about the story of the Ese’eja people and how they live sustainably within the forest around the Amazon basin,” Cox said. “Our job is just to help them -- be their voice not just in Peru but internationally.”
He and Sarah Driver journeyed through the Amazon rainforest during the weeklong expedition, where they slept in the Ese’eja’s one-room huts and spoke to the people about their lifestyle and history. Driver, a visual communications and anthropology major from Darlington, Md., said she found the Ese’eja’s way of life enlightening and intriguing. “It was so eye-opening seeing how people who basically have one room to live in can be utterly happy,” said Driver. “Instead of their house being their home, everything around them in nature is their home, and it was really good to see that such a different way of life can work.”
Peru is a developing nation and inevitably, the Ese’eja Nation will become more westernized, Cox supposes. "This particular group of people live a unique way of life that we’ve forgotten, and to hold that knowledge that has been passed on for thousands of years is something important to share with the world,” he believed. “Moreover, there’s so much that we as a Westernized society can take away from how these hunter gatherers live and how they interact with their environment.” Driver said, the opportunity to see an ancient society evolve into one solid community within a developing country was exhilarating.
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