Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday

by Robin Hemley

In 1971 Manual Elizalde, a Philippine government minister with a dubious background, discovered a band of twenty-six “Stone Age” rain-forest dwellers living in total isolation. The tribe was soon featured in American newscasts and graced the cover of National Geographic . But after a series of aborted anthropological ventures, the Tasaday Reserve established by Ferdinand Marcos was closed to visitors, and the tribe vanished from public view. Twelve years later, a Swiss reporter hiked into the area and discovered that the Tasaday were actually farmers whom Elizalde had coerced into dressing in leaves and posing with stone tools. The “anthropological find of the century” had become the “ethnographic hoax of the century.” Or maybe not. Robin Hemley tells a story that is more complex than either the hoax proponents or the authenticity advocates might care to admit. It is a gripping and ultimately tragic tale of innocence found, lost, and found again. The author provides an afterword for this Bison Books edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Ethnography

339 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 2003

About the author

Robin Hemley has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book, Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday deals with a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. James Hamilton Paterson, writing in the London Review of Books, call Invented Eden, "brave and wholly convincing." John Leonard writes in Harpers, "Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution." Invented Eden was an American Library Association's Editor's Choice book for 2003.

Robin Hemley co-edited the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone, and is the author of the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness, which won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection has sold over 40,000 copies and will soon be reissued by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Studebaker and the story collections, The Big Ear and All You Can Eat.

His awards for his fiction include, The Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. He has published his work in many of the best literary magazines in the country, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Witness, ACM, North American Review, and many others. His fiction has been widely anthologized, translated, and heard on NPR's "Selected Shorts" and others. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington Univeristy, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College, and the University of Utah, and in many Summer writing conferences. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for five years.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book and one which actually has greater resonance and meaning as time goes by. I am old enough to have watched, as a 13 year old, the original TV coverage of the discovery of the Tasaday and later reading various newspaper stories about them. I also recall, after the collapse of the Marcos regime, of the news that the Tasaday story had been a fraud. After that as far as I knew the Tasaday disappeared back into an obscurity that was easier in pre internet and social media era. That is until I found this book and was launched back once more to my days as a 13 year old watching a black and white TV for news about a world that seemed so impossibly distant. The wonderful thing about Robin Hemley's book is that it is so nuanced, thought provoking and balanced in its attempt to discover exactly what happened back in 1971. In fact if someone like Robin Hemley had been around and reported the Tasaday story when it first broke there might have been no Tasaday story.

But Hemley like me was a child in 1971 so he wasn't in a position to demolish this fraud at its inception but being old enough to remember the world of 1971 he presents a story where the vanished eden of 1970s anthropology and journalism is as much the story the Tasaday themselves. It would be so easy to have told the story of the Tasaday as a forerunner of fake news, of academic hubris, of corruption, etc. etc. In fact in many ways it was a story which escaped its possible creators both amongst Marcos' cronies and the academic/anthropological community because it was a story that people wanted to believe.

The 1960s were over and the age of Aquarius, if it had ever dawned, had gone down again. After all the failed attempts at living in ashrams, communes and other 'hippy' style communities here was news that the original was still alive and flourishing. A 'Stone Age' community untouched by the outside world, an innocent eden, a world without words for war, in the 'depths' of jungle, primordial, primitive, real. It was a past we in the 'west' wanted to believe in coming out of the 'east' where the mystics and gurus of the era came from. It wasn't a story that had to be sold, it sold itself. Eden, the prelapsarian world before the fall, had been found. If we had been shown the tree of the fruit of good and evil we wouldn't have been surprised.

Quite how much and how quickly the world took the Tasaday into their hearts and homes surprised everyone. One of the finest aspects of Hemley's book is the way he tries to unravel the truth behind the creation of the Tasaday story. It is not simple to unravel exactly what was intended. That there was fraud is undeniable but exactly who was fooling who is harder to disentangle, particularly where the anthropologists are concerned. Exactly what they knew and when is still problematic. Although not directly culpable in the fraud many of the first researchers seemed to have accepted way too much on trust. The same might be said of the journalists and TV people. By the time some questions were raised too much had been invested in the Tasadays, not simply in terms of money but as a dream.

I am doing a very poor job of explaining either what happened or the richness of Hemley's investigations. This wasn't simply a case of a bunch of local peoples being told to take off their clothes and live in a cave while journalists wandered about taking pictures. Hemley's book looks into not simply a fraud but the way we, in the 'west' in particular defined places like the Philippines as the 'other'.

In many ways the 'discovery' of the Tasaday was similar to Hiram Bingham's 'discovery' of Machu Picchu. Neither were discovered because neither were ever lost. But back then way too many people happily talked of Columbus 'discovering' the 'New World'. That the way the discovery of the'new' world was 'constructed' along with ideas about the world of 'Stone Age' or 'Primitive' man is now almost fantastically unbelievable but it is within such a context that the story put out about the Tasaday has to be understood.

A truly remarkable book which counts as a must read once you learn even a tiny bit of the original story.

[Varmint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Myths die hard. Should be required reading for any anthropolgy freshman, along with Derek Freeman's book on Mead.

The Marcos family were mediocre dictators at best, But they were magnificent con artists. Some of their best trick involved skimming money off charities. One of their cronies collected money for the desperately poor tribes on the southern islands. He discovered that the more primitive he made the tribe sound, the more money he took in.

It was only logical that he hire some farmers, dress them in loin cloths, and proclaim them a lost stone age people. But this isn't the best part. That came with the reaction of the world scientific community. They bought it with an aggressive sort of idiocy. Hordes of anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists staked their reputations on the Tasaday. The book succeeds as a cautionary tale of academic arrogance, or just a light comedy. WOuld have oved to have seen what Evelyn Waugh could have done with this.

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good exploration of the Lost Tribe of Mindanao "hoax"--i.e., was it or wasn't it? Examines the idea of hoaxes and why and how they occur or are alleged to occur, the question of truth vs. fiction and the role of various segments of society--the press, the scientists, the politicians.

[Laurelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most insightful and sensitively reported stories of the Philippines in contemporary nonfiction.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting work of journalism that investigates the history (disputed, as the title states) of the Tasaday, a tribe of indigenous "stone age" people who were allegedly discovered, untouched by modern civilization, in the Philippines in the 1970s.

[Niks · Rating 4 out of 5]

The "Gentle" Tasaday: genuine lost Stone Age tribe or elaborate hoax? Robin Hemley sets out to solve this puzzle, but finds there are no clear answers. At the center of the storm are the Tasaday, but a wide range of characters figure in this saga: politicos, missionaries, land grabbers, loggers, miners, Marcos, Manda Elizalde, John Nance, communists, Muslim rebels, Christian settlers, journalists, linguists, anthropologists, archaeologists, etc.

Ultimately, this is a meditation on "truth", how elusive it is, how it is obscured by our words, languages, and cultural biases, and how we bend the truth to achieve our selfish interests.

And it reads like a thriller.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

My husband and I read "The Gentle Tasaday" by John Nance in the early 70s. We were both very excited about this peaceful stone age tribe that had no weapons or words for ward. We were very disappointed when we later heard it was all a "hoax." Robin Hemley tried to figure out what was true about them. However, it proved to be too elusive. Because of the way they were dealt with initially, we will never know the truth. I found the book to be confusing and difficult to read, but that was partially due to the complexity of the subject. Ultimately, I don't feel like I know much more than I did when I started.

[mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

An "untouched stone-age tribe", the Tasaday, was discovered in the Philippines in 1971, that "discovery" was later claimed to be as a "hoax" 15 years later. Hemley investigates both claims and finds the truth to be far more complex than either of those two simple stories. An interesting disentangling, a bit difficult to follow at times because of all the misunderstandings, confusions, and outright lies imbedded in the whole mess - and a certain sadness to it all, as the Tasaday are promised much and given little by actors mostly looking to use them for their own careers and purposes.

[Mountain Learning · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is well-written and insightful. The author seems to have an acute sense of what is and has always been at stake in the Tasaday controversy. Without cut-and-dried answers, he attempts to address the subject and the issues surrounding it as responsibly as possible and gives a fair assessment of the points of view of the people from different sides. Overall, a very good read.

[Rei · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Robin Hemley here! I was in the same room where he interviewed Dr. Peralta. Now, I'm not so ignorant about the Tasadays.