Talk:Operation Auca

An entry from Operation Auca appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 28 February, 2006.

Wikipedia

NPOV

I've added the NPOV tag for several reasons: Most allegations of the article are based on the accounts of missionaries who were involved, or their closest relatives. The interference of evangelical missionaries in indigenous cultures has been highly controversial and this article does not reflect that. The article contains allegations that are not substantiated and wording is not neutral or even racist. —Babelfisch 02:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

If you'll notice, many of the references listed are anti-missionary references. Please give examples of "allegations that are not substantiated and wording is not neutral or even racist". Everything I have written is substantiated by sources. Unfortunately, no one but the missionaries themselves wrote anything about what happened there, so those are the only sources we've got. I agree that much of the controversy must still be added, but I haven't started writing anything other than what happened. Also, I'm restoring the link to the blog—I found it to be the most complete and useful online source of information related to this topic, and I found it via a google search (that is, it isn't spam if I added it and it isn't my site). If you know of any better external links, please suggest them. --Spangineer (háblame) 03:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

A blog is not a good source. See Verifiability. The blog you want to link contains individual copyrighted articles culled from various missionary organisation sites. It might be appropriate to link to those articles directly, but actually I don't think so, because they largely overlap in their contents. Just one or two might in fact be enough, but I've added more now. We don't need a dozen film reviews by evangelical Christians.

I have reverted your deletion because in case of a controversy it makes sense to add short explanations to the sources listed.

Racism starts in the first paragraph, with the words "violent tribe".

The text seems to be based on only two sources, Elliot and Saint, and it reads like missionary propaganda pap, without any critical distance. (One example: Some of the wording is not appropriate or misleading: Missionaries don't "hope to present Christianity" to a people, they want to proselytise, and that's what they did.)

The article failes to mention which organisations the five were working for.

But it's a beginning. Let's work on it. —Babelfisch 07:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The blog link was in the Wikipedia:External links section; thus the verifiability policy is not particularly relevant. From the external links policy, "Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as textbooks or reviews." Also, "Linking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem".

From what I've read, the Huaorani were one of the most violent people groups on earth. Life expectancy below 30 due to inter-clan revenge killings, and killings of anyone entering their territory. Am I wrong? That to me is "violent". Remember that that is the lead of the article and thus everything must be summarized; soon I'm going to add a paragraph explicitly sourced that talks about their history.

To me, "proselytise" has a negative connotation. I don't really see the problem with "hope to present Christianity"—it's not like the Huaorani were being force-fed the stuff; the foreigners had a specific mission and goal but we're not talking about Spanish invaders killing the Indians if they don't convert.

It's bad formatting to describe a reference in the references section (it is never done in FAs, for example); I eliminated the text for a reason. I thought the comment was aimed at me, and noting it, I deleted the text. Once texts are included that are anti-missionary and are cited in the article text, it will be obvious which sources are anti-missionary (Thy Will Be Done, Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire, etc.), and which aren't.

I was hoping to continue with the narrative, but this Friday probably I'll start working on an Aftermath section, including a discussion of what different anthropologists think about all this. --Spangineer (háblame) 13:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Their hope was not to "present Christianity" but to convert those people to their version of evangelical Christianity.

Proselytise, evangelise, convert - these are the three words that I would view as NPOV. If they have negative connotations, that is because for many people, the process they describe has negative connotations.

I don't see why this euphemism should be used. It's just misleading and incorrect.

A section about the aftermath of "Operaction Auca" should be added. —Babelfisch 05:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem I was having was conveying the fact that this was the first time (protestant) missionaries had gone to the Huaorani. That meaning isn't carried in "they hoped to convert them for the first time". They hoped to be the first to "preach the Gospel" to the Huaorani. After thinking about it, I believe that "evangelize" carries that meaning acceptably ("they evangelized them for the first time") but I'm still not sure. Seems like preach/proclaim/present carries the meaning better. Maybe I'll try to restructure the sentence to avoid the problem. I'll think about why I consider "proselytize" to have a bad connotation; maybe I'm just off the wall on that one.

Re the aftermath section, I'll try to get that in shortly; I'm thinking about including the worldwide reaction to the news, the involvement of Elisabeth Elliot, Rachel Saint and Steve Saint, and ultimately the degradation of the Huaorani culture. That'll flow well into the "legacy" section, since pretty much everyone agrees (Christians & non-Christians) that Huaorani culture is falling apart. They just have differing interpretations on whether or not the overall impact has been good or bad (better to have reduced the number of the killings at the expense of the culture or not?) Can you think of anything else that ought to be in there? —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 06:25, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Babelfisch is right, the term convert or proselytise is the most accurate description of their activities. It is POV to sanitise what they actually did. While these words have negative connotations to some (such as myself) that is because they find the idea repugnant. Others find the idea wonderful, and for them the word has a positive connotation. Either way, it is the accurate word and should be used. Finally, it should not be whitewashed out of the article that in the eyes of the missionaries, the most important change they wanted to bring was conversion, and the other changes (which have been retrospectively increased in importance) were merely secondary to the missionaries. Sad mouse 01:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you not think "evangelize" an appropriate term? I'm not trying to whitewash anything, but I'm fairly confident that the word "proselytize" sounds negative to the vast majority of readers, whether they like the concept or not. "Evangelize", I feel, is more likely to sound negative to people who don't like the concept, and positive to those who do, which is the idea of neutral wording—no one gets insulted. Babelfisch felt that "evangelize" was acceptable, and I agree, so that's what in the article (see the third sentence of the lead). Do you disagree? And do you see other POV problems? --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 02:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

In general, no, I don't think evangelise is as accurate as convert. Convert: to cause to adopt a different religion, political doctrine, opinion, etc.: to convert the heathen., Evangelise: to preach the gospel to; to convert to Christianity. While the definitions are close, in my opinion the connotation (and most common usage) for evangelise is to preach to those within your culture, while convert is to preach to those alien to your culture. Still, convert vs evangelise is not a big deal. In general I think the article is quite well written, but the intro and end read rather POV. Part of that is going to be due to the bias in available sources, I understand, but why is the (relatively minor) effect on Christians given equal (if not more) time to the profound effects on the natives? Also the POV can be quite subtle in places: The other missionary in the river, before being speared, desperately reiterated friendly overtures and asked the Huaorani why they were killing them. You read it and go "poor guy", but how do we know what was said by any unbiased source? What language did he talk to the Huaorani in? Did he also have a gun drawn? I won't make any edits because I don't know enough about the topic and I am rather revolted by the missionaries, but I think this article would have been better if it had had an extensive peer review and significant contributions by multiple people, rather than your single (and excellent) effort. Sad mouse 03:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I had a tough time in particular with the section containing your example, since the only living witnesses were Huaorani, and the only people they would have recounted the story to were other missionaries (since they had no friendly contact with anyone else). I did my best to get info from non-missionary sources when possible (the stuff about the bullet and Nampa in that section is an example), but as far as I know there are no other sources for that particular part. It could be removed as unnecessary detail, I suppose.

As for the effect of Operation Auca, the term has a narrow definition—the work and deaths of the five men—and does not encompass all 20th century missionary efforts among the Huaorani. Most of the direct impact on Huaorani culture was due to work by subsequent missionaries. In her book, Laura Rival lambasts missionaries (particularly SIL and Rachel Saint) for pages but speaks of Operation Auca for only a paragraph or two (she even gets one of the names wrong—it's clear she didn't pay much attention to that part of the story). Obviously, Operation Auca opened the door, but the real impact was seen later (and is documented at Huaorani). On the other hand, it was the deaths of the five men (that is, "Operation Auca") that shook up the USA. Few paid attention to the long-term work of missionaries there. Does this help explain the discrepancy in amount of coverage? I agree 100% that more and better coverage is needed of the disintegration of Huaorani culture; I just think it should be in Huaorani or perhaps in a separate article. --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 04:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

This was big news at the time, as not being christian was viewed negatively by many. MakeChooChooGoNow 00:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Can someone check the second sentence? Particularly the occurrence of honey bees and urethras. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.68.125.13 (talk • contribs).

All fixed. --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 00:54, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Great read!

What a good article! I really enjoyed reading this. Kudos to the editors who whipped this into FA material. — BrianSmithson 02:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 02:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Missing information?

Could we have an enlarged Legacy section? Nyttend 04:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything in particular that you'd like to see? There's a bit more on the disintegration of Huaorani culture at Huaorani, but I feel this article should focus on the effect of Operation Auca specifically (that is, the work and death of the five men, not the work of later missionaries). --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 04:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added a reference to the "Christian Views" subsection referencing the inclusion of the story as a part of Steven Curtis Chapman's 2002 tour. Hope that helps. --LoadStar 06:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Other films and books

The article mentions that other films and books have been written on this subject. It seems to me that these should at least be listed at the end for complete coverage. Especially any that may related to other parts of the articles like films from within the christian community. Dalf | Talk 09:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Waorani

Overall, this seems quite a good article but I'm a little concerned with the coverage of the Waorani themselves. While I I think it is good that anthropological perspectives have been provided, it seems that in this article they are limited to the interpretation of the events — the image of the people on the other hand seems still very much in line with the traditional evangelical christian missionary perspective of a violent, primitive tribe.

Perhaps inadvertently, the article sketches a simplistic picture of the Waorani as a violent people: they consisted of three groups 'all mutually hostile', they were 'often engaging in vengeance-motivated killing of other Huaorani' ... carried out raids 'in extreme anger' ... and 'the circle of violence continued'. (Cf. also 'the natives seemed abnormally fearful' later on, note the 'abnormally'.) Most of the phrases above are sourced to Rival 2002 and Boster 2003, and I think they have a lot more to say than that. As a matter of fact, our own article Huaorani cites Robarchek & Robarchek (1997), a study providing more background to the 'circle of violence' among the Waorani. I think their analysis of the post-WOII breakdown of clan relationships (maybe due to diseases from external sources) would be worth mentioning here.

But more importantly perhaps, there is a lot more to say about the Waorani than the oft-noted violence. While I recognize that the main article on the Waorani has to be Waorani itself (i.e. we cannot treat them in detail here), it seems to me that this particular article could do better in painting a realistic and NPOV ethnographic picture of the Waorani at the time of Operation Auca. — mark ✎ 09:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)