Primitives among us - The paradox of the Tasaday and other "lost tribes

Controversy over the authenticity of the primitive Tasaday tribe discovered in the Philippines in 1971, as well as the selective portrayal of other in digenous groups like the Yanomami in the Amazon, the !Kung San of South Afr ica, and the "hoaxing" of Margaret Mead in Samoa, point to the need to exam ine mass media portrayals of anthropological field studies. Portrayals of s o-called lost tribes are examined in this article in terms of anthropologis ts' struggle with their discipline's colonial past and the popularity of pr imitivity as a theme in global media discourse in which characteristics of ethnic cultures are unfairly reduced to a single dimension.