SAVAGES by Joe Kane (Vintage: $13,...

SAVAGES by Joe Kane (Vintage: $13, 274 pp., illustrated). Kane chronicles the efforts of the Huaorani Indians of Ecuador to preserve their traditional hunter-gatherer way of life despite the efforts of Christian missionaries to eradicate their ancestral culture and the environmental damage caused by American oil companies. He watched petroleum executives, politicians, missionaries and environmentalists debate the future of tribal homelands; when the Huaorani demanded the right to determine their own destiny, no one listened. Kane fears the skills that enabled the Huaorani to survive for millenniums in the Amazon jungles won’t help them resist modern greed and corruption. His first-person account of visiting their rain-forest homes is entertaining but ultimately depressing.