by Stephen Corry
April 25, 2019
With a lot remorse, I’ve to announce the current dying of Ken Taylor, who ran the Survival Worldwide workplace in Washington DC from the late Seventies for a few years. Ken was a (fervent) Scot, whose father was killed on the D-Day landings, one thing which was by no means talked about at dwelling. He took up kayaking as a lad in Scotland. That took him to Copenhagen to check structure within the Nineteen Fifties.
Greenland was a Danish colony, and Greenland was the land of the Inuit kayakers with whom Ken labored for a number of years, now as an anthropologist. Within the Sixties he went to work with Yanomami in Brazil and, with the Brazilian anthropologist, Alcida Ramos (they married, later divorced, she survives him), was one of many very first to push for Yanomami land rights.
He was a great buddy of the Yanomami, a fierce fighter, and a big thorn within the aspect of the Brazilian authorities and of these American anthropologists who didn’t just like the Indians (e.g. Napoleon Chagnon). After retiring from Survival, Ken lived in a commune in Virginia, USA. He wrote an internet weblog about his early experiences. The final replace was made simply 3 days earlier than he died. (Ken Taylor and “Cameron” are the identical individual).
Ken was a fantastic buddy with an unlimited humorousness. He was totally unafraid and lived a frugal and hermit-like existence, although he significantly loved whisky (Scotch, in fact!). We disagreed about some issues and had normally didn’t kind them out by the point it was 5am and the bottle had mysteriously emptied (evaporation?).
