Cabeceras Aid Project

Our Fieldworkers

Montetoni Cabeceras Aid Project relies primarily on our two founding fieldworkers, Lev Michael and Christine Beier, to carry out our organization's community-oriented projects in the Amazon Basin. Chris and Lev founded Cabeceras Aid Project in 1996 as a mechanism for developing sustainable, practically oriented, and mutually beneficial relationships with small indigenous Amazonian groups, as those groups face the challenges presented by increasing or sustained contact with other societies, cultures, and languages. Please read on to learn more about them.

In addition, Cabeceras is very proud that many of the language documentation projects that our organization has helped develop rely on team-based field research. We would like to acknowledge the following participating fieldworkers:

Iquito Language Documentation Project (2002 through 2007): Linguists (now Licenciada) Sisi Bautista Pizarro; Linguists Lynda (de Jong) Boudreault (now PhD); Mark Brown (now MA); Cynthia (Anderson) Hansen (now ABD); Taryne Hallett (now MA); Molly Harnisch (now MA) ; (now Licenciado) Edinson Huamancayo; I-wen Lai (now PhD); (now Licenciada) Karina Sullón Acosta; Briana (Grohman) Walther; and ethnomusicologist Kathryn Metz (now PhD);
Muniche Documentation Project (2009): Linguists Stephanie Farmer (now MA), Gregory Finley, Michael Roswell, and Lic. Karina Sullón Acosta;
Omagua Documentation Project (2003, 2004, 2006, 2010): Linguists Edinson Huamancayo (now Licenciado); Zachary O'Hagan; Clare Sandy; Tammy Stark; Briana (Grohman) Walther; and Vivian Wauters; and Katherine Clark.
Máíh+ki Project (2010): Linguists Stephanie Farmer, MA and Gregory Finley.

Cabeceras' Founding Fieldworkers Christine Beier and Lev Michael have carried out fieldwork for Cabeceras in Peru in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2010. They are planning their next fieldtrip from January to August 2011. Over the years, they have collaborated with individuals from the following indigenous communities: A?'+wa (Vacacocha), Dekyunawa (Muniche), Iquitu (Iquito), Katsakati (Andoa) Matsigenka, Nanti, Omagua, Sharanahua, and Yabashta (Yaminawa).

Language Documentation Please click the links here for various reports written by Chris and Lev about Cabeceras' work, as well as some of the products and results Cabeceras' fieldwork projects.

Lev Michael completed his PhD in the Linguistic Anthropology program at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2008, and has been an Assistant Professor in the Linguistics department at the University of California at Berkeley since August 2008. Click here to visit his faculty page and here to visit his blog Greater Blogazonia.

Chris interviewing a Nanti woman Christine Beier completed her PhD in the Linguistic Anthropology program at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2010. She is now a full-time volunteer fieldworker, project manarger, and grant writer for Cabeceras. Information on Chris' research, including access to her dissertation, is available here.

While at UT-Austin, Lev and Chris were involved in the development of The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, a web-based archive of sound recordings and texts from diverse indigenous languages of Latin America. Please visit the AILLA website!

Lev Michael: lev at cabeceras.org
Chris Beier: chris at cabeceras.org

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Camisea River 2006 Last updated: 18 September 2010