One of the tribe
‘Let’s get out of here,’ suggests Bruce Parry a few moments after his agent has introduced us in the ornately decorated lobby of a hotel off London’s Bayswater Road. I’m not surprised by his reluctance to stay inside: Parry is the unorthodox presenter of Tribe, the documentary TV series in which he immerses himself in the lives of the world’s most remote indigenous groups – eating, sleeping and living the way they do, taking part in their rituals and adopting as many of their customs as he can. So, on a gorgeous bright, sunny morning, we head across the road and find a quiet spot on the meticulously tended lawns of Kensington Gardens.
Wearing a blue T-shirt, a pair of jeans and trainers, Parry somehow doesn’t look quite right. I suppose I’d half expected him to turn up in a loin cloth. And he’s shorter than I’d imagined: considering some of the rather hair-raising situations he’s got himself into, one has the impression that the man is Herculean.
Parry’s just returned from a five-week trip filming for the third series of Tribe, staying with the Penan of Sarawak, one of the Malaysian states of Borneo. ‘During the 1980s and ’90s, the Penan were the iconic tribal group fighting against the destruction of the forest,’ he explains. ‘They became famous for fighting against the government, building these blockades to try to stop them from coming in to steal their land, so we went out there and just retold their story.’
I ask him how he copes with being wrenched from the depths of the jungle one week and thrown into the midst of a hustling, bustling city of eight million people the next. ‘I should get culture shock, but I don’t,’ he says. ‘I’ve only ever had culture shock once, when I was in Greenland for four months [participating in Blizzard: Race for the Pole, a reconstruction of Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole]. The landscape was just so boring, just white, white, white. No stimulation, no colour, no trees and no noise. All our senses had been completely nullified. Then we landed in Reykjavik and suddenly there was colour and noise… But usually I could literally be in New Guinea with cannibals one minute and on the Tube in Heathrow two days later and not blink an eye.’
During the past four years filming Tribe, Parry’s rarely stayed in one place for long. If he’s not trekking through the jungles of Borneo or learning how to stick fight in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, he’ll be working at the BBC offices in Cardiff, editing the many hours of film generated by his trips with series producer Steve Robinson. He explains wistfully that he hasn’t been home for more than a fleeting visit for ages and, at the time of our meeting, is looking forward to a break. So where does a man who spends most of the time travelling call home?
‘Well, I live in a farmhouse in the hills in the south of Ibiza,’ he says with a guilty smile. ‘I do love the outdoors, but I’m just as happy in the middle of London. I’m not just a country bumpkin, you know. I love clubbing in Shoreditch – it’s fine by me. I mean, I live in Ibiza for God’s sake!’
Military training
Parry was raised in the West Country with two brothers and a sister, and educated privately at Wells Cathedral School. At the age of 18, he followed his father into the military and joined the Royal Marines. His six-year career culminated in him being appointed as the youngest ever officer in charge of all physical aspects of the UK’s commando training, at the age of 23. ‘I was in Iraq just after the first [Gulf] war in 1990,’ he says, ‘doing humanitarian work, putting people back in their homes after [they had] been bulldozed by Saddam and also pushing Saddam south a little bit.’ It was ‘dull stuff really’.
After six years’ service, Parry traded in the camouflage for civvies and was accepted on a degree course at Loughborough University to study physical education and sports science, which ‘seemed like the obvious thing to do, because in the Marines you don’t get many qualifications you can use outside’.
But Parry is a restless sort of chap, and three years in one place was too much. ‘I got really bored at Loughborough, having come from the Marines,’ he says. ‘It was just a very different pace of life. So I got into expeditions and started leading groups to the jungles of Borneo, Sumatra, Sulawesi and places like that, doing conservation work for tigers and orangutans and turtles.’
Skills developed in the Marines, such as problem solving and leadership, proved handy for leading small expeditions to far-flung destinations. ‘In the Marines, you learn how to deal with these crisis situations in a stressful environment, and we had some proper adventures – snake bites up a mountain in the middle of nowhere and all sorts of things. It was good training for me and amazing fun.’
After four years on the road with a company called Trekforce, Parry returned to the UK in search of something new. ‘I looked at all my ex-Marine friends, who were all very successful, earning millions in the City or whatever. But I just had no ambition of putting on a suit,’ he says. Instead, he focused his energies on getting into TV, on the advice of a ‘really good mate’ who worked in the film industry.
At first, he wasn’t too comfortable. ‘I’d come from leading in the Marines,’ he says, ‘leading expeditions to remote places, always being in charge, and then suddenly I was making tea for art directors. I was like a general dogsbody.’ But he moved swiftly through the ranks, eventually working as a film location manager and later as assistant director on feature films, commercials and pop videos for the likes of the Chemical Brothers, the Manic Street Preachers, Blur and Mel B.
Despite the variety and excitement of these roles, he just couldn’t shake the overwhelming desire to travel and explore new places. So he decided to combine his experience of film and TV with that of travel and expeditions. ‘In the old days, I could have gone to the Royal Geographical Society and said, “I want to go to the South Pole.” If you had the balls to do it and could sell it well enough, they might have given you the money. But these days, you can’t do that because you don’t get any money unless you get sponsorship. And you only get sponsorship if you’ve got media backing. The only way to do that is to get into bed with TV.’
Parry’s life as a TV presenter began with Extreme Lives, which covered a journey he made with a friend, Mark Anstice, to New Guinea to ascend the 4,700-metre peak of Puncak Mandala. They succeeded and met an uncontacted tribe along the way. The film won awards around the world and led to the making of two children’s series for CBBC – Serious Desert and Serious Jungle. The first series of Tribe followed in 2005, the second in 2006 and the third will be shown this year.
For Tribe, Parry has stayed for a month at a time with 15 different indigenous groups in 11 countries. He’s dined with cannibals in West Papua; drunk water containing hyena dung and frogspawn with the Akie in Tanzania; and had his skin pierced with razor blades and thorns as part of a Suri ceremony in Ethiopia. With the Babongo in Gabon, he ingested large quantities of iboga, a potentially lethal hallucinogenic. ‘After eating it for about ten hours,’ he says, ‘I was high for three days, tripping strongly for about 12 hours.’
Aside from the doubtlessly fascinating and incredible stories he has to tell, many of which are published in his new book about the series, it’s the insight into the family values, social organisation, economics and cultures of some of the world’s most endangered peoples that have, for him, been the most valuable lessons gained from making Tribe; lessons by which he wishes he could live his own life.
‘It’s a mad irony,’ says Parry. ‘I’m learning all these wonderful things about society, family values, joie de vivre, free time, stress-free living and gender equality, and gaining all these wonderful insights into life. But I can’t actually implement any [in my own life] because I’ve become this weird kind of TV personality.’
Common humanity
There’s no doubt that Tribe makes compelling viewing. But aside from the obvious entertainment it offers, showing Parry accept every painful or humiliating challenge laid down before him, what is it trying to achieve and how does it really benefit the tribes involved? ‘Common humanity is what it’s all about,’ says Parry. ‘To humanise the tribes is the big thing.’
He explains that Tribe set out to engage a wider audience than had been captured by ‘fly-on-the wall’ documentaries on indigenous peoples. These were good, honest portrayals, he says, but they highlighted differences and kept their subjects at a distance through anonymous, God-like narration.
‘We thought we’d try a different slant by putting me in to highlight the similarities rather than glorify the differences,’ he says. ‘Yes, we have to get people’s attention. Yes, we have to show some of the fun moments in the programme because this is TV and we want to keep people’s attention. But we also want to show the human stuff, what they get up to on a daily basis, their conversations and also the changes that are threatening their existence.’
But you can’t help feeling a slight sense of discomfort watching Tribe. Surely engaging with indigenous peoples, let alone uncontacted peoples, purely for our entertainment is incredibly damaging? When I suggest this, Parry becomes defensive. ‘There’s a lot of preconceptions about what is the right or wrong way in dealing with change and with tribal people,’ he says. ‘I hear it every day. If you go to a completely untouched tribe, they don’t know about the outside world and you shouldn’t go in there. You should leave them alone. But if they’re already in a cash economy, they’re completely involved in the outside world and that’s got nothing to do with me. Only one group in the whole of Tribe wasn’t using cash [the Kombai in West Papua].
‘It’s a very complex story, and you have to remember there are lots of other forces of change going on now, such as miners, loggers, slave traders, whatever, and putting this in people’s living room is actually a very positive thing,’ explains Parry. ‘Trying to tell them what’s best for them isn’t right – it’s patronising. All our romantic notions just get in the way of what’s really important, which is what they want.’
A great deal of research goes into each month-long stay, and a carefully considered form of remuneration is provided in exchange for Parry’s bed and board. This, he explains, is based on the advice of local ‘fixers’ and anthropologists. In some cases, it’s hard cash, or a specifically requested gift. In others, school funds are set up. ‘You have to be so careful you don’t upset the balance of wealth in the community and you also have to be careful you don’t upset the surrounding communities,’ he says.
After travelling the world, drinking half-congealed cow’s blood with the Suri in Ethiopia, herding reindeer in Siberia with the Nenet, being declared a shaman with the Sanema people of Venezuela, and having his septum pierced with a bone by the Kombai of West Papua, how has the whole Tribe experience affected him? ‘Well, now I can drink water out of a puddle that would make an English dog sick,’ he says proudly, before briskly shaking my hand and heading off to his next appointment, with the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
October 2007
Wearing a blue T-shirt, a pair of jeans and trainers, Parry somehow doesn’t look quite right. I suppose I’d half expected him to turn up in a loin cloth. And he’s shorter than I’d imagined: considering some of the rather hair-raising situations he’s got himself into, one has the impression that the man is Herculean.
Parry’s just returned from a five-week trip filming for the third series of Tribe, staying with the Penan of Sarawak, one of the Malaysian states of Borneo. ‘During the 1980s and ’90s, the Penan were the iconic tribal group fighting against the destruction of the forest,’ he explains. ‘They became famous for fighting against the government, building these blockades to try to stop them from coming in to steal their land, so we went out there and just retold their story.’
I ask him how he copes with being wrenched from the depths of the jungle one week and thrown into the midst of a hustling, bustling city of eight million people the next. ‘I should get culture shock, but I don’t,’ he says. ‘I’ve only ever had culture shock once, when I was in Greenland for four months [participating in Blizzard: Race for the Pole, a reconstruction of Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole]. The landscape was just so boring, just white, white, white. No stimulation, no colour, no trees and no noise. All our senses had been completely nullified. Then we landed in Reykjavik and suddenly there was colour and noise… But usually I could literally be in New Guinea with cannibals one minute and on the Tube in Heathrow two days later and not blink an eye.’
During the past four years filming Tribe, Parry’s rarely stayed in one place for long. If he’s not trekking through the jungles of Borneo or learning how to stick fight in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, he’ll be working at the BBC offices in Cardiff, editing the many hours of film generated by his trips with series producer Steve Robinson. He explains wistfully that he hasn’t been home for more than a fleeting visit for ages and, at the time of our meeting, is looking forward to a break. So where does a man who spends most of the time travelling call home?
‘Well, I live in a farmhouse in the hills in the south of Ibiza,’ he says with a guilty smile. ‘I do love the outdoors, but I’m just as happy in the middle of London. I’m not just a country bumpkin, you know. I love clubbing in Shoreditch – it’s fine by me. I mean, I live in Ibiza for God’s sake!’
Military training
Parry was raised in the West Country with two brothers and a sister, and educated privately at Wells Cathedral School. At the age of 18, he followed his father into the military and joined the Royal Marines. His six-year career culminated in him being appointed as the youngest ever officer in charge of all physical aspects of the UK’s commando training, at the age of 23. ‘I was in Iraq just after the first [Gulf] war in 1990,’ he says, ‘doing humanitarian work, putting people back in their homes after [they had] been bulldozed by Saddam and also pushing Saddam south a little bit.’ It was ‘dull stuff really’.
After six years’ service, Parry traded in the camouflage for civvies and was accepted on a degree course at Loughborough University to study physical education and sports science, which ‘seemed like the obvious thing to do, because in the Marines you don’t get many qualifications you can use outside’.
But Parry is a restless sort of chap, and three years in one place was too much. ‘I got really bored at Loughborough, having come from the Marines,’ he says. ‘It was just a very different pace of life. So I got into expeditions and started leading groups to the jungles of Borneo, Sumatra, Sulawesi and places like that, doing conservation work for tigers and orangutans and turtles.’
Skills developed in the Marines, such as problem solving and leadership, proved handy for leading small expeditions to far-flung destinations. ‘In the Marines, you learn how to deal with these crisis situations in a stressful environment, and we had some proper adventures – snake bites up a mountain in the middle of nowhere and all sorts of things. It was good training for me and amazing fun.’
After four years on the road with a company called Trekforce, Parry returned to the UK in search of something new. ‘I looked at all my ex-Marine friends, who were all very successful, earning millions in the City or whatever. But I just had no ambition of putting on a suit,’ he says. Instead, he focused his energies on getting into TV, on the advice of a ‘really good mate’ who worked in the film industry.
At first, he wasn’t too comfortable. ‘I’d come from leading in the Marines,’ he says, ‘leading expeditions to remote places, always being in charge, and then suddenly I was making tea for art directors. I was like a general dogsbody.’ But he moved swiftly through the ranks, eventually working as a film location manager and later as assistant director on feature films, commercials and pop videos for the likes of the Chemical Brothers, the Manic Street Preachers, Blur and Mel B.
Despite the variety and excitement of these roles, he just couldn’t shake the overwhelming desire to travel and explore new places. So he decided to combine his experience of film and TV with that of travel and expeditions. ‘In the old days, I could have gone to the Royal Geographical Society and said, “I want to go to the South Pole.” If you had the balls to do it and could sell it well enough, they might have given you the money. But these days, you can’t do that because you don’t get any money unless you get sponsorship. And you only get sponsorship if you’ve got media backing. The only way to do that is to get into bed with TV.’
Parry’s life as a TV presenter began with Extreme Lives, which covered a journey he made with a friend, Mark Anstice, to New Guinea to ascend the 4,700-metre peak of Puncak Mandala. They succeeded and met an uncontacted tribe along the way. The film won awards around the world and led to the making of two children’s series for CBBC – Serious Desert and Serious Jungle. The first series of Tribe followed in 2005, the second in 2006 and the third will be shown this year.
For Tribe, Parry has stayed for a month at a time with 15 different indigenous groups in 11 countries. He’s dined with cannibals in West Papua; drunk water containing hyena dung and frogspawn with the Akie in Tanzania; and had his skin pierced with razor blades and thorns as part of a Suri ceremony in Ethiopia. With the Babongo in Gabon, he ingested large quantities of iboga, a potentially lethal hallucinogenic. ‘After eating it for about ten hours,’ he says, ‘I was high for three days, tripping strongly for about 12 hours.’
Aside from the doubtlessly fascinating and incredible stories he has to tell, many of which are published in his new book about the series, it’s the insight into the family values, social organisation, economics and cultures of some of the world’s most endangered peoples that have, for him, been the most valuable lessons gained from making Tribe; lessons by which he wishes he could live his own life.
‘It’s a mad irony,’ says Parry. ‘I’m learning all these wonderful things about society, family values, joie de vivre, free time, stress-free living and gender equality, and gaining all these wonderful insights into life. But I can’t actually implement any [in my own life] because I’ve become this weird kind of TV personality.’
Start the slideshow (5 pictures)
Common humanity
There’s no doubt that Tribe makes compelling viewing. But aside from the obvious entertainment it offers, showing Parry accept every painful or humiliating challenge laid down before him, what is it trying to achieve and how does it really benefit the tribes involved? ‘Common humanity is what it’s all about,’ says Parry. ‘To humanise the tribes is the big thing.’
He explains that Tribe set out to engage a wider audience than had been captured by ‘fly-on-the wall’ documentaries on indigenous peoples. These were good, honest portrayals, he says, but they highlighted differences and kept their subjects at a distance through anonymous, God-like narration.
‘We thought we’d try a different slant by putting me in to highlight the similarities rather than glorify the differences,’ he says. ‘Yes, we have to get people’s attention. Yes, we have to show some of the fun moments in the programme because this is TV and we want to keep people’s attention. But we also want to show the human stuff, what they get up to on a daily basis, their conversations and also the changes that are threatening their existence.’
But you can’t help feeling a slight sense of discomfort watching Tribe. Surely engaging with indigenous peoples, let alone uncontacted peoples, purely for our entertainment is incredibly damaging? When I suggest this, Parry becomes defensive. ‘There’s a lot of preconceptions about what is the right or wrong way in dealing with change and with tribal people,’ he says. ‘I hear it every day. If you go to a completely untouched tribe, they don’t know about the outside world and you shouldn’t go in there. You should leave them alone. But if they’re already in a cash economy, they’re completely involved in the outside world and that’s got nothing to do with me. Only one group in the whole of Tribe wasn’t using cash [the Kombai in West Papua].
‘It’s a very complex story, and you have to remember there are lots of other forces of change going on now, such as miners, loggers, slave traders, whatever, and putting this in people’s living room is actually a very positive thing,’ explains Parry. ‘Trying to tell them what’s best for them isn’t right – it’s patronising. All our romantic notions just get in the way of what’s really important, which is what they want.’
A great deal of research goes into each month-long stay, and a carefully considered form of remuneration is provided in exchange for Parry’s bed and board. This, he explains, is based on the advice of local ‘fixers’ and anthropologists. In some cases, it’s hard cash, or a specifically requested gift. In others, school funds are set up. ‘You have to be so careful you don’t upset the balance of wealth in the community and you also have to be careful you don’t upset the surrounding communities,’ he says.
After travelling the world, drinking half-congealed cow’s blood with the Suri in Ethiopia, herding reindeer in Siberia with the Nenet, being declared a shaman with the Sanema people of Venezuela, and having his septum pierced with a bone by the Kombai of West Papua, how has the whole Tribe experience affected him? ‘Well, now I can drink water out of a puddle that would make an English dog sick,’ he says proudly, before briskly shaking my hand and heading off to his next appointment, with the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
October 2007
