Jacques Lizot

The 2010 documentary film Secrets of the Tribe by José Padilha revisited the topic and included interviews with men who had sexual encounters with Lizot.

Lizot published the Diccionario enciclopedico de la lengua yanomami publié (Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Yanomami Language) in 2004. He donated his field notes and documents pertaining to the Yanomami to the Social Anthropology Laboratory of the Collège de France in 2004.

The 2000 book Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney described a series of alleged ethical breaches by anthropologists studying the Yanomami, including those of Chagnon, Kenneth Good, and Lizot. The book detailed how Lizot "probably distributed more clothes and shotguns than any other individual among the Yanomami". According to Tierney, Lizot traded goods made from steel for sexual favours from young men— "two sex acts for a machete, six for a shotgun". The Yanomami word for anal intercourse became Lizo-mou, "to do like Lizot". Tierney also wrote that Lizot was briefly imprisoned in Venezuela for child molestation and repeatedly denounced.

Lizot had differences with the missionaries of Salesians of Don Bosco but helped them develop teaching materials for the Yanomami. Lizot returned to France in 1993.

Lizot studied the Yanomami language as well as the myths, material culture, and economy of the Yanomami. He wrote the 1976 book The Yanomami in the Face of Ethnocide and the 1985 book Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest. His 1985 book is descriptive and partly narrative. He has received criticism for disregarding the impact of European contact on the Yanomami.

Lizot was awarded the Académie Française's Prix Estrade-Delcros in 1976 for his book Le cercle des feux. Faits et dits des Indiens Yanomami.

Lizot travelled to Venezuela where he took part in a joint project of the French Atomic Energy Commission and the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 1968 to 1970. Lizot later returned to Venezuela and lived among the Yanomami people for over 20 years, with over 15 of those years at Tayari, a village near Bisaasi-teri. A Yanomami village was named for Lizot.

Jacques Lizot (born 1938) is a French anthropologist and linguist. He lived among the Yanomami people in Venezuela for over 20 years, documenting their culture and language. Among his writings are the 1976 book The Yanomami in the Face of Ethnocide, the 1985 book Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest and the 2004 Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Yanomami Language. The 2000 book Darkness in El Dorado and the 2010 documentary film Secrets of the Tribe included allegations that Lizot had traded goods for sexual favours from young boys. Lizot denied the allegations.

Jacques Lizot was born on 11 February 1938 in Montreuil, France. He studied at Sorbonne University, receiving a PhD in anthropology in 1967. He was an Orientalist and studied classical Arabic. His doctoral thesis concerned the rural sociology of an Algerian village, based on surveys conducted in 1966 in Mitidja. Lizot later expanded on the thesis in his 1973 monograph Metidja, un village algérien de l'Ouarsenis.