Peaceful Societies

Last Thursday, the Herbal Folklore Research Centre in India uploaded a 12 minute video to YouTube that describes the importance of preserving traditional healing practices and natural herbal preparations used by the Yanadi in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh. Other literature indicates, for example, that Yanadi healers may prescribe for children a powder made from the roots of a small shrub, the Malabar Nut, Adhatoda vasica . It should be taken orally, mornings and evenings for one week, to help recover from fevers.

The video opens with scenes of a Yanadi village, surrounded by the rolling green hills of the Eastern Ghats in southern Andhra Pradesh. While the Yanadi “have centuries of traditional knowledge … it is now on the verge of extinction,” we are told. The camera follows people gathering herbs in the country and preparing them for their uses.

The narrator explains that healers only use the herbal preparations after they perform appropriate rituals. A healer, experienced in treating the diseases of children, says that he uses the dried stomachs of porcupines mixed with herbs to help cure disorders of the human stomach and to foster general well being. The camera focuses on the man and some pupils that he is training in his craft.

Then, the video concentrates on a Yanadi woman healer talking about her practice. She is proud that she has not taken any modern medicines—so far. The narrator says that customary names and traditional practices are normally kept secret. The names are only spoken quietly to pupils who are learning the practice of healing. The male healer then tells us that he observes the proper formulas before he treats anyone.

The video discusses changes that are occurring: invasions of industries, mining ventures, and forest removal, all of which are having a huge impact on traditional Yanadi uses of the land. These destructive forces prevent healers from entering the forests and gathering their plant materials. In fact, only some people from the Yanadi communities are now given permission by the government to enter the forests to collect non-timber forest resources. The government denies permission for older, experienced healers to enter the remaining forests or to collect plants for their rituals.

These factors are changing Yanadi lifestyles dramatically, the video claims. “The government policies are weaning them away from the forest,” one man says. The narrator explains that changes in the natural environment have forced the Yanadi to modify their economic activities, to become farm laborers in order to survive.

The closing two minutes of the video explain the importance of preserving the traditions of the Yanadi and the work of the Herbal Folklore Research Centre (HFRC), which is trying to help. These advocates of the tribal society have published monographs and articles in international, national, and local media to let people know what is happening.

The organization stresses the importance of health knowledge, the conservation of resources, and the role of healers in providing primary health care. HFRC has also trained the Yanadi in ways to increase the shelf life of their herbal products. The video closes with the statement that the “bio-cultural heritage of the Yanadi healers is at stake.”

Perhaps coincidentally, the Deccan Chronicle carried a news story last week about a research project carried out in the forests of Nellore District to catalog and describe the medicinal plants used by Yanadi healers.

Researchers from the National Institute of Indian Medicinal History and from the Sri Venkateswara University indicated that people living in those remote, forested regions have no access to modern medicines, so they use traditional herbal preparations to help treat their ailments.

The scientists appear to have taken the Yanadi healing practices seriously. G.P. Prasad, one of the researchers, described the project. He said that his team has documented not only the herbs the Yanadi use but also their medicinal properties. The catalog they prepared “will help us to study further … individual plants to find out whether they are of real medicinal value, and if so, in what dosage and in what form [they] should be taken,” he said.

The news story summarizes the characteristics of the 61 plant species gathered by the Yanadi and the uses the healers make of them, such as for menstrual problems, asthma, insomnia, constipation, fractures, cuts, wounds, eye diseases, indigestion, snake bites, ear aches, and so on. The full report, titled “Ethnobotanical Studies in Rapur Forest Division of Nellore District in Andhra Pradesh,” by M. Neelima and others, was issued in January 2011.

The report provides fascinating details about the uses of the plants, such as the Malabar nut mentioned earlier. For another example: a leaf powder from Ammannia baccifera is “administered orally for every one hour up to 10 hours [which] works as an antidote for scorpion sting.” Or, for Andrographis elongata: “Leaf juice with 2 to 4 drops of infant urine dropped into ear controls earache.” The report is available on the Web.

Many Amish people live in Holmes and Wayne counties, Ohio, a peaceful region of rolling farmland normally associated with horses, buggies, bird watchers, and an absence of crime. However, over 150 Amish gathered recently in a barn near Millersburg, the county seat of Holmes County, to learn about the latest criminal craze that has invaded their rural neighborhoods. Meth labs.

Or, correctly, methamphetamine labs. An illegal drug that has taken over other bucolic corners of America, the chemical curse among the corn fields threatens the health and lives of people in rural regions. It is no longer a habit dominated by street corner drug peddlers. Rural people are beginning to take up the production and selling of the substance.

There is no record, as yet, of any Amish becoming involved, but that is no guarantee that they won’t. A news report last week described in detail the problem of criminals cooking their products and getting other local people involved. It’s a spreading scourge, evidently.

Paul Miller, director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Berlin, Ohio, said, “It’s a jolt to the stereotype of the quaint, rural community that we have in Amish country. It’s a jolt to our own values. We don’t condone it. We don’t want to see it happen.” Much as he may not want it, he admits that the problem has arrived.

Holmes and Wayne counties are only a half hour drive from Summit County, where Ohio’s rural meth production began to thrive about 2004. That year, authorities busted 126 meth labs in that county, the highest in the state. Some people still believe that illegal narcotics problems are confined to cities, which have dealt with hard drugs such as crack cocaine for decades. It is difficult to accept that rural areas are becoming similarly infested with such issues.

Over the past year, police have raided eight meth labs in Holmes County, a small figure compared to Summit County, but worrisome since it is much higher than ever before. One meth lab was discovered less than 1,000 feet from an elementary school. The superintendent of that school system decried the situation. “We’re a family-oriented community,” he said. “It shows that these things can crop up anywhere.”

The news story indicates that the reason for the rapid spread of meth in rural areas is that the drug is now quite easy to prepare. Not long ago, dealers had to work for hours preparing their chemicals and cooking the ingredients. Now, the drug is much easier and quicker to make, right in bottles. The dealers prepare the drugs next to their vehicles, then discard the remains into the roadside ditch or nearby cornfield.

Ed Miller, an Amish contractor from Apple Creek, is quite concerned about the development. He participated in the meeting with law enforcement people. “The devil doesn’t care where we live, whether in the city or in the country,” he said to the reporter as he explained his concerns about the rising use of drugs among his neighbors.

An intriguing journal article last fall examined the Semai of Peninsular Malaysia and the Mardu of Western Australia in the light of values theory to search for the structures, attitudes and relationships that help form peaceful societies. Marta Miklikowska and Douglas P. Fry came to some interesting conclusions after examining the two societies.

Marta Miklikowska The authors, both of whom are at the Ǻbo Akademii University in Finland, open their work by describing the implications of values research, particularly the theories of Shalom H. Schwartz. His theories indicate that the values people hold are more than just abstract expressions of idealistic behaviors. Rather, they express people’s basic needs, they provide goals, and they motivate individuals to take effective actions in handling conflicts.

The values theory of Schwartz, the authors explain, holds that there are ten different value types that can be organized into two different dimensions. Miklikowska and Fry spend most of their effort in contrasting self-enhancing values with their polar opposite, self-transcending values. Self-enhancement values focus the individual on striving for power, domination, selfish pursuits, and personal achievements. Self-transcendence values focus people on equality, caring for others, concern for nature, appreciation of diversity, and the general welfare.

“This body of research shows that values create a motivational context in which aggression and violence are either facilitated or inhibited within and among groups,” the authors tellingly write (p.126). Self-transcending values correlate positively with promoting peace, cooperative behaviors, altruism, and pro-social views on many issues, and negatively with anti-social behaviors such as dominating others, authoritarian actions, and aggressiveness.

Douglas P.Fry The point of the study conducted by Miklikowska and Fry was to see how self-transcending values contribute to peacefulness in two different parts of the world—Peninsular Malaysia and the Western Desert of Australia. They start with the Semai, a society in Malaysia which is also profiled in some detail in this website.

The Semai treasure their affiliating values—cherishing others, believing in harmony, and opposing fighting. Their egalitarian beliefs, essential aspects of their affiliating values, are important to them. They are constantly concerned about nurturing others and satisfying their needs. And, most interesting, the Semai seek to avoid any actions that might arouse emotions, since they associate such arousal with possible conflicts, which they try to avoid. They suppress emotional outbursts and deny feelings of anger.

Further, the Semai are fanatics about resolving conflicts. If they have difficulties that they cannot resolve by interpersonal means, they conduct a becharaa’, a public meeting that Robarchek has described in a number of publications, one of which is available in this website. These meetings serve to diffuse conflicts by, literally, talking them to death—settling matters so they cannot be brought up again. One could wish the authors had evaluated the research published in 2009 by Edo and others which proposes a different perspective on Semai conflict resolution strategies. The article by Edo et al. indicates that the formal Becharaa’ meetings are recent innovations, derived from Malay precedents that were not native to Semai tradition. Doubtless the Edo et al. piece was published after Miklikowska and Fry submitted their article for publication. A minor point.

The authors argue that Semai children, raised in an environment where they never experience or witness aggression or violence, have no way of learning how to be aggressive. The children’s image of the world is a nonviolent one, a pattern that is repeated, of course, in other peaceful societies, where children can only model harmonious behavior if that is all they witness.

Miklikowska and Fry also describe the existence of a peace system in Peninsular Malaysia, particularly among the so-called “Orang Asli” (aboriginal) societies. The Semai and the other aboriginal societies have no history of going to war with one another, a pattern that occurs in other parts of the world—the Upper Xingu valley in Brazil, the Inuit of Greenland, the Nilgiri Hills of India, the Western Desert of Australia, and so on.

The Semai and their neighbors, the Batek, the Chewong, the Jahai, and perhaps others, do not, and have not, fought with one another. They have a very long tradition of coexisting nonviolently—part of their self-transcending values.

The authors provide comparable details about the Mardu, an Aboriginal society of Australia’s Western Desert. While they are not as peaceful as the Semai—they do fight at times—the Mardu are able to effectively diffuse conflicts, limit most aggressiveness, and make sure that warfare is only symbolic in nature. They emphasize sharing and cooperation in their elaborate kinship networks.

The essence of their belief system is absolute equality, though the authors qualify that. The Mardu have a more pronounced gender and age hierarchy than the Semai, but leadership is ritualized and is not at all authoritarian. When they do fight, the fighting is conducted mostly as a public drama, a ritualized enactment consisting of posturing and hostilities that permits very little bloodshed.

Though very different from the Orang Asli peoples, the Western Australian Aboriginal societies also have a peace system that mostly prevents outbreaks of warfare. The nature of their environment—an extremely harsh, unforgiving desert—means that the best way people can survive is to have no defined boundaries and to freely move into the territories of others when drought or famine threatens. Peace serves them all.

The authors conclude that self-transcending values contribute to peacefulness in and among societies in several clearly definable ways. For one thing, they argue, these values inhibit violent behavior. This can be seen clearly in the details they present about both the Semai and the Mardu. Aggressiveness is incompatible with the values of both, which favor, instead, cooperation and nurturance.

Secondly, self-transcending values contradict and diminish violent responses to conflicts. Instead, those values favor toleration, avoidance, and restraint. Thirdly, self-transcending values promote self control and the denial of anger. Miklikowska and Fry wisely conclude that “the ethnographic data on the nonviolent Semai and their equally peaceable Malaysian neighbors as well as on the nonwarring Mardu and their neighbors suggest that self-transcendent values contribute to both internal and external peace” (p.133).

This fascinating article is available for purchase by individuals who do not have access to a library which subscribes to the journal Beliefs and Values. Highly recommended.

Miklikowska, Marta and Douglas P. Fry. 2010, “Values for Peace: Ethnographic Lessons from the Semai of Malaysia and the Mardu of Australia.” Beliefs and Values (2, no.2): 124-137

In a 1989 article, Willis describes how the agriculture of the Ufipa Plateau, where the Fipa people live in southwestern Tanzania, may have been a factor in helping foster their peacefulness. Finger millet, he writes, was the staple crop. The people kept large numbers of cattle, chickens, goats, pigeons, and sheep, with the numbers of cattle being the major mark of their wealth.

The fact that the plateau is virtually lacking in forest cover has precluded the possibility of nomadic, slash and burn agriculture, which was common among the other Bantu peoples in the region. As a substitute, the Fipa were forced to develop a unique style of agriculture based on raised-bed compost mounds. Willis explains that their agricultural system was six times as productive as that practiced by their neighbors, but it required the people to live in stable, long-term villages. Their peaceful culture of intense sociability may have developed as a result.

The problem is that Willis did his field work among the Fipa from 1962 – 1964, with a return visit in 1966. Are they still as peaceful as they were 45 years ago? Is their agricultural technology as productive as it was then?

A recent article in one of the major African news sources, Allafrica.com, does not answer the first question, but it does provide some significant insights into what is still the major economic activity of the region—agriculture. The article focuses mostly on numbers, such as the tons of fertilizers used and the tons of crops produced, for two regions of southwestern Tanzania, Rukwa and Mbeya. Most of the traditional Fipa territory is now encompassed by the Rukwa Region of the country, between Lakes Rukwa and Tanganyika, but the northwestern edge of the Mbeya Region also includes what was a part of Ufipa.

The article indicates that the two regions are the breadbasket of Tanzania, producing surplus food crops to help feed people in poorer regions of the country. While the two regions have excellent soils and a good climate for crop production—the natural resources are outstanding—it is clear that the Fipa are in the process of giving up their raised-bed composting style of farming.

The Regional Commissioner for the Mbeya Region, Mr. John Mwakipesile, describes how hard the farmers work for their crop successes. They have seen their lives improve, he says, as they continue to invest in their farms. “People have been able to send their children to school, cater for their health when they fall sick, build modern houses, buy cars and even open up businesses by using money generated from the agricultural produce,” he said.

Mr. Daniel Ole Njoolay, Regional Commissioner for the Rukwa Region, expresses a similar opinion. Everyone is very hardworking—people who don’t work hard on their farms are looked down upon as outcasts, an attitude that is passed down through the generations. He added, “we have never experienced [a] food shortage or hunger in [the] Rukwa Region.”

The advent of high technological inputs into food production has clearly had an impact on the Fipa. The article cites many figures—growth, growth, growth—from both areas, but it is simpler to concentrate on just those for the Rukwa Region. The acreage under cultivation in Rukwa grew from 68,440 in 2005 to 109,388.7 last year, according to Mr. Njoolay. The number of power tillers increased from three in 2005 to 225 last year, and the number of tractors from 54 to 85. The usage of “improved seeds” grew from 323.6 tons in 2005 to 4,026 tons last year. Farmers in Rukwa used 5,173 tons of fertilizers in 2005, and 18,644.5 tons last year.

The figures go on. The number of cattle dips increased from 13 to 36. In 2005, Rukwa had 20,191 hectares of irrigated land, which grew to 27,136 hectares last year. And finally, for the region, the harvest of food crops increased from 1,058,377.5 tons to 1,969,873.8 tons over the period 2005 through 2010. The article reports similar increases for the Mbeya Region.

Allafrica.com concludes that the hard work, combined with the excellent growing conditions, foster excellent crops for the people of that part of Tanzania. It is not clear, however, if the people of the plateau have completely abandoned their traditional, raised-bed, composting gardening techniques. An anthropologist needs to replicate the field work of Willis a half-century ago on the Ufipa Plateau to see how these the changes in agricultural technology may be affecting social conditions.

A periodic census is supposed to maintain the peace among different groups in a state, to make sure that political realities are periodically balanced with population distributions. But sometimes the results are controversial.

The Leh District of Ladakh was stunned a month ago when the preliminary results of the latest national census of India were released. Leh had the worst gender imbalance of any district in India. In a nation famed for female foeticide, what was going on in Ladakh? In that district, the woman has always had a strong, important position in the home and in society. The figures released by the census department showed that the ratio of females to males had dropped, from 823 to every 1,000 males in 2001, to 583 today.

People in Ladakh were upset, and reacted immediately. Rigzin Spalbar, Chief Executive Councilor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), dismissed the figures. “We are a small population and we know each and every village. There is no gender bias here and female foeticide is non-existent.” He also pointed out that more girls than boys attend schools in the district.

Census officials reacted to the criticism. One argued that female foeticide was picking up in the state. However, the figures from the census seemed to question that. Girls aged 0 – 6 constitute 10.59 percent of the total female population of the district, a far higher ratio than the 6.54 percent of the male population who are boys of the same age. Farooq Ahmad Factoo, director of census operations for the entire state, said that his job was simply to provide the figures, not to interpret them.

From the beginning of the controversy, everyone suspected that there probably were two major factors skewing the population figures so dramatically in favor of males. One is the fact that there is a heavy presence of army personnel in the district, most of whom are men. Those who are stationed in Leh District are counted as residents there at the time of the census. The other suspected cause of the huge discrepancy is the possibility that many more women are studying outside the district, in the major cities of India, than men.

On Tuesday last week, some of the census officials began to modify their positions. Dr. Farooq Pakhtu admitted to the press that the stationing of para-military and defense personnel in Leh District was a major factor in making Ladakh appear to have so many more males than females.

Dr. Sonam Wanchuk, Executive Councilor for LAHDC, provided very different figures for the population of the state. His figures indicate that Leh District has 53,475 females and 51,909 males.

Dr. Rigzin Zora, State Tourism Minister, also disputed the census figures. He argued that women have more power and rights in Ladakh than in the rest of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. “We have women in all spheres of life, including Air Force, IAS, Army and other vocations where males generally dominate,” he fumed.

The various irritated officials might have cited the extensive anthropological literature about Ladakh, such as Norberg-Hodge’s book Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, or R. S. Mann’s The Ladakhi: A Study in Ethnography, both of which describe the strong position of women in traditional Ladakhi society. While polyandry is now illegal, the traditional Ladakhi home revolved around the woman. She held the economic control of the household, and with several husbands, often brothers, she had a dominant position sexually as well.

Despite this latest news, some of the census officials were not about to accept the criticism. They were just doing their job. A news report last Wednesday indicated that Farooq Ahmad Factoo defended the department. “We count the army and the paramilitary personnel as per their presence in an enumeration block. This is standard practice throughout the country,” he told the press. “I am not authorized to pass comments on why the sex ratio is low in Leh. My duty is to record and communicate what the figures confirm.”

Philippine soldiers are harassing the Buid and the other Mangyan villagers, according to a series of news reports last week, but the indigenous mountain peoples are reacting by reciting their peaceful poetry, called ambahan, to assert their unity and sense of determination.

Out of the seven (or some sources say eight) Mangyan societies that survive in the mountainous interior of Mindoro in the Philippines, two, the Buid and the Hanunoo in the southern end of the island, still use an ancient written script to help preserve their poetry. According to Thomas Gibson’s article in the 1990 book The Anthropology of War, edited by Jonathan Haas, the primary purpose of the script is to preserve poetry, which is often used by young Buid men to court young women. Instead of trying to conquer women through force and violence, the Buid recite love poems to try to win their favor.

A 1981 book by Antoon Postma describes the uses of the poetry among the Buid as well as the Hanunoo. These two societies speak mutually unintelligible languages, but to some extent both groups understand the same words of the formal, stylized poetry. While the other Mangyan groups farther to the north do not preserve writing systems, they also recite ambahans, much as the Buid and the Hanunoo do, for such purposes as expressing ideas, describing feelings, forming harmonious relationships—and making love. Parents may use the poems to educate their children; visitors may use them to gently ask for food; and relatives may recite ambahans to say goodbye after a visit.

Of course, the Buid do not say everything poetically. A man coming home from working in his fields would not use an ambahan to express his hunger to his wife. As Postma writes, “he will express the feeling of his stomach in plain and clear language.” But he will use the ambahan on special occasions when he needs to say unpleasant, delicate, or embarrassing, things. A boy might use plain language to express his love for a girl—that he will love her forever—but it will sound much better if he can say so with an ambahan. Many examples of the poems are reprinted on the website of the Mangyan Heritage Center.

All of this made the news last week in a series of four articles published by the Philippine alternative news magazine Bulatlat.com. The first in the series of four, an overview, was titled “A Difficult Life for Mangyans.” The second concentrates on the mining industry, which is threatening human lives in the mountains. The third article describes the ways soldiers are terrorizing the people, while a fourth summarizes the series. The four articles suggest that there is some hope for the Mangyan peoples because of their growing feelings of having a common cause. Their newly forming sense of unity, and the organizations they are establishing, may give them the power to achieve their rights.

Pastor Marcelo Carculan, chair of the group Hagibbat, an acronym based on the names of the seven indigenous societies and himself a Mangyan, describes the discrimination he and the other members of his village have experienced from Filipinos. For instance, an outside organization, San Miguel Corp, offered the people of his village P150 (US$3.50) per kilo for cassava roots, but in the end they only paid them P1.50 per kilo.

On April 15 and 16, the articles point out, 500 people from all seven Mangyan societies gathered to celebrate Mangyan Day, hosted by Pastor Carculan in his village, Abra de Ilog, at the northern tip of Mindoro. While representatives spoke seven different languages and came from seven different cultures, they were united in their opposition to the loss of their lands—and united in their determination to defend their rights.

The representatives gathered together, chewed betel nuts, and shared their ritualistic ambahans as symbols of their unity. A blog post from July 2009 indicates that reciting stories poetically remains an important aspect of life in the Mangyan villages. But the uses of the poems are changing. To some extent, the traditional content of the ambahan is giving way to newer ideas and concerns—problems with soldiers, mining, logging, the loss of lands, the destruction of forests. But the older uses also remain important.

One person at the Mangyan Day celebration explained his ambahan song: “We, Mangyans avoid problems but now, it cannot be avoided. The only solution is unity.” A Buid representative sang—the poets chant their thoughts—about the importance of fighting a dam, while a representative from another group indicated, in his ambahan, how the people plan to defend their lands.

The representatives did more than recite poetry. They prepared and signed a Mangyan Declaration, a statement opposing proposed mining operations. The declaration named government officials whom the people feel are guilty of discriminating against them. It called for an end to aggressive development projects, and it requested the repeal of laws that permit the desecration and expropriation of their lands. According to Pastor Carculan, “mining and other projects divide us, like the fingers in our hands. It is only when we clench our fist that we would be able to win against threats to our existence.”

But government officials are aware of the threat posed by popular organizations. Five days before the planned Mangyan Day, soldiers visited Marcelo Carculan to ask about Hagibbat and the upcoming activities. On April 15th, they carried through. A truckload of soldiers from the 80th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army arrived at 7:00 AM, brandishing their high powered rifles in front of the growing crowd.

Some attendees were intimidated, as the soldiers had doubtless intended, and simply melted away to avoid any confrontations. But many stayed, discussed their issues, and wrote their declaration expressing their newly found unity.

The four Bulatlat.com articles, about 4,500 words, provide a lot of details about the problems all the Mangyan societies are enduring. The third article relates stories about soldiers intimidating villagers, including some nasty incidents in a Buid community. The second gives background about the ways government elites are expropriating Mangyan lands and selling off the mining and drilling rights to large international corporations. Power dams threaten Buid communities. Throughout the series, the reader is confronted with depressing stories about Mangyan villagers experiencing discrimination from the lowland, Christian, Filipino peoples. But the Buid, and the other Mangyans, are relying on their traditions to help them build hope for a just and peaceful future.

Although medicine and peacefulness are quite separate issues for most of the world, in some small-scale societies, such as the Paliyan, traditional healers and botanical preparations still help maintain physical, cultural, and social health. A detailed article describing the healing plants used in some Paliyan villages of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, provides some interesting insights into their medicinal beliefs.

The authors, J. Karunyal Samuel and B. Andrews, from the Department of Botany at the American College in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, were able to earn the trust of the residents in Pachalur and Periyur villages, Dindigul District of Tamil Nadu state. Paliyans live in some of the hamlets in those two villages. As a result of their field work, the authors were able to catalog 82 different plants and describe the uses the people make of them.

For instance, Caesalpinia decapetala, known as Mysore thorn, Mauritius thorn, or cat’s claw, is a modest-sized, evergreen, tropical thorn shrub that originated in India and has spread in the tropics worldwide. It has been introduced in many locations, where it spreads through seed dispersal and branch tip rooting. An aggressive, invasive plant, it forms dense, impenetrable thorn shrub barriers. The Paliyan, however, appreciate the fact that they can make a paste from the leaves to treat fevers.

Many familiar plants that are listed in the catalog are interesting due to their uses by the Paliyan and the other rural inhabitants in those hamlets. Allium cepa, the common onion, is used by the indigenous village peoples for sore throats: the bulb is peeled and chewed. The boiled bulbs of Allium sativum, garlic, are taken at night for high blood pressure. Aloe vera, a well-known succulent plant, is used to treat infertility and baldness. A pulp from the leaves is applied overnight to bald heads. The article does not indicate how well it works.

Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea)

The Paliyan use Calotropis gigantea, the crown flower, a tropical shrub with spectacular blossoms, for inflammations. They apply a paste from the plant on affected areas overnight. The plant is commonly found in temple compounds in India, where it is known as Madar. It was supposedly strung into leis and worn by Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii as a symbol of her royalty.

While the medicinal uses for plants have normally been kept secret by local healers and passed along within families, the authors found that, once they got to know the residents of the hamlets, the people were quite forthcoming about their traditional knowledge. The tribal peoples became eager to provide information about plant uses to the study group.

Samuel and Andrews point out that, for the most part, the villagers still use the medicinal plants daily for health purposes. Many of the plants are either found commonly in the areas surrounding the villages or in deeper forest environments, though some are rare.

The authors did note that younger tribal people show less interest in the healing plants than their elders do. Also, alarmingly, the young showed less concern about preserving the biodiversity and the traditional knowledge of their communities. Perhaps they are immersed in the wonders of the outside world through the technical devices in an information center opened in Pachalur in 2007.

A newspaper article about the new information center indicated that it included six computers, mobile and landline telephone services, radio, television, and multimedia facilities. The community is running the facility as a business, hoping, according to the newspaper, “to make available the benefits of new technology, particularly information and communication, to the poor and downtrodden.”

The new center provides such basic information as marketing news for farmers and local businesses. The article by Samuel and Andrews on local traditional botanical medicines in Tamil Nadu is available as a PDF on the Web, so the young Paliyans, even if they don’t learn from their elders, can still read about their traditions on their community computers.

Samuel, J. Karunyal and B. Andrews. 2010. “Traditional Medicinal Plant Wealth of Pachalur and Periyur Hamlets, Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu.” Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 9(2): 264-270.

Jean Briggs’ epochal book Never in Anger focused on a small band of Inuit living on the land just south of the village of Gjoa Haven, in Arctic Canada, and their complete intolerance for any expressions of anger. One day, when some outsiders acted in a disrespectful fashion toward their hosts, the Utkuhikhalik Inuit—Briggs’ friends—she briefly flashed anger at the visitors. Her sudden expression of emotion so upset the Inuit that they ostracized her for weeks afterwards.

Since Briggs’ Inuit friends often went for supplies to Gjoa Haven, anyone who has been affected by the beauty of her book will notice when the community makes the news—as it did this past week. Gjoa Haven announced that construction will soon begin on a 1,500 square foot visitors’ center, to be completed by the summer of 2012.

Gjoa Haven and the Kitimeot Inuit Association announced that they have awarded a contract to Arctic Canada Construction, Ltd., to design and build the new center. They expect it to showcase the crafts, arts, and culture of the Gjoa Haven region.

Ed Stewart, Gjoa Haven economic development officer, said, “the community is excited. This is something they’ve wanted for a long time and are looking forward to the benefits it will bring.” Nunavut Tunngavik, Inc., has joined Kitimeot Inuit Association in providing funding for the project. The Nunavut Territory’s Community Economic Development fund will provide long term management funding.

Gjoa Haven had only 110 people in 1961, a couple years before Briggs arrived to live on the land nearby with the Utkuhikhalik band. But as the Inuit moved permanently into settled towns over the years, the community has grown—to 1,064 in 2006. The town has a local airport, and a ship arrives annually with supplies.

It was named by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, after his ship Gjøa. In 1903, his ship became trapped by the ice in the harbor, so he and his men stayed there for two years, exploring locally and learning survival techniques from the Inuit. The knowledge he gained proved important for his successful race to the South Pole a few years later. Some present day residents of the area claim to be descendants of Amundsen or his men.

In addition to the local arts, crafts, and culture, hopefully the new visitors’ center will include a mention of Briggs’ book and its importance to the study of peaceful societies—and the visit of Amundsen and his men.

The news about Tristan da Cunha last month was dire. A huge ship had crashed on a reef near Tristan, threatening not only thousands of sea birds but the economy and social traditions of the Tristan Islanders as well.

Tristan Islands map On March 16th, the MV Oliva, a 75,000 ton bulk carrier taking a load of soy beans from Brazil to Singapore, crashed head on into the rocky coast of Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan Group, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of the main island of Tristan da Cunha. Nightingale and nearby islands had millions of nesting sea birds. Some were soon covered with oil that escaped from the wreck.

Most of the news reports since March have focused on efforts to clean oil off the birds. Sean Burns, the Administrator of Tristan da Cunha, issued a comprehensive report last Thursday summarizing the status of many of the issues facing the Islanders as a result of the shipwreck.

Apparently, cleaning efforts for the rockhopper penguins and the other seabirds coated with oil have continued, and will go on after the current flotilla of ships leaves. The lead for the cleaning is being provided by a nonprofit seabird rehabilitation center in Cape Town called the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB). Burns writes that the SANCCOB team is planning to leave at the end of this week, April 22 or 23, but he indicates that there may be a possibility of extending their stay.

The SANCCOB website says, in an undated news post, that 3,718 oiled penguins have been captured and transferred to Tristan for cleaning. Fortunately, most of the seabirds had just finished raising their young and many had left their rookeries by the time of the wreck. The birds will not return to the Tristan Islands until August to begin the next breeding cycle. If it had happened a few weeks earlier, the disaster for the wildlife could have been much worse.

Burns writes that five ships are, or were when he wrote, anchored off Tristan—a record, he feels. One of the ships has a helicopter which has flown over Nightingale and the other islands. There was little evidence of oil around Inaccessible Island, one of the world’s major seabird sanctuaries, but there was still a lot of it around Nightingale and its nearby islets. The wreckage of the ship has disappeared beneath the waves, but Mr. Burns has been told that as it breaks up, the wreck will probably continue to release pockets of oil into the seas. Burns indicates he is eager for the storms which sweep the region to clean away the oil and soy spilled from the wreckage.

Workers are trying to clean the beaches on the islands, but they are apparently not using any chemicals or dispersants. They are using high-pressure hoses with warm sea water. Any oil they can successfully clean off rocks is being bagged and removed to Cape Town. None of it, he claims, will be allowed to get back into the water.

The fishery around Nightingale and Inaccessible has been closed. Fishery samples are being sent to Cape Town for analysis. Mr. Burns writes that he is working with the owner of the fishing operation, Ovenstone, a Cape Town firm, plus insurers to resolve the insurance issues.

He also says that all islanders who have pitched in to help during the crisis should be continuing to keep records of the time they are spending, since the insurers should be compensating people for their labor. He will be seeking compensation for possible longer term declines in the lobster fishery as a result of the shipwreck.

The Tristan Islanders are quite used to dealing with maritime disasters. News reports earlier indicated that they immediately took in the seamen from the sunken vessel, as they have done for generations when ships wreck on their shores. Burns writes, in that spirit, “many thanks to all of you for pulling together during this crisis. The response from the community has been fantastic.”

This past week, Nubians expressed many different points of view about their hopes for the future, including whether or not they necessarily want to resettle along the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt. But at least their opinions are, at times, being considered. At other times they are still ignored.

Mohamed ElBaradei

Early in the week, the internationally known diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei said that he will be focusing on the Nubians soon, when he begins campaigning for president. The former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, ElBaradei told a meeting of young activists that the demands of the Egyptian Revolution of January had not yet been met. He specified that when the campaigning begins for a new President of Egypt, he plans to focus on marginalized peoples, such as the Bedouins and the Nubians.

Later in the week, another news report indicated that the ruling cabinet had decided to grant lands to Nubians in the Toshka Project of Southwestern Egypt. Some Nubians felt the decision was a victory, while others decried it as a betrayal.

The Toshka Project is a massive water diversion scheme in Southern Egypt. A huge water pumping facility, named, not surprisingly, the Mubarak Pumping Station, was completed in 2005 on Lake Nasser, the reservoir created by the massive Aswan High Dam. The pumps move over a million cubic meters of water per hour into a canal system designed to transport it to the west and north into vast reaches of desert.

According to one enthusiastic civil engineering website, the project will reclaim a half million acres of desert. It was named “one of the five most outstanding civil engineering achievements of the year” by the American Society of Civil Engineers. By 2020, when the project is scheduled to be completed, the newly watered desert will be able to house over three million inhabitants and will increase the arable land in the country by 10 percent.

Haggag Addoul, the well known Egyptian writer and frequent spokesperson for Nubian rights, quickly said that the decision did not recognize their demands to be allowed to resettle on the banks of Lake Nasser south of Aswan, near their ancestral homeland which was flooded by the High Dam.

Manal al-Teeby, a Nubian activist, also said the decision was ill advised. It was worse than the decisions of the former Mubarak regime toward the Nubians, she believes. She decried Prime Minister Essam Sharaf for not consulting with the Nubians before issuing the decision, and urged a public debate on the matter.

However, Mossad Herky, President of the Nubian Club, was in favor of the decision. He believes that there is a need to resolve the Nubian land issues. and the current government is moving in the right direction.

Mounir Bashir, Chairman of the Egyptian Nubian Association for Law, argued that the cabinet decision is oriented at driving a wedge between Nubians exiled from their lands by earlier, smaller Aswan dams, such as the one in 1933, and the last, and most massive, dislocation of 1964. Some of those 1964 refugees from Old Nubia still want to return to the Nile.

Omar al-Sharif, from the Aswan Local Center, welcomed the cabinet decision. He said the center had been pressing for such a solution to the Nubian claims for 12 years.

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