Peaceful Societies

Looters broke into the world famous Egyptian Museum on Saturday and ripped the heads off two mummies, but soldiers prevented them from getting to the gold mask of King Tutankhamen or the other priceless treasures of Egypt’s incredible history. The soldiers then secured one of the most important museum collections in the world.

Burning buildings, tanks in the streets, running battles between protesters and police—television images of the protests last week in Egypt quickly stopped the influx of foreign tourists and sent the ones already in the country fleeing. Over 12 million tourists per year visit Egypt and support an industry which represents 11 percent of the country’s GDP, roughly $10.8 billion per year. Tourism is one of the nation’s top sources of foreign revenue.

But they will probably return. Tourist numbers slumped after terrorists killed 58 foreigners at the Temple of Luxor in 1997, but they quickly rebounded. Similarly, the events of September 11, 2001, the start of the second Palestinian Intifada, and bomb attacks on resorts in 2004 and 2006 prompted immediate declines in the numbers of tourists, but they soon came back in ever larger crowds.

However, the welcome for tourists is not very strong among many Nubian people of southern Egypt, according to a news report last Thursday. A proposed resort project along the banks of the Nile immediately south of the city of Aswan caused controversy in 2009 among local residents. A businessman named Mansour Amer, who had developed a resort on the north coast of Egypt and another on the Red Sea coast to the east, proposed a large development on the banks of the Nile. It would have overlooked the Nile from the village of Gharb Soheil, on the west bank near the old Aswan Dam, and extended north as far as the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan, directly across from the city.

Opponents of the dam enlisted the help of Mohamed Mounir, a popular Egyptian actor and singer. The Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities investigated. He closed down the project by the end of 2009 because it would have been constructed too near the tomb of the Aga Khan.

The relief was only temporary. Another businessman, Ali Agha, started construction in 2010 near Gharb Soheil on still another tourist project. Local Nubian residents who discovered the construction knew nothing about the plans, and forcibly chased away the workers—at least temporarily. Hakeem, a young resident, said that a couple of people were arrested as a result of the scuffle.

Another local resident, Abdel Hakim Abdu, told the press that Ali Agha was not interested in talking with local residents. Instead, he went straight to the government of Aswan. He feels that the project is being imposed on them, which the local Nubian people don’t appreciate.

Gamal Ahmed Salahin, a local leader who had opposed the 2009 resort proposal, said, “We have always considered this area to be a natural protectorate; we don’t want to see it ruined with the construction of [tourism] projects bound to attract more investors ….” Nubian villagers worry that the developments will take away their lands.

That issue, land ownership, is probably the major concern of the Nubians. Yahia Taher, who owns a small hotel in Gharb Soheil, told the press that “land ownership among us is marked by tribal customs. Barely anyone has ownership contracts; by not consulting with the people in the area first, the governor did not take into consideration our culture and traditions, which led us not to welcome such projects.”

Ali Agha argues that he was not intending to harm anyone. He says he has the best interests of the local people at heart. He just wants to assist the area in making some progress. “It’s about time we move forward and develop,” he says. “Such a project is bound to positively affect the area since I only seek to employ Nubians. The idea is to build a prototype of a Nubian village for visitors to experience the Nubian life.”

Despite the worries of local Nubians, the developments are proceeding—or they were until the rioting began last week. Mohamed Hassan, a spokesperson for the Governor of Aswan, told the press that the project, and numerous others, were going to move ahead. Asked about environmental concerns over the development, he said there was no issue. Large scale projects encourage better environmental protection, he argued.

Salahin, the local leader, counters: “People have been trying to tell the governor that we do not seek to push investors away. [What] we don’t want to see is investors coming with big projects that stand to ruin our environment.” He adds that the Nile already suffers from pollution, some birds are already gone, and there are too many boats in the water. He believes it will get worse. Whether the rioting will slow down the construction, and thus help protect the Nubian environment, remains unclear.

The Nubians are used to being ignored by the Egyptian government, a situation that dates back to the 1960s when much of Old Nubia was destroyed in order to construct the Aswan High Dam. Taher expresses frustration that is typical of the Nubian people. “We are not willing to stand by and see something similar happen again for the sake of tourism projects. The government has not been making decisions with our best interest at heart for too long. It’s time this changes.”

Local resident Abdu expressed thoughts that may be typical of many Nubians: “If people here continue to feel their concerns are being sidelined, then you can’t expect us to remain quiet. Many [of us] are willing to die to protect our land.”

Respect is one of the most significant features of peaceful peoples, an essential element in the maintenance of their harmony. A lack of respect bedevils the G/wi as they struggle with the government of Botswana to overcome the discrimination they face. Requests that they be treated just as respectfully as all the other citizens of their country have frequently been denied.

Last Thursday, January 27, the Botswana Court of Appeals decided unanimously against the government and in favor of the G/wi and the other San, who have been denied the right to have water for their homes. The court ruled that they must be allowed to reopen their old borehole and open new ones if necessary. The five justices on the highest court in the nation decided that the government was acting illegally in banning them from having access to water.

The San people also now have the right to sink new boreholes at their own expense. The court castigated the government for its “degrading treatment” of the minority people. It ruled that the government must pay the court costs of the San in launching their appeal to a ruling issued last year by a single judge on the High Court who had decided that the government did have the right to deny them water.

After the decision, a spokesperson for the San peoples told the press, “We are very happy that our rights have finally been recognized. We have been waiting a long time for this. Like any human beings, we need water to live. We also need our land. We pray that the government will now treat us with the respect we deserve.”

The court gave detailed descriptions of what the government must do and must not do about the water issue and the San. It ordered that the San must be allowed to repair or service their boreholes and to keep them in good working order. They must not be hindered in using the water they obtain from the boreholes for their domestic purposes.

The order stipulated that the people must be allowed to bring any water tanks into their communities that they may need. The language of the decision sounds as if the court was anticipating every possible approach the government might subsequently try to use to thwart the ruling. It is worth quoting in part.

“By themselves or their agents the applicants … may bring in the reserve any rig, machinery, plant or any other equipment they may reasonably require to sink boreholes or re-commission the borehole at [Mothomelo].” It continued, “the applicants should be allowed to obtain such advice or assistance from persons resident outside the reserve as they may reasonably require to carry out the order of the Court and transport materials in the reserve.”

The justices specified that the government was not allowed to hinder outsiders from assisting the San in reopening the old borehole, or sinking new ones, by denying them entry permits into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

The government announced on Friday that it would comply with the court ruling. Jeff Ramsey, a government spokesperson, said that “while we do not agree with certain aspects of the basis on which the decision was reached, we recognize that this is a decision of Botswana’s highest court from which there is no appeal.” He stated that the government would implement the decision of the court because of its respect for court decisions and the rule of law. He did not indicate if that respect extended to the concept of human rights for the G/wi.

The G/wi and the other San peoples of Botswana were back in court last week, pleading again for the right to reopen a borehole for water to serve their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The five judges of the Botswana Court of Appeals took most of the day to hear their lawyer, and the lawyer for the government, argue the case.

The San peoples, or “Bushmen,” or “Basarwa,” as they are often called in the press, won the right to live in their traditional territory, the CKGR, in a High Court ruling in 2006. The government has tried to prevent them from returning to their homes ever since. One strategy it has used has been to deny them the right to reopen a borehole that they had relied on for decades, or to drill a new one.

The San took that issue to the nation’s High Court last July, where only one justice heard the case and ruled against them. They appealed last week in the Court of Appeals in an effort to overturn that ruling. The court is expected to return a verdict either today, the 27th, or next Monday, the 31st.

The attorney for the San, Gordon Bennett, told the court that his clients are not asking the government to do anything for them. “They have asked only that they be allowed to make their own arrangements to restore the borehole in order that they and their families can enjoy access to water that is of no use to anyone else but is of vital importance to them,” he said.

Bennett went on to argue that anyone who lives in the CKGR needs reliable water. The physical and mental health of the residents, particularly the elderly and the young people, can suffer without it. They do not have enough water to maintain cleanliness, mothers are unable to generate enough milk for their babies, people lack energy, and everyone is prone to sickness from the conditions. The people have to search for roots to extract a few drops of moisture, which is inadequate.

The attorney for the government argued that the G/wi and the other San people could simply move back to the resettlement camps, where the government provides water. He said that the government accepts the 2006 court judgment that the San must be allowed to live, if they want to, in their traditional homes in the CKGR, but that court decision did not obligate it to provide services.

It is not clear from the news reports if either side mentioned the underlying issue in the CKGR—the primary reason the government wants to keep the indigenous people out. Diamonds. Coincidentally—or perhaps not so much a coincidence—diamonds were also in the Botswana news last week. At the same time that it was arguing in court about preventing the San from having water near their homes in the CKGR, the government was granting a license to Gem Diamonds to begin mining operations there—which, of course, will require plenty of water.

A third news story last week related to the situation. On Thursday, WikiLeaks, via The Guardian newspaper website, released a communication from March 18, 2005, by the then U.S. ambassador to Botswana, Joseph Huggins, concerning his reactions to a visit to Western Botswana and a San resettlement camp called New Xade. Numerous news sources issued stories about the ambassador’s reactions nearly six years ago to the conditions he saw.

According to the released document, the ambassador spoke on March 10, 2005, with officials of an unnamed NGO that operates a training site near Ghanzi, a major town in western Botswana which Mr. Huggins visited. It is useful to quote the ambassador directly. The published WikiLeaks report blanks out identifying information.

“XXXXXXXXXXXX was highly critical of the GOB [government of Botswana] resettlement policy, noting that people had been dumped in villages like New Xade, without being provided with sufficient shelter, support, or even food, and decried the idea as ludicrous that the people could transform themselves into industrious villagers, craft-sellers, while seventy miles away from a main road. They emphasized the arbitrariness, the lack of consultation, and the lack of transparency in GOB decision-making when it came to the treatment of the San/Basarwa peoples in the district.”

A few paragraphs later, Ambassador Huggins “asked how many persons had been removed from the CKGR, and how many had returned. In all XXXXXXXXXXXX [another informant] estimated some 2,500 had been evicted; some 250 persons, mostly older San/Basarwa, were still in the CKGR, and perhaps another 250 had returned over the past two years from the relocation villages. XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that San/Basarwa are systematically being discriminated against by the GOB, which moves them away from wherever there might be an income-generating opportunity.”

The next morning, March 11, the ambassador and his party traveled 70 miles along a sandy track to New Xade, the resettlement camp, accompanied by GOB officials. Perhaps because of the presence of the officials, the chief at the village, Kgosi Lobatse Beslag, greeted the party with words of praise for the conditions in the camp. People were much better off since they have moved, he said. When Mr. Huggins asked if people really wanted to be there, he was told they did. He asked how they made their living, and after some hedging, it became clear that everything depended on welfare payments from the government. The settlement was too far from the paved road to ever allow the sale of handicrafts to tourists.

Near the end of the meeting, however, some people began to express contrary opinions. The report states, “while many people were resigned to the relocation by now, many also went back to the CKGR. People mourn for their way of life, and regret that their children are not with them, but at school. Another grievance was that the Game and Wildlife Department prohibits New Xade residents who want to visit their relatives on the other side of the CKGR from traveling through the reserve; they have to go around.”

Ambassador Huggins concluded that “people have been dumped in economically absolutely unviable situations without forethought, and without follow-up support. The lack of imagination displayed on the part of the GOB is breathtaking.”

Shipshewana, a small town just south of Interstate 80 in Northern Indiana, has become identified as a tourist Mecca with a special focus on the local, peaceful Amish. The broad highways leading into the bucolic community have wide lanes on either side so the Amish can safely drive their buggies into town.

But a battle is forming in Shipshewana over the issue of alcohol. A convenience store, Gas America, has applied to the LaGrange County Alcoholic Beverage Board for a permit to sell warm beer and wine in town. Much of the community does not like the idea.

Kevin Lambright of Shipshewana Auction, just south of the center of town, expressed his opposition. “This is something we don’t need or desire in our community,” he said. Mr. Lambright has collected 180 signatures—out of the 500 residents in the town—on a petition which opposes the proposal. “It’s a good test, a good opportunity, a good challenge for us as a community to come together and say this is still an important factor,” he said, referring to the prohibition.

Linda Zehr, from the business Simple Sounds, one of many merchants involved in the protest, also expressed her opposition. She explained that the gas station had attempted to obtain a similar license once before, but then they had simply withdrawn their permit application. “We’ve always been a quiet dry town,” Zehr said.

Lambright was arranging van or bus transportation so the local Amish could attend the meeting of the county Alcoholic Beverage Board this week, where the permit application will be discussed and perhaps voted upon. The Shipshewana Town Board has already voted its opposition to the measure.

Some residents expressed their support for the proposal, since Shipshewana is a major tourist town, and tourists like to drink. But others believe that the dry nature of the community attracts tourists. There is one facility in town where, if people rent a room for a party, they can have someone else provide liquor for an event. But there is no place to walk in off the street and purchase alcoholic beverages.

It is not yet clear from the numerous media reports how the Amish of LaGrange County actually view the proposal, but typically their elders would oppose it. Drinking, especially by young people, is an issue that Amish churches sometimes have to deal with. Teenagers raised in Amish families are not yet church members, so adults have to react carefully to avoid alienating the next generation.

Of course the media like to portray the rumspringa, the running around period by Amish young people, as a time for partying, excessive alcohol, drugs, and sex. Television series, print literature, and movies have been devoted to the phenomenon. British director Lucy Walker made a film called “Devil’s Playground,” released in 2003, which explored the rowdy lives of a few LaGrange County Amish youths. She used over three hundred hours of footage to put together her 77 minute documentary, which showed people smoking, using illegal drugs, drinking, partying, and having pre-marital sexual encounters. One young man featured in the film took up drug dealing to support his expensive addiction.

A scholarly analysis by Stevick (2007) of the growing up period among the Amish points out that the wildness of the rumspringa period is overblown by the media. “Devil’s Playground” may have been a carefully created documentary, but it only portrays a small fringe of the Amish in LaGrange County.

Stevick indicates that the vast majority of young Amish would not permit a visiting filmmaker to photograph them doing anything, and the experiences of the drug user captured by Walker are hardly the norm. He argues that the daily activities of the vast majority of Amish young folks—weekly singing, hanging out with friends—would make for a very dull film.

The author adds that some drinking does occur among young, un-baptized Amish people in many smaller settlements, but drug use is rare.

During the annual pilgrimage season which just ended, more than 30 million Hindu devotees visited the temple of Lord Ayyappan at Sabarimala, India, almost without incident, the Times of India reported on Friday. One source points out that the Hindu rituals at the Ayyappan temples, in the forested hills of Kerala state, represent the largest pilgrimage in the world.

But just as the Times of India filed its story, disaster struck. Reports differ, as with any epic tragedy. One news story said that a vehicle crashed into a crowd of devotees, setting off a stampede which resulted in over 100 people being trampled to death. Other news sources indicated that a jeep traveling on a forest path hit an auto-rickshaw, which overturned, sparking the stampede. In either case, large numbers of people were injured and killed. The accident occurred on a path which leads out of the hills of Kerala, down toward the plains of Tamil Nadu.

The Malapandaram live in the same forests as the Ayyappan temples—in close proximity to them, in fact. The tragedy prompts a closer look to see if they might have been involved. To judge by the literature, it is unlikely.

For one thing, the Malapandaram would not have been walking back along a pathway toward the plains. More to the point, they don’t get involved with Hindu religious festivals. They have very different religious and spiritual beliefs from the Hindu pilgrims who visit the Ayyappan temples in their midst.

Brian Morris (1992) describes the differences between the religious beliefs of the Malapandaram and the Hindus. The Malapandaram believe in hill spirits, supernatural beings associated with particular hills or landscape features. There are many of them. They identify one hill spirit for every 8 square kilometers of forested land, Morris estimates. They also believe in ancestral shades, spirits which generally have beneficent intentions, protect the people against misfortunes, and offer advice when needed.

Morris (1981) goes into greater detail about the Ayyappan cult in the hills of Kerala and the religious practices of the nearby Malapandaram. There are four major Ayyappan temples, he writes. Kulathupuzha and Arienkavu are holy sites associated with the deity when he was a youth. Achencoil is where he hunted as a young male god. In this area, Ayyappan had, in the words of Morris, “amorous affairs with two particular young women (p.222).” Sabarimala, where the tragedy occurred this weekend, is the major Ayyappan temple, one built by a local king at the request of the god himself.

The anthropologist explains that although the Malapandaram describe themselves as Hindus when outsiders ask them about their beliefs, they really are not. Morris spent some time doing field research among the Malapandaram in the immediate vicinity of Achencoil, which is located about 20 miles south of Sabarimala. He explains that while the Malapandaram trade with the Hindus at Achencoil, they have little interest in their religious beliefs, myths, or deities.

The Malapandaram only recognize Ayyappan, and his associated deity, Karuppaswami, in a peripheral fashion. They have minimal knowledge of these two locally-venerated gods and they know almost nothing about the nationally recognized deities of the Hindus. They visit the Ayyappan temples during the pilgrimage season, November through January, only for secular purposes.

The primary difference between the minority population and the Hindus is that the hill people contact their spirits through trances and possession rituals, Morris explains. They have no shrines or temples and, unlike the Hindus who attend the Ayyappan pilgrimage in order to make personal appeals to the god, they have no interest in propitiating any spirits. Furthermore, unlike Hindus, they have no use for regular ceremonies or formal rituals, they do not observe religious periods or dates, and they do not venerate sacred spots.

Unlike the Hindu Brahmins, they do not allow any hierarchical relationships to develop between their ritual specialists and the rest of the community. The caste system of the Hindus is absent in Malapandaram society.

Morris (1981) observes that some other South Indian tribal societies, such as the Paliyan and the Kadar, have become more integrated into the lives of the surrounding Hindu people than the Malapandaram. As a result, their religious beliefs and practices have adopted some of the trappings of the wider society.

For example, the Paliyan and Kadar, increasingly, have begun to represent their deities in the form of icons. Also, they are adopting propitiatory rites, practices derived from the Hindus that the Malapandaram so far (as of 1981, at least), have not adopted. The Malapandaram remain quite distinct from the Hindus, so their religious practices show little Hindu influence.

Furthermore, as people from the plains have moved into the hills, primarily as workers in forest extractive industries, they have begun to adopt the Malapandaram spirits and imbue them with their own religious values. Outcroppings in the hills, associated by the Malapandaram with spirits, have been adopted by these people from the plains as deities. They have begun marking the rock outcroppings with stone piles or other iconic markers.

As part of their veneration, the forest workers have left groves of large trees standing around these sites to mark their sacredness. The workers may stop and salute the stone piles as they walk past them, or light incense sticks in front of them. The Malapandaram dismiss this veneration and are irreverent toward these places.

A much more recent account by Morris (1999) adds some brief details to our knowledge of Malapandaram religious practices. He writes that their interactions with the mountain sprits normally include prayer and meditation, offerings of betel leaves and honey, and possession rites.

Their ritual specialists, called Tullak-aran/i, are men or women who go into dance-induced trances, accompanied by drumming and singing, in order to be possessed by a deity. They handle misfortunes and crises, such as illnesses or hunting problems, during their trances. Their ritual specialists do not act as mediators between individuals and their gods.

While the Malapandaram doubtless were not involved in the pilgrimage fervor, the tragedy this weekend serves as a reminder that small, peaceful societies can exist in the midst of the vast Indian ferment, but still retain their distinct identities and beliefs.

Since most peaceful societies exist as minorities within larger, more forceful, nation states, they are influenced by the whims, conflicts, and violence of the majority peoples. The Ladakhi, though relatively isolated in their mountain valleys, are very much part of the tensions that affect the rest of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in northern India. The government of India took one initiative last October to reduce tensions in the region by appointing a panel of three interlocutors to investigate possible solutions to the conflicts. The government is about to take another.

The Union Home Secretary in New Delhi, Mr. G. K. Pillai, announced on Friday last week that the government is thinking about making a 25 percent cut in troop strength in Jammu and Kashmir over the next year. He made his announcement at a symposium, “The Way Forward in Kashmir,” which was organized by the Jamia Millia Islamia University in the capital city. He told the attendees that the local police forces in the state should be able to handle security in its urban areas.

He said that military forces should primarily be positioned to provide security in border areas. Further, he indicated that the government is planning to issue six-month, multiple entry visas so people living in the portion of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan can visit relatives in Indian-controlled Kashmir. He also expressed his hope that the interlocutors would be able to present their final report by April.

The Indian army quickly registered its discontent with the government’s peace feeler. General V. K. Singh, Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, said shortly after the report of Pillai’s announcement that he was opposed to the concept of reducing forces. Speaking at an annual Army Day press conference, the general did not comment about the context of some of Mr. Pillai’s remarks.

He did, however, express publicly his opposition to the heart of the government announcement—reducing troop strength in heavily populated zones. “In the interior areas, to maintain peace and carry out operations against the militants, we have some troops. As of now, we do not feel we should reduce the numbers,” General Singh said.

Perhaps anticipating internal opposition to confidence-building measures, Secretary Pillai also said that the basis for stationing troops in a state like Jammu and Kashmir was the Armed Forces Special Powers ACT (AFSPA). The law applied because the state government had declared the state to be a “disturbed” area. If the state government were to make a “leap of faith,” Mr. Pillai said, and declare that portions of the state are no longer “disturbed,” then the provisions of AFSPA would no longer apply.

Confidence building measures such as the proposed army reduction will not affect the Ladakhi villages immediately, but in the long run, a stronger tilt toward peace by major actors in the northern corners of India could at least help preserve the existing peacefulness at the village level.

A magazine article last week in The Hindu, one of India’s major papers, describes the health of the natural environment in southern India’s Kerala state from the perspective of a canarium tree growing high in the Anamalai Hills. The authors, T. R. Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa, scientists with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, India, explain how major developments of the past year have affected the indigenous people, the Kadar, and the local forest wildlife.

The Canarium, a genus of trees that grows in tropical Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, is a forest giant whose new leaves sprout red against the various greens of the canopy. The flight of a great hornbill through the stately white trees welcomes, in The Hindu article, the new year to the hills and the residents, both human and animal. The individual canarium growing in the Kerala hills thrives on months of drought, followed by periods of monsoon rains, the authors write, and it provides fruits for the hornbills, big birds with huge casques on their bills, which populate the wilderness. The seeds from those fruits feed the small animals of the forest floor.

The first major success of the past year has been the establishment of two new protected areas in Kerala and Tamil Nadu states—the Parambikulam and Anamalai Tiger Reserves. The Parambikulam was upgraded from a wildlife sanctuary to a tiger reserve on February 17, 2010. The authors are hopeful that the management of the new core and buffer zones of these protected areas will succeed, compared to the failures of other natural reserves in the past. Earlier, local people have been excluded from the management of protected areas, but in these two new reserves, the indigenous people—the Kadar—have become actively involved. The plantations and agricultural projects of local communities will now be permitted, and managed, in the park buffer zones.

The Kadar need to be respected for their knowledge of the forests, the authors maintain. Their involvement in research and management of key species, such as the hornbills, is critical for forest protection. The authors hope that the Forest Rights Act (FRA), combined with tiger conservation plans, will prompt the government agencies, civil society, and indigenous groups such as the Kadar to work together to avert the tragedy of forest destruction.

Another development over the past year has been an increase in certification programs, such as the one run by the Rainforest Alliance, which certify the practices of tea and coffee plantations. These programs seek to revive shade tree plantings, avoid toxic chemicals, protect waterways, and assist the forests to survive and thrive.

A third, major development last year has been the decision of Mr. Jairam Ramesh, head of the Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi, to cancel the much-reviled Athirappilly Dam. While it is downstream from the hilly perspective of the canarium tree, it would still have harmed the overall forest ecosystem. When the Minister vetoed the proposed construction project, it was a major victory for the forest and for the Kadar community, both of which would have been devastated by the construction of the dam.

Mr. Ramesh appears, in the opinion of the authors (and presumably the canarium), to be “keen to uphold the environmental laws of the land.” He has changed the ministry from a rubber-stamp to an active advocate for environmental laws. His efforts “have revitalized India’s conservation movement and the dignity of his ministry,” they write.

While the authors see these developments positively, global climate change also threatens the forest, a factor which worries the canarium. The new leaves of the tree flutter red timelessly over the Anamalai Hills, but the authors are both hopeful and worried about the future of the forest and its inhabitants.

The worries appear to be justified. Another article in The Hindu last week reported the public comments on Friday by A. K. Balan, Electricity Minister of Kerala. A long-time advocate of the Athirappilly Dam, Mr. Balan bitterly blamed the central government for the cancellation of his pet project. “The State government had tried its best. But it failed due lack of cooperation from the Centre,” he said.

The significance of John Marshall’s life is not so much that he made accurate films about the Ju/’hoansi, as that he returned, again and again, to film the same people so he could effectively tell their stories.

Journal of Southern African Studies For 50 years, beginning in the early 1950s, Marshall chronicled their lives, capturing with his films, which were based on unique, lifetime friendships between filmmaker and subjects, the passing of their old ways and the radical changes of their society. Certainly one of the most influential ethnographic filmmakers of the past century, he set a high standard for recording human experiences.

His work as a filmmaker began when he and his family visited southern Africa, trips which were intended to record the lives of the supposedly untouched San, or Bushmen, people. But while the family insisted on veracity and accuracy in their writings, photography, and films, a recent article by Lauren van Vuuren in the Journal of Southern African Studies notes that John Marshall was not above manipulating his subject matter as he reported their history.

His first feature length film, The Hunters, issued in 1957, was based on 700,000 feet of film he had made beginning in 1952. The Hunters focuses primarily on one group of young men named Kxao, ≠Toma, //Ao, and /Qui. John admitted that he was, himself, fascinated with technology and hunting in the early 1950s.

The film shows the four men shooting, with their poisoned arrows, a female giraffe and then following the wounded animal for days, with the filmmaker in tow. They finally catch up with the dying animal and, with John’s camera running, the animal crashes to the earth, where the hunters proceed to finish it off. Kxao stabs it in the heart with his spear. The men skin the carcass, divide the meat, and send for help to carry it back to their camp so it could be shared with the other members of the band. There is feasting and storytelling—stories of this hunt and past hunts. The story is their life in a hard, desert environment.

Yet Marshall made some modifications in telling the story of the hunters and their lives in the Kalahari, at least by the time he released the film. According to one study of the original film footage (which is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution) that he drew on to make The Hunters, he excised out all the footage that showed traces of outside, western influences—bottles, cans, fabricated clothing, vehicle tires, etc.

The Marshall family wanted to record the lives of people who supposedly had little if any contact with the outside world, so John also excluded footage of the Bushmen trading with neighboring non-San peoples, such as the Herero and the Ovambo. The Ju/’hoansi needed to appear pristine, untouched, and uncontaminated—at least in John’s film.

A few years later, Marshall advocated too strongly and publicly in favor of his Ju/’hoansi friends so the government of South Africa—Southwest Africa was then a territory under its control—barred him from returning for several decades. He traveled instead to Botswana in the 1970s to participate, with a National Geographic filming crew, in the production of Bushmen of the Kalahari. While he did not make that film himself, he was the main character in it.

That film portrayed the incredible poverty under which many of the San people were then living, a striking contrast with the clean, desert subsistence lifestyle he had portrayed in The Hunters. Some of his friends from the 1950s, notably ≠Toma, traveled east across the border to visit with the American filmmaker in Botswana. In Bushmen of the Kalahari, Marshall depicts a showing of The Hunters for his mentor from the 1950s as a way of sharing with his friend their common history.

The two men then visited the Tsodilo Hills, a place in northern Botswana revered by local San peoples as a home of the sprits. Sir Laurens van der Post made it world famous in his best seller The Lost World of the Kalahari. Marshall listened to his friend interpret the meaning of the rock art located in the hills, which were designated a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2001. ≠Toma interpreted the depictions of hands and creatures on the rocks as the story of a hunt, which made him reflect on his youth when he too went out into the desert hunting, accompanied at times by Marshall. Both men shared their respective historical memories in the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

Van Vuuren also describes Marshall’s 1980 film N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman. His style had changed, along with the filmmaking trends of the day. He refered to it as Cinéma Vérité, but the author prefers to classify Marshall’s style in 1980 as “Direct Cinema.” Marshall felt that it was essential for his films to let the stories of the people emerge as they did and let them explain their own perspectives. He did not want to allow the perspective of the filmmaker to cloud the production. Forget the slanting of The Hunters—that was decades earlier.

N!ai is the story of a woman from Tsumkwe, the central community of the Nyae Nyae region, a town filled, by 1980, with alcohol, fighting, poverty, and too many people living on government rations. N!ai describes her past with joy and sadness— her beauty as a young woman, which singled her out for special attention, her marriage to /Gunda, their family, and the visits of the Marshall family in the 1950s.

She reviews the racist attitudes of the South African administrators and the white soldiers fighting the SWAPO insurgency. The film includes scenes of white tourists watching trance dancing and some footage of the filming of The Gods Must Be Crazy, which includes scenes showing the patronizing, racist attitudes of the South African film makers. The film ends with N!ai saying sadly, “Now people mock me and I cry. My people abuse me. The white people scorn me. Death mocks me. Death dances with me…(p.567).”

Van Vuuren’s critical appraisal celebrates the many accomplishments of John Marshall in recording the lives, the history, and the struggles of the Ju/’hoansi since 1952.

Van Vuuren, Lauren (2009). “‘And He Said They Were Ju/Wasi, the People…’: History and Myth in John Marshall’s ‘Bushmen Films’ 1957-2000.” Journal of Southern African Studies 35 (3): 557-574

While a tourist facility in the sacred Dzongu reserve of North Sikkim has just gotten a blessing from a foreign royal party, it is not clear how increased tourism will affect the lives of the local Lepcha villagers.

A news story last week indicated that Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, his wife Crown Princess Mette-Marit, and their two children had spent three days in Sikkim at a home that has been opened for tourists in the village of Passindang, in Dzongu. According to Sonam Norgay Lachungpa, the owner of Galaxy Tours and Travels, which conducted the Norwegians, “the royal family was delighted with the beauty and peace of the place.” The Crown Prince said that they plan to return next year with a larger entourage.

Gyatso Lepcha, who runs the establishment where the royal family and their six bodyguards stayed, said that they simply wanted to enjoy the beauty and natural surroundings by taking short treks and going to the Teesta River. They were also interested in local culture, he said.

Another tourist in Passindang, Martin Koskin from Sydney, said he was spending five days there. “Dzongu is very peaceful and completely different from other hilly areas,” he said. “The people here are very hospitable and friendly.”

Mr. Lachungpa, who is also the general secretary of the Travel Agents’ Association of Sikkim (TAAS), an organization of travel and tourism operators in the state, has been promoting the idea of local villages in Dzongu opening small tourist facilities for high-end visitors. He emphasizes that they should focus on the Lepcha culture and the peaceful beauty of the area. Several members of TAAS toured existing facilities in Dzongu last week.

Lukendra Rasaily, the deputy director of the state tourism department, said that it was important for tourists to not see concrete structures. The tourist promoters are emphasizing Dzongu precisely because it has not been modernized. “We want to develop tourism here according to the local lifestyle,” Rasaily said. It is an ideal destination because of its simple beauty and lack of modern structures.

Mr. Lachungpa requested the Lepcha to refrain from erecting concrete buildings. “Tourists don’t want to see massive structures or modern lifestyle[s],” he said. “They are more interested in enjoying village life with the local community.” The newspaper article did not address the long-term possible consequences to the Lepchas themselves from willfully turning their villages into museum displays so they would appeal more to upscale international tourists.

In rural northern Missouri, Maudie Oliver doesn’t mind earning a lot of money each year by driving the local Amish, but that doesn’t stop her from condemning their pacifism. Along with other residents of Schuyler County, she is proud of her patriotism. “They do not honor the flag or go to the military,” she said. “We’re protecting them and all their kids, and that’s not fair.”

The St. Louis Post Dispatch last week featured the Missouri Amish people by focusing on the recent immigrants to Schuyler County. At first, when the Amish started buying farms and moving in, many residents were suspicious, though others were evidently welcoming.

Karen Johnson-Weiner, an anthropology professor at the State University of New York, Potsdam, told the paper that Amish migrants often do not meet the cultural expectations of established residents. Amish who move to new areas are typically conservative people who are trying to maintain their traditional, rural lifestyles rather than becoming entangled in the modern, technologically-obsessed world. It is hard to understand your new neighbors, she explained, when they avoid automobiles, electricity, computers, radios, and telephones. How do established residents reach out to people who want to remain separated from others?

One complaint relates to the economics of the Amish farms. Robert Aldridge, the presiding County Commissioner, explained that when “English” farmers make money, they upgrade their equipment, buy new trucks, or expand their machinery. Not the Amish. They continue using the same team of horses. Since they buy so little, they don’t pay much in the way of personal property taxes to the county treasury. Residents blame them for driving up the prices of property, an inflation which prevents other young potential farmers from buying land and staying in the area.

Missouri, the newspaper points out, has one of the fastest growing Amish populations in the United States. Out of the 250,000 Amish now living in the U.S., about 10,000 live in that state. Many immigrants settle near long-established Amish communities in Missouri, such as Jamesport, Seymour, or Bowling Green, but some have settled in Schuyler County, which has a population of about 4,100 people on the northern border of the state next to Iowa.

The reporter spoke with Henry Miller, a 43-year old Amish man who lives with his wife and nine children on their 17 acre farm near the village of Downing, Schuyler County. He said he left Wisconsin to get away from the colder winters, and he has never felt any animosity from his neighbors. “There’s not really any problems,” he indicated.

However, his neighbors, Jack and Maudie Oliver, are aware of the animosities. Mrs. Oliver is concerned about more than just the Amish opposition to fighting. While she has gotten to know many of them quite well by driving them to weddings, funerals, and shopping destinations, she is alarmed when adults leave their children to take trips. She also has problems with the burdens that their simple, technology-free lifestyle place on the Amish women.

Some of the Schuyler County “English” express their fear that the Amish practice what they feel is incest, by marrying people who are too closely related, such as second or third cousins. The Amish share that concern and try hard to avoid any incestuous relationships.

Even manure on the roads from Amish horses causes some complaints. “If I wanted manure on my car, I’d drive in a pasture,” one constituent grumbled to Commissioner Aldridge.

Gerald Robinson defends the Amish, calling complaints against them “trash talk.” He explains that not everyone is receptive to him because of his own Christian faith, but that doesn’t matter to him. Referring to the Amish, he says, “their belief is their belief. That’s what our freedom is.” Prof. Johnson-Weiner has the same reaction. When told of Mrs. Oliver’s opposition to pacifism, Johnson-Weiner replies, “That’s the problem when you enshrine religious freedom in the Constitution. Some people take you up on it.”

Another Amish man, who didn’t want to have his name publicized, owns a large farm near Queen City, in Schuyler County. He moved to northern Missouri from near Fort Wayne, Indiana, five years ago. He sold 80 acres in Indiana in order to buy a 300 acre farm in Missouri. He wanted to escape the strictness of zoning laws, city life, and an inappropriate environment for raising children. “Living around a whole lot of wealth is not good for Christians,” he told the reporter.

He explained that the Amish do, in fact, pay property taxes, contrary to popular, persistent stories, but they do not pay into the social security system since they never will collect any money from it.

Local resident Virginia Griswold feels the Amish are probably friendly, but she observes that they simply want to be left alone. But Commissioner Aldridge noted that attitudes are changing. At first, many local people complained about the newcomers, but now they stop and buy produce at their farm stands and chat.

Lorraine Austin, editor of the Schuyler County Times, a weekly newspaper published in Glenwood, says that the complaints she heard when the Amish first arrived have mostly dissipated. “It’s the flow of life. They’re here. They’re good people. They’re just accepted,” she told the reporter from the Post Dispatch.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Rioting in Egypt Affects Tourism

Will the G/wi Win Respect?

San Situation in the News Again

Alcohol and the Amish

Tragedy in Kerala and the Malapandaram

Measures for Peace in Ladakh

Progress in the Anamalai Hills

Appraisal of John Marshall’s Ju/’hoansi Films (journal article review)

Tourism in the Dzongu

Amish Newcomers in Missouri

Subscribe to our weekly digest

Subject Listing

Previous News and Reviews