Peaceful Societies

Jean Briggs (1994) argued that when the Inuit teach their children to be cautious and uncertain about the intentions of others, it instills insecurity in them and, at the same time, it reinforces their peacefulness. An essential aspect of their worldview is that uncertainty about the feelings of others makes one constantly strive to deserve their love and support.

Uncertainty is an important aspect of an Inuit myth about a woman, often thought of as a goddess, who lives at the bottom of the sea. A recent journal article by Jarich Oosten and Frédéric Laugrand in the journal Religion and Arts describes the many variants and characteristics of the myth as it is told among the Inuit. The article maintains that the representations of the sea woman, called “Sedna” in many versions, point to an artistic vision of Inuit uncertainty.

Though the name Sedna is not universally recognized among the Inuit, many share the belief that a sea woman can have a major influence on the abundance of hunt-able marine mammals. The authors prefer to call her “The Sea Woman,” out of respect for the diversity of beliefs about her.

Sedna, in most of the tales, was a young woman who was overly choosy about the man she would marry. She rejected human suitors and even, in one version, a man with a forehead topknot who turned out to be a bull caribou. Sedna’s father became angry with her choosiness and told her to go off and live with a dog—which she did, on an island. She mated with the dog. When they ran out of things to eat, she put a pack on the dog, her husband, and sent him back to her father for more food. After some time, she gave birth to pups.

But that meant that they ran out of food more often than before, so Sedna’s father became suspicious and went to the island in his qajaq, his skin kayak, to investigate. He was angry to discover that he had a raft of puppies for grandchildren. The next time the dog/husband came to fetch food, the father filled his pack with rocks, which caused him to sink into the sea. But then, the father had to take food to his daughter and grand-puppies himself. In revenge for the murder of her husband, Sedna told her children to chew apart his qajaq. He then had to remain on their island and be the provider.

When her puppies became older, she prepared to send them away, in three separate groups. One group went south to become ancestors of Indians. Another group became the qallunaat, the outsiders, the white people. The third group became ijirait, people who are not seen except as caribou. With the dogs all gone, Sedna again started seeing visiting suitors and rejecting them until a tall man appeared who seemed to be very handsome. Sedna agreed to marry him and went off with him to his island. But when he climbed out of his clothing and took off his goggles, he turned out to be a fulmar. He mistreated her.

Her father came to rescue her and they fled from the island in his boat. Fulmar discovered the absence of his wife and caused huge waves, which threatened to overturn them. In desperation, the father threw Sedna overboard. When she tried to grab the sides of the boat and climb back in, he chopped off her fingers, which turned into various sea mammals. Sedna, or Sea Woman, lives in a house at the bottom of the sea, the mistress of her domain.

Whenever Sedna gets angry with humans, she withholds the marine mammals from the human environment. When that happens, a shaman will have to travel to Sedna’s house to properly clean her hair. She has no fingers to do the job herself. If done properly, she may then allow the marine mammals to return so they can be hunted again.

The authors describe some of the variations of the myth. In some, for instance, Sedna comes to the surface of the sea when called by a shaman; in others, her house at the bottom of the ocean is described in different ways; others give different descriptions of the dangers the shamans face when they visit Sedna. In one variation, a shaman harpoons Sedna when she appears at a breathing hole, and she quickly retreats in anger. The amount of blood on the harpoon suggests the success of the coming hunt. Sedna is clearly not your garden-variety goddess. In fact, the authors indicate, the very term “goddess” is hardly appropriate for her.

The focus of the article is on representations of the sea woman in Inuit carvings, an issue the same two authors touched on in an article published in 2008. They maintain that the artistic representations of the myth all across the Arctic combine animal and human features in the same objects. Often, the carvings depict a human with the tail of a fish, or an animal with a human head. In most of the carvings, the sea woman combines animal and human parts, with the upper part usually being human. These figures may represent Sedna herself or one of the other mythological spirits that accompany her in the sea world.

The authors argue that these carvings merge the shifting boundaries between animal and human, changes that represent the loss of human social nature. The distinctions between human beings and animals collapse in the non-social, timeless world of the sea.

Oosten and Laugrand also maintain that the art objects should not be viewed as symbols of a mythological past. Instead, the objects represent what they term a “living tradition” (p.492), which depicts the Inuit views of the present and the past. Distinctions between the different categories of non-human beings aren’t clear to the Inuit. Many transformations and transitions are constantly occurring in a world that is neither permanent nor fixed.

The carvings thus show how people can never be certain of their own true form, or even of their own existence. The uncertainty argument of Oosten and Laugrand circles the reader back to the reasoning of Briggs and to the ways the Inuit promote nonviolence in their communities.

Oosten, Jarich and Frédéric Laugrand. 2009. “Representing the ‘Sea Woman.’” Religion and Arts 13(4): 477-495

India’s most prestigious literary prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award, has just been given to Bhogla Soren for his latest published work, a play about the Santhali and Birhor peoples.

The Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, awards a plaque and a cash prize each year to the outstanding literary work in each of the nation’s 24 major languages. The purpose of the awards is to recognize new trends in literature and excellence in writing.

The award-winning play by Soren, Rahin Rawa Kana, published in 2008, is set in a couple villages in the East Singhbhum District of Jharkhand State. The plot revolves around a Santhali boy, Charan, and a Birhor girl, Hinsi. As Soren describes the play, “Rahin Rawa Kana has two parallel story lines—one on love and the other on culture. The lifestyle of Santhals, who have taken to farming, and Birhors, who have stuck to their age-old traditions, forms the backdrop of the stories.”

The 52-year old author did not complete his university education since he dropped out to work as a sub-divisional engineer with Bharat Sanchar Nignam Ltd, an Indian telecommunications company. He has written five plays, some essays, and short stories. He expressed the hope that the award would help the morale of other Indian writers from tribal communities. He advocates teaching the tribal languages, such as Santhali, in the schools as a way of keeping indigenous peoples connected to their traditions.

The award will certainly help the rest of the country appreciate Santhali literature, a language spoken by six million people in eastern India. If the play becomes more popular as a result of the prize, perhaps it will also help Indians understand the traditional culture of the Birhor.

The war of words between Survival International and the government of Botswana over the treatment of the G/wi has intensified recently, an unfortunate development for a society that has been characterized as highly peaceful.

Survival, a London-based indigenous rights NGO, apparently found the way to really capture the attention of the government and the general population of Botswana when it launched, in early October, an international boycott of Botswana diamonds and tourism. Kick ‘em where it hurts. The acrimony has been escalating, but it appears, from recent news sources, as if the SI campaign is making an impression.

The most recent round of accusations began with an official document on November 30th stating the position of the government about the SI boycotts. Survival, the government charged, wants the G/wi and the other San people “to live a life of poverty and disease in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), where there are no social amenities.” The British NGO has “the audacity and arrogance to target the economy of a promising developing country [i.e., Botswana].” It continued by claiming that the government only encouraged the San people to move out of their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve nearly 10 years ago.

An African news source that same day, November 30, referred to SI as a “radical UK group,” imitating the government’s position, but it pointed out, interestingly, that Mmegi, a prominent independent Botswana news source, was increasingly covering the story and giving it wider circulation. It indicated that there is a lot of public outrage in Botswana over the boycott emanating from the UK, the former colonial power.

But perhaps of even more significance, the growing public discussion in Botswana seems to be swinging public opinion, at least to some extent, in favor of opening the borehole in the CKGR near the G/wi settlement and allowing the San peoples who insist on living there to have the water they seek. The government’s stubbornness on that matter is inflaming world opinion, the Botswana people seem to be concluding, which may force their country to lose revenues from tourism and diamond sales.

SI has been responding to the government statements with its own campaign of countercharges. On December 10th, SI pilloried president Ian Khama for referring to the San people as “primeval,” “primitive,” and “backward.” SI almost seemed delighted with President Khama’s choice of words, writing in its rebuttal, “Khama also accused Survival of ‘embarking upon a campaign of lies and misinformation,’ calling the tribal rights organization ‘modern day highway robbers.’” The SI statement of course rehashed some of the previous history, referring to the way the government has prevented the San from having access to water, while it allows water to be allotted to the diamond industry and the tourist facilities.

Last Thursday, Mmegi published an SI opinion piece in which the organization corrected one of the earlier government charges. It indicated that SI had never said the San people should live in the CKGR, or live in a so-called primitive fashion. “All we have said,” the statement concludes, “is that the Bushmen must be allowed to stay on their lands if that is what they want, and to decide for themselves whether and how they should be ‘developed.’”

On Friday, the 17th, another news source from southern Africa again quoted President Khama’s description of SI as a bunch of highway robbers, that they are demanding “your money or your life.” The president evidently added that Survival survives off its highway robbery. Is it possible that the president was trying to be humorous? Otherwise, the whole debate—about whether or not people should be allowed to have water—would be very sad.

About 130 years ago, Roman Catholic priests from Germany moved into southwestern Tanzania and started converting the Fipa to Christianity, a process that began to change their culture, though they still retained their peacefulness when Willis did his field work in the 1960s. When Smythe was doing her field work in Ufipa between 1994 and 1996, she observed how powerful the church had become a century after the missionaries had arrived: its obvious wealth, material possessions, buildings, machinery, and infrastructure.

Smythe remarked, in her 2006 book, that church officials in the area played an important role in the economic endeavors of the people and in local politics. The church has evidently continued to assert itself in the political scene in Sumbawanga, the major city in the traditional Fipa region of southwestern Tanzania. The church today strongly dislikes one of the politicians.

Tanzania held national elections for president and for members of the National Parliament on October 31st this year, with the dominant party, the CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the Party of the Revolution), winning overwhelmingly.

Of the 343 seats in parliament, the CCM party won 251. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, the CCM candidate for president, was reelected by 62 percent of the votes. There was a problem in Sumbawanga, however, which caught national news attention. The CCM candidate, Mr. Aeish Hilaly won, according to the results announced on November 2, but by a very slim majority of 17,328 over the 17,132 votes for Mr. Norber Yamsebo, the candidate for another party, Chadema.

In the Rukwa Region, where the traditional Fipa kingdoms were located, CCM mostly won landslide victories. The contest between Mr. Hilaly and Mr. Norber was notable not only because of its close results, but more significantly because Mr. Hilaly had been a former student of Mr. Yamsebo. The latter had been the headmaster of the school the winner had attended. Mr. Yamsebo indicated he would challenge the results in court.

A week after the election, it became clear what the trouble was. Yamsebo alleged that the voting had been rigged. He claimed that some of the ballot boxes were late in arriving at the site where election results are announced, and that there could have been some tampering with the votes in the interval while they were in transit.

All of this may sound remarkably familiar, but the story became more interesting last week when the Catholic Church amplified its involvement in the election. Supporters of the CCM candidate, Mr. Hilaly, have been barred from taking part in prayers and other religious services in the catholic churches because of their political affiliation. Mr. Hilaly is a Muslim.

The attitude of the church evidently developed before the election. Around 400 Roman Catholics in Sumbawanga were barred from their churches during the campaign because of their open support for the Muslim candidate, and the diocese just announced that around 20 more members will be excommunicated for the same reason. Their names were to have been announced on Sunday. Some of them had already stated publicly that they did not intend to bend to the whims of the church leadership, and they indicated they would quit.

One of the defiant church members commented to the press, “we have been advised by some of our spiritual leaders to confess in the church during Mass but some of us have rejected the advice. We are now keen to join other religious sects.”

The Sumbawanga Diocese accused Hilaly, who has now been sworn in as a member of parliament, of making blasphemous remarks, though it is not clear from the press account last week exactly what he may have said that offended. Father Damian Kyaruzi, the Bishop of the Sumbawanga Diocese, had given his blessings to the persecution of wayward members of his flock who had the temerity to support the Muslim man. Recently, however, the bishop has not commented further about the controversy.

In addition, the church has excommunicated top members of the CCM party in the region who have supported the winner in the election, and it has punished priests who have not obeyed orders about the matter. The priests are being reprimanded, or locked out of their churches, until they repent. Interestingly, President Kikweti is also a Muslim, but he’s from eastern Tanzania, not Sumbawanga.

The cultural beliefs of some societies, such as the Ju/’hoansi, prompt people to share generously, to forgive failures, and to act altruistically. But there’s a catch. The actors and their actions must be known publicly. When people can act anonymously, their behavior may become more self-focused.

Polly Wiessner, an anthropologist who has studied the Ju/’hoansi extensively, tested some general theories about reciprocal behavior and cooperation while she was staying at the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia and engaged in a larger research project. She introduced some games in three different villages in 2004, analyzed the results, and published the results recently in an interesting journal article.

Sharing and formalized giving in traditional Ju/’hoan society were governed by socially-constructed rules that everyone monitored. A person who killed an antelope would share the meat with others, who would then give away some of their portions in waves of further sharing that would follow rules accepted for generations. Despite the changes in their society in recent decades, the author writes that some traditional social practices, such as sharing, persist, though they have weakened from 50 years ago.

She decided to analyze the contemporary sharing spirit of the Ju/’hoansi with some experiments. She invited the residents of three different villages to play what she calls the dictator game and the ultimatum game. In both games, the participants were paired with others in the village, but the paired individuals did not know who they were playing with. Wiessner assured the players that only she would know who their partners were. No one else would find out.

The Ju/’hoansi have had so much experience with the whims of outside investigators that they were not at all concerned by the terms of the game. They were pleased that the author said she would give very real money to each participant for the purposes of the game—money they desperately needed since their welfare checks had not come and they were hungry. Wiessner explained that she herself did not care how they played the game, nor would she worry about the results. The participants should act as they wished.

In the dictator game, a mediator gave $10 of Wiessner’s funds to each participant, who was told that he or she might divide the money with an unknown person in the community. The Ju/’hoansi themselves modified the rules by insisting that a minimum of $1.00 had to be offered, or it couldn’t really be a game of giving. Wiessner accepted the modification. The point was to measure the spirit of giving in a situation of complete anonymity.

The ultimatum game differed a bit. Again, each participant was given $10 and asked if he or she wanted to give some of it to an anonymous partner. If that other person, informed of the amount of the division, accepted the recipient’s decision, they both got their amounts. However, if the unknown other refused the amount, because it had been too stingy, neither participant would get anything. Nobody except the author would know what had been offered, accepted, or refused—or who the participants had been paired with. The people in the villages were most enthusiastic to play, and they were asked to not discuss the results with others for a few days until Wiessner could play the same game in each of her three study villages.

The results were perhaps predictable. The people responded selfishly to the dictator game, and even more selfishly to the ultimatum game that followed immediately afterwards. Wiessner speculates that the people gave even less to others once they were really convinced that they could be as selfish as they wished and there would be no consequences. No one would know.

Some participants gave generously, $4 or $5, in the first round, but when they realized that no one would know the difference, they acted more selfishly in the follow-up. Wiessner wondered if anyone would offer more than $5, in order to act as a big shot, but no one did.

In one of the villages, Wiessner sat around and discussed the results of the games with the participants immediately after they had finished playing. People said that since no one knew what others were giving, everyone should be happy with only one or two dollars. One person suggested that no one should give much because it might go to someone who had been stingy.

The author observed the results of her experiment during the days that followed, though she was discrete in order to not influence the actual course of events. Some of the participants took their own money, and the funds of others, to Tsumkwe or Gam, nearby towns, in order to shop for desperately needed supplies. The shoppers who went to Gam were lucky in securing transportation. They got into the town fairly quickly and were able to return the same day.

The shoppers gave specifically-requested items to some people, pooled the food they had bought, and shared the cooked meals in equal portions, even though the money used for the purchases had not been contributed equally. Their actions followed traditional patterns.

However, a group of people in the village were excluded. The ostracized faction had not properly shared the meat from a goat they had butchered not long before, and tensions were high about the matter. While the feasting people ate, they loudly criticized the excluded group so all could hear. Unfortunately, the two factions got into a brawl the next day, and the excluded group left the village to settle elsewhere. Weisser argues that the loud criticism during the feast had followed traditional patterns of handling inappropriate behavior.

She concludes that the Ju/’hoansi still play the games of life—sharing and reciprocity—according to long-established social rules. They know how meat from a goat should be properly distributed. As long as they live in a face to face village environment and can all monitor one another, they follow their traditional practices. However, when complete anonymity prevails, they can act as people do in many faceless, anonymous societies—as selfishly as seems appropriate for the circumstances.

Wiessner, Polly. 2009. “Experimental Games and Games of Life among the Ju/hoan Bushmen.” Current Anthropology 50(1): 133-138

While the Buid have traditionally relied on rituals for help in maintaining harmony in their families and communities, they will also turn to them when they are threatened by outsiders, such as the Christian lowlanders who are taking away their lands.

Recent news stories about the land conflicts do not report any violence, though tensions are obviously running high in the Buid communities of southern Mindoro Island, the Philippines. The Buid have farmed the highlands in the region for many generations, and are protesting the way their ancestral lands are being deeded to non-Buid farmers. The process of taking away Buid lands started some years ago, and it has resumed, with government support, in the past few weeks.

In 2004, the Department of Agrarian Reform in Oriental Mindoro province started distributing titles to some 600 hectares of Buid (also spelled Buhid) ancestral lands to non-Buid lowlanders. The titles were given to over 200 non-Buid farmers as part of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. However, due to an insurgency in the region at the time, the government did not continue the program until a few weeks ago when it resumed distributing the titles.

A reporter, Madonna Virola, contacted the provincial government of Oriental Mindoro to obtain the background. Rene Catly, in the agrarian reform office, described how the agency had deeded the Buid lands to non-Buid farmers in 2004. The properties had been declared disposable for agrarian purposes by the Ministry of Human Settlements.

Yaum Sumbad, leader of a group called Sadik Habanan Buhid, told the reporter, “Our sacred lands were measured and are being taken away. We fear sickness, calamities, death. We ask for the protection of our land.”

Ms. Virola visited the town of Bongabong and witnessed a Buid ritual called a Luhudan. Five mediums chanted prayers above a pig, she writes, which had been tied to a piece of wood. They were appealing to the ancestors for help in driving away the evil spirits, which they felt were trying to take their land away from them. If she witnessed the full ritual, she doesn’t describe the sacrifice of the pig or the distribution of the meat.

Gibson (1989b) indicates that pig feasts were often held in Buid villages when he was there in order to resolve internal disputes, particularly marital problems. The ritual of sacrificing pigs and distributing the meat to others followed traditional rules designed to restore and reaffirm harmony within the household and the community.

In another work, Gibson (1989) describes additional reasons for pig feasts. Though the animals that are sacrificed all belong to individual households, the meat is always shared equally in the community. The circumstances that prompt the ceremonies may vary, but the rituals are only held because of a mystical danger of illness or death. The larger the apparent threat, the greater the community of participants. Gibson briefly describes, in his 1986 book (p.172), what he calls the “swinging-pig ritual,” which serves to expel invading spirits “through the violent release of animal vitality.”

Gibson worked in the hamlet of Ayfay, located within the same Bongabong municipality that Ms. Virola visited. In the course of his work there, from 1979 to 1981, he helped the Buid prepare a map of their traditional holdings, in order to assist them in the land conflicts that had been building up for years. He writes (1989b, p.73) that while the Buid community realized the importance of settling conflicts through appropriate rituals, “internal squabbles continue to be dwarfed in importance by the threat posed to all Buid by lowland squatters and capitalists.”

Some of the Buid today are taking active positions. Inggid Ray-Uman, from the Maptung community, claims that the government is violating the Indigenous People’s Rights law. The land is not disposable, he says. He argues that the government has not obtained the informed consent of the Buid to being dispossessed of their lands, and he says they have submitted several petitions about the matter.

The non-tribal Filipinos disagree, needless to say. Robert Fabella, who attended the pig ritual, claimed that he was born in 1974 on land to which he now has title, over 2000 square meters, or a half acre. He said he had the land surveyed, obtained the title, and only afterwards did the Buid confront him with their claims that the land was theirs.

Maricel Tolentino, from the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), is trying to forge a compromise. She maintains that both the Buid and the non-tribal farmers are very poor, and both are trying to use the same land. Her group is fostering dialogs between the competing interests and the provincial agencies in order to bridge the differences between the differing perspectives on property rights.

Mr. Catly in the Department of Agrarian Reform is defensive. “We can’t cancel all titles we awarded on over 900 hectares,” he tells Ms. Virola. “But the tribal people’s claimed land is over 99,000 hectares. There has to be a win-win situation.”

Congressman Teddy Baguilat, who chairs the committee on cultural minorities for the national government, is optimistic that the problem of tribal rights versus settler claims for lands can be settled. Himself a member of the Ifugao society in northern Philippines, Mr. Baguilat sees the dispute in terms of bureaucratic tangles because so many different agencies have been involved and have differed over the right ways to settle land rights. Part of the problem, he feels, is that the agencies have not effectively negotiated their differences for the best interests of all.

He believes that if the government can properly solve the Buid case, that could set a precedent for traditional land title claims all over the Philippines. His committee has received many complaints from indigenous groups about this problem. The issues are often quite similar to the Buid dispute. If his rosy perspective fosters real leadership about the matter, the reporter speculates that the Buid may not need to continue their sacrificial rituals.

Chris Brown left Tristan da Cunha after a three-year stay, but he still thinks it is “a remarkable place with remarkable people…” If he could, he said, he’d like to go back. Father Brown was the Anglican priest at St. Mary’s Church on the island from 2007 until July 2010.

Like Tristan da Cunha administrators, who have come and gone for many decades, the priests who serve in the Anglican church are also temporary residents. The interesting circumstance is that three of the Anglican priests have come from the same town, Malvern, located in Worcestershire, in the West Midlands region of central England. Last Friday, the Malvern Gazette, a newspaper in the town of slightly under 30,000 people, carried a story about the odd link between the English town, its church people, and the distant outpost of empire.

The first Anglican priest from Malvern to serve on Tristan, Edwin H. Dodgson, younger brother of the famous writer Charles L. Dodgson (who was better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll), served on the isolated island beginning in February 1881. He landed safely, but shortly after he got ashore, a gale came up and drove the ship onto the rocks, destroying most of the paraphernalia he had brought along. Communion vessels and a stone font were saved, but not much else.

He served as school teacher as well as priest, and at first he was optimistic. But he soon became quite depressed about the situation—particularly the isolation of the Tristan Islanders and their lack of education. He felt the isolation stunted their intellectual growth. He urged that the people be removed from the island, for their own good, but the British government ignored his recommendations. He left early in 1885.

Later that year, however, 15 men drowned at sea in a boating accident that decimated the adult, male population of the island. Hearing the news, Dodgson returned to Tristan in August 1886 to help out, staying until December 1889, when poor health forced him to leave for good.

The island was without a priest until 1906 when John Graham Barrow, also from Malvern, arrived. The landing party was again hampered by mountainous seas, but the new priest was able to bring ashore a church bell, donated by the parishioners in St. Andrews church in Poolbrook, his former parish. Poolbrook is a suburb of Malvern. He served on Tristan until 1909.

Other Anglican priests have come and gone. One, described by Peter A. Munch in his book Crisis in Utopia (1971), acted in an imperious, dictatorial fashion toward the islanders. The islanders handled him by deferring to his wishes as much as necessary and nonviolently resisting whatever they could, without directly confronting him.

The third Malvern man to serve as parish priest on Tristan, Father Brown, was much more exhilarated by his isolated post than his predecessors. At first it all seemed to be very bleak and dreary, he told the news reporter, but after he met some of the islanders he quickly changed his mind.

He said he found the community to be a friendly, though reserved, place. With just 261 residents, everyone knows each other. It retains, in Brown’s estimation, the atmosphere of rural Britain in the 1950s. Wool being one of their major crops, the bearded priest was given a pile of knit goods when he left.

A news story on the Tristan da Cunha official website includes five pictures of Father Brown at a party a few days before he left, with parishioners wishing him well.

It may be hard for non-Amish Pennsylvanians to appreciate the fact that their peaceful, hard-working Amish neighbors may have other things to do than spend money on consumer goods.

The Amish disinterest in consumer spending, combined with their habit of working hard, may be starting to sour some attitudes toward them in the Philadelphia suburbs west of the city. Some roofing companies along the Mainline feel they simply cannot compete with Amish contractors coming from Lancaster County and the western fringes of Chester County who make significantly lower bids on jobs.

The difference: the Mainline contractors blame the social security taxes, which the Amish do not have to pay, as a major reason why they can undercut their bids. The arguments are similar to the ones made by jealous manufacturing firms in Canada that have a hard time competing with Hutterite enterprises, which sell their products for less.

Southeastern Pennsylvania Map The reporter for a Philadelphia Inquirer story last week, Harold Brubaker, quotes Keith McLean, a roofing contractor from Paoli, who owns Hancock Building Associates, Inc. He lost a job recently when his bid of $8,000 turned out to be more than $3,000 above a bid from an Amish competitor. He told the Inquirer that his “wiggle room,” the amount that he could bring down his bid, is in the hundreds, not the thousands of dollars. “I don’t have three grand” to bargain over, he said.

Since their Amish competitors do not have to pay social security taxes for their Amish employees, they have an unfair advantage, Mr. McLean argued. Also, as with the Canadian Hutterites, the American Amish are allowed a religious exemption so they are not required to pay workers’ compensation insurance. “If they are going to come into our community, they need to conduct their business the same way we do,” the contractor told the newspaper.

The Amish contractors, needless to say, see their competition differently. John F. Stoltzfus, owner of Countryside Roofing & Exteriors in Strasburg, said that one of their major advantages over the Mainline firms is that they come from somewhat less expensive areas farther out in the country. Their costs are not as high.

Amish contractors have been doing business in the Philadelphia suburbs for many years, but before the economy dropped three years ago, the mainstream, “English,” contractors also got plenty of customers so they didn’t complain. Now they do. One complaint is that the Amish go back to their homes without even spending their money in the suburbs.

Steve Kraegel, owner of CedarTek, a roofing firm in Paoli, called the phenomenon of Amish coming in from the country and taking jobs a form of “outsourcing.” The Inquirer noted, however, that when suburban homeowners pay less money to get work done, they then have that much more to spend, so it would be hard to calculate whether the influence of the Amish businesses is a positive or a negative influence on the economy of the Mainline.

Mr. Brubaker interviewed Aaron S. Esh, President of Esh Home Improvement in New Holland, an Amish firm, about the situation. His attitude is that his employees simply work faster and harder than the people hired by his competitors. He was not modest in discussing his company. “The faster my guys work, the lower I can bid. If my guys are efficient and they get the job done in half the time, guess what? I’m going to bid lower.”

Mr. McLean dismissed that reasoning when he was told of it. It’s not true that they work faster, he argued, but he admitted that the Amish do have fewer expenses than their “English” competitors. For instance, they don’t have high bills for cable service. He was refreshingly candid. “They don’t have a lifestyle. They just work.”

The news story mentioned the familiar—that the Amish do not have to participate in the Social Security system—but it also indicated that Pennsylvania law, along with some other states, permits businesses to exempt Amish employees from participating in Workers’ Compensation due to religious reasons. Typically, Amish firms that do not want to participate will be set up as partnerships, with each worker being a part owner.

But six of the ten Amish contractors the reporter interviewed do, in fact, pay for the workers’ compensation insurance. The reporter found that that insurance, at least in Chester County, was not a factor in the competitive difference between the Amish contractors and the non-Amish ones.

The reporter examined the records of suburban Uwchlan Township in north central Chester County to compare the applications for permits to contractors. Out of 125 permits issued for replacement of residential roofs, about one-fifth went to Amish firms. Slightly over half of them had workers’ compensation insurance.

Two different homeowners, interviewed by the paper about the jobs that had been done on their homes, were enthusiastic. Clifford Hoffman indicated he had hired L&S Construction from New Holland. Their bid, of $1,800, was less than he had paid ten years before for a new roof. He did not bother to get a second bid. “They did an excellent job,” he said of L&S. “Everything was perfect.”

George Marion hired Beiler Bros., also of New Holland. Jenna Marion said that George had hired them, not because their price was significantly less, but because he thought that they would do a quality job. Mr. Brubaker tries to retain his journalistic objectivity in his news story, but it is apparent that the arguments of the English contractors are not as convincing as the evidence about the work ethic, and lack of consumption, by the Amish themselves.

The Ladakhi people are working together, with assistance from many benefactors, to rebuild from the devastation caused by floods in early August that destroyed parts of Leh and surrounding villages. Several news stories from India last week focused on the continuing problems in Ladakh, and the progress that is being made as winter weather sets in.

The Times of India reported that at the Solar Camp, the largest temporary village set up for refugees whose homes were destroyed by the flooding and mud slides, people were finally able to move their few belongings into more permanent shelters for the winter. The conditions do not appear to be ideal in the newly constructed structures, but they are obviously better than they were in September, when many observers were pessimistic about the refugees getting into satisfactory living facilities before winter.

Thenles Chodol, a mother of three, pointed out to the reporter the rips in her tent, made by stray dogs tearing their way in at night. She had lost her home in the village of Byama, and had been forced to seek shelter in the Solar Camp.

The government was eager to show off the 170 more or less completed structures that the people were moving in to. The reporter noted that some of them did not appear to be completed, and that the large windows in the new structures, made of stone, cement, and pre-painted galvanized iron sheets, faced to the north, away from the warming rays of the winter sun, in a region where temperatures often go well below freezing. The new shelters also lack indoor toilets. Administrators had planned community facilities instead.

Tenzin Dolma, a 35 year old beautician who lost a daughter in the flood, has put her own money into improving the pre-fab room the government provided. She has added extra rooms and a bathroom to the structure. Inviting visitors into her home, she shows off the plastered and painted rooms and floor seating. She offers tea to her visitors and explains how difficult it would have been to make it through the winter with only an outdoor toilet.

Ms. Dolma’s sister and some friends have helped her by visiting and staying with her, so she won’t be alone. In addition to her daughter, she lost her mother, another sister, and a niece in the flood. “The close-knit community of Leh has come to the rescue,” the Times suggested, referring to the way the woman’s family and friends have responded.

T. Angchok, the Deputy Commissioner of Leh, added a similar thought about the way the Ladakhi people help one another. “The Ladakhi community is very supportive—the culture is such. They come together in difficult times,” he said.

The mudslides the evening of August 5th—6th destroyed many homes and buildings. In addition, they covered fields with thick mud, which has hardened like concrete. Planting new crops will be very difficult, if not impossible, in March, the beginning of the growing season. “Clearing [the mud] with bare hands is impossible, and nothing can be sown in it either,” said Mohd Azghar, a resident of the village of Phyang. He added that all of their food stores were washed away, and with their fields destroyed, he is pessimistic about surviving the winter.

Mr. Angchok, the Deputy Commissioner, admitted that work on clearing the fields with bulldozers has just begun. Some of the fields will be impossible to rehabilitate, he said, so residents will have to be compensated and induced to move to other locations. Agriculture is the foundation of the economy of Ladakh, and the loss of their fields is a serious blow to the affected farm families.

The flash floods and mudslides also disrupted most of the tourist business, the second most important sector of the region’s economy. Rigzin Spalbar, the elected Chief Executive Councilor of Leh-Ladakh, told one reporter that the flood of news reporting brought a lot of help to Leh and its surrounding villages, but it also scared away virtually all the tourists, on whom the economy of the small city has come to depend.

Stanzin Namdam, the owner of a hotel, explained how the tourist season, which used to last for only a couple months starting in July, had grown. In 2009 it had extended from May through October. In 2005 Leh received 40,000 visitors, a figure that had doubled by 2009. The number was expected to exceed 100,000 this year, before the flood hit. A large proportion of the visitors consisted of hiking and trekking foreigners, but in recent years, with occasional Bollywood films focusing on Ladakh, some Indians have begun visiting too.

Mr. Namdam indicated that Bollywood actor Rahul Bose had visited in September, but other than that, celebrities have been staying away. “Little else has come our way since,” he added.

Except for the Chief Minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, who visited Leh on Friday. Mr. Abdullah inspected the construction works at the Solar Colony, where families were moving into their new homes—two-room tenements, as one news report described them.

The Chief Minister inaugurated a new power station that will augment the electricity supply for the Solar Colony. He visited Phyang, where he announced that funds would be available for the reclamation of the devastated fields. He said that a comprehensive plan has been prepared that should help the work of cleaning up the fields. It has been submitted to higher levels of government for funding.

The Zapotec people of one Mexican town, Ixtlán de Juárez, in Oaxaca State, respect each other, work together, and cherish their forests in order to live in peace. Their effective natural resource management strategies and sustainable wood-products industries are based on beliefs that they must treasure healthy community forests.

The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin has often been cited in the American forest stewardship literature for its long-range commitment to well managed tribal forests. Forest stewards, and those interested in sustainable forestry practices, now have a second indigenous group in North America to emulate. The New York Times featured the Zapotec town last week.

The community evidently takes a long range view of their woods, much as the Menominee do. The reporter quotes Alejandro Vargas, a worker in a pine plantation: “We’re the owners of this land and we have tried to conserve this forest for our children, for our descendants.” Mr. Vargas adds that the reason they feel that way is that they have lived there for many generations.

Ixtlán won the right to own and manage its forests from the Mexican government 30 years ago. Previously, outsiders, under state-controlled corporations, exploited the timber crops without much regard for long-term values. With the community now in charge, the people of Ixtlán have built their own lumber business at the same time they have learned how to care for the land. The town enterprises employ 300 people in logging, caring for the forest, and making wooden furniture.

The Times indicates that the town is now considered to be the gold standard model for community forestry. The Forest Stewardship Council, a highly respected certifying body for sustainable forestry practices worldwide, has certified the Ixtlán forest. That forest is not unique in Mexico, however. Much of the remaining woodland in the country—perhaps 60 to 80 percent—is also owned and managed by communities. David Bray, an authority on community forestry practices at Florida International University, told the paper that the management of forests by communities in Mexico is “astounding.”

The newspaper reviewed the way community lands in Zapotec society are managed by the general assembly of each town, the comuneros, mostly men, who set management policies. These same people also have to commit their time to working in the forest and its enterprises.

Francisco Luna, secretary of the committee that manages the forest and its related businesses, explained the thinking of the people. “You can see the harmony,” he said. “For us to live in peace, we have to respect all the rules.”

The Times reporter asked Pedro Vidal García, a forester who had worked for the community, about problems of illegal logging or other issues related to deforestation. He laughed. The community would judge very harshly anyone who dared to work for, or to guide, a logger who tried to steal trees. That person would be judged severely, branded as a traitor, and lose his own property rights.

The reporter describes the approach of Ixtlán as a unique mixture of socialism and capitalism, although it seems to work. According to Mr. García, it takes a long time for community assemblies, where forest-related issues are discussed, to reach agreements. “The assembly can turn emotional, or technical,” he says. But the forest-related enterprises made a profit last year of U.S.$230,000, 30 percent of which went back into the businesses, 30 percent into forest preservation, and 40 percent to the community and the workers. Those funds support community needs such as pensions, low-interest loans, and support for students living in Oaxaca City getting their educations.

Alberto Belmonte, a resident who is in charge of marketing the furniture and lumber products, finds the mixture of socialism and capitalism to be odd. It is socialism at the community level, but it includes a commitment to also be profitable, he says. He is trying to open new markets for the furniture the community builds, such as bunk beds for children’s homes.

One worker, Julio García Gómez, returned from a stint as an illegal worker in the United States to employment in the town sawmill. The pay is good enough for him to raise his young family, plus he benefits from the equipment and training. Prof. Bray added that this kind of community forestry will not work everywhere, but in places which produce quality timber, it is a viable management approach. And it is an immense improvement over the previous style of logging.

Francisco Chapela, a Mexican agronomist, suggested that the community forestry plan is working well in Ixtlán. It has created many jobs, brought in a lot of money, and is generally quite successful. Comparing old photographs and recent ones shows a significant improvement in the health of the forested landscape.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

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Play about Birhor Receives Award

Botswana versus Survival International

The Catholic Church and the Politicians

Buid Lose their Lands

Tristan Priests from Malvern, England

The Amish Like to Work

Community and Government Provide Support in Ladakh

Healthy Forests in a Zapotec Community

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