Peaceful Societies

Last week the Mexican news website lanetanoticias.com published a cultural piece explaining why the art of tattooing became popular among the Ifaluk. The story of the adoption of tattooing on the island, tied in with a belief in the god Wolfat (also spelled Wolphat), is explained effectively by the journalist but it is better related, and with more detail, by Edwin Burrows in the first chapter, “Tattooing,” of his 1963 book Flower in My Ear: Arts and Ethos of Ifaluk Atoll.

Both sources indicate that tattooing is very important among the Ifaluk because it is supposed to be highly attractive to potential mates. Specifically for men who want to attract women, they must be covered with tattoos. The god Wolfat instituted the custom, according to Ifaluk legends.

One day the god looked down at the earth and saw a woman, Iloumuligeriou, and he fell for her beauty. Burrows adds the note that the Ifaluk themselves deny that this occurred right on their island, but they are not sure where it did occur. Anyway, when he entered her house at night, she awoke and asked who was there. Wolfat answered that he was a man from the sky.

A tattooed man on Fais, a neighboring island to Ifaluk, making sennet, a type of rope (Image from the Atoll Research Bulletin no. 494, Golden Issue 1951-2001. U.S. National Museum of Natural History, in the public domain)

She started a fire which allowed her to see him and she was struck by the black designs all over his body. Three other women also lived in the house with their husbands and when they saw the designs on the visitor’s body, they too were intrigued. They woke up their husbands and told them to look at the stranger—they wanted their men to look like that also.

In the morning, Wolfat went back to the sky. The three husbands that day took some charcoal and began covering their bodies with designs such as they had seen the night before on Wolfat. Oddly, that second night when Wolfat appeared at Iloumuligeriou’s door, he had no black designs on his skin. They were all gone. The other three women woke up and concurred with the statement of Iloumuligeriou to Wolfat. She told him to go away. She didn’t like him without his beautiful designs.

Maroligar, the second-ranking chief on Ifaluk in 1953, has tattoos on his face and arms (Image from the Atoll Research Bulletin no. 494, Golden Issue 1951-2001. U.S. National Museum of Natural History, in the public domain)

So Wolfat stepped out of the house, took the time to put on his tattoos again, and sought to reenter the home. The men of the house all awoke and, seeing Wolfat, suggested to Iloumuligeriou that she ought to marry him. So she put the idea to the god and he agreed. The next morning he showed the men of the house the art of tattooing and instructed them on how to proceed. They needed to make a needle from a wing feather of a man-of-war bird. Then they should make suitable blackening dust for decorating the skin by burning breadfruit gum and gathering the resulting soot on a smooth surface.

Melford E. Spiro, who also did fieldwork among the Ifaluk, explained in a 1951 article that Wolfat was really a trickster god, the source of much amusement to the people. For the god’s behavior was often characterized by roguish, and sometimes even hostile and petulant, behavior. Since only the Ifaluk chiefs really knew the stories of the gods well, the rest of the people just enjoyed them and delighted in the contrasts between the confrontational activities of the deity and the nearly complete absence of aggressive behavior in their community.

Other scientists, including biologists Marston Bates and Donald Abbott, studied the ecosystem of the island and its surrounding waters during a 1953 expedition. In their jointly-authored book about their work, Coral Island: Portrait of an Atoll, Abbott wrote in one of his chapters about his experience in getting a tattoo put on by an Ifaluk tattoo artist (p. 239 – 241). He had a set of porpoises tattooed about halfway up his right leg one day, an operation observed by a crowd of islanders.

He hadn’t foreseen the effects of his gesture. Everywhere he went during the remaining time he had with the people, his tattoo was admired and commented upon. The sentiment of identifying with the island and its inhabitants was widely appreciated. “We were closer to them now than we had been before, and when we left, we would carry a bit of Ifaluk with us for a lifetime,” Abbott concluded (p. 241). He does not mention Wolfat, much less the issue of attractiveness to Ifaluk women.

According to the closing credits of a six-minute video posted to YouTube last week, the marvelous footage of an Mbuti community suffering from discrimination in the Eastern Congo was prepared by the Survival Media Agency. The beauty of the scenery—and of the Mbuti people themselves—recommends the production but it is worth summarizing its factual points and arguments for readers who don’t have the time to watch the original.

A milk distribution center in Kalonge, Congo (Photo by USAID on Pixnio, in the public domain)

The video opens with Kasolee Kalumbiro, an elder from the Mbuti community in Kalonge, Congo. He is well-dressed and, speaking in his native tongue, describes their former lives in the Kahuzi Biega forest. His comments, translated into English subtitles, describe in idealistic terms their former forest existence. They were never sick; they got their food, shelter, and medicines from the forest.

But various unnamed international conservation organizations argued to the Congo government that protecting the forest required the indigenous people living in it to be excluded. When the government agreed and decided to expel them from the forest, without talking to the people beforehand, it moved in with excessive brutality. One day, groups of armed thugs invaded their forest homes, shooting people they saw, injuring and killing many, and burning their houses.

A waterfall in the Kahuzi Biega National Park (Photo by the U.S. Forest Service in Wikimedia, in the public domain)

As the narrator goes on, camera shots skillfully show us scenes of the Kahuzi Biega landscape—mountains and forests shrouded in mists, Mbuti gathered around a fire. The people were forced to flee. The story continues with explanatory panels gently interspersed with scenes of the Congo and its Mbuti people. Different narrators speak in English or other languages, but all are given English subtitles. The video argues that the park areas of the Congo from which the indigenous people have been expelled have suffered a reduction of their forest cover of about 40 percent.

The basic point was that the government of the Congo wanted to convert the forested lands into money-making areas from, at first, logging and after that from mining, specifically of coltan. Instead, the Mbuti speakers and the filmmakers argue, retaining the forests for their indigenous people with their traditional uses would absorb the global emission of vast amounts of carbon.

An industrial logging operation in the Congo Basin (Photo by J.G. Collomb, World Resources Institute in Wikipedia, Creative Commons license)

A map of the Congo appears and the person speaking at that moment says, “Some of us went to live in Kabare.” The camera leaves the map and focuses on a group of people walking along a dirt track cut into a mountainside, forests above and below. Breathtaking. But the video quickly focuses again on the next stage, a scene of people following a wider road—a protest march. We are told that they faced their problems and decided to establish an organization called CPAKI, which stands for Collectif pour les Peuples Autochtones au Kivu (Organization for the Indigenous Communities of Kivu). The group has been working to end destructive mining and logging in the forests, educate the people about their land rights, and teach techniques of sustainable farming.

At this point the voice of a woman narrator comes on—the previous speakers had all been men—and, introduced as Sifa Adelle, Mbuti farmer, the attractive lady explains how they are farming successfully now and they have enough food. She says confidently to the camera, “our children don’t go hungry and the surplus is sold and used to pay for our children’s school fees.”

Beekeeping in Luhonga, Eastern Congo (Photo by Molly Bergen/WCS, WWF, WRI on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The video continues by explaining how they merge modern agricultural techniques with their traditional knowledge by managing over 100 beehives, sharing the produce, and using it for food and the treatment of over 100 diseases. But the bright successes are interrupted with the darker stories. The video briefly tells us the tale of the attempt by the government to evict the indigenous people living in the Itombwe Forest, an effort that was resisted by CPAKI activists. That story was covered in more detail in a 2016 news report.

A man speaking in English, Samuel Nnah Ndobe, Coordinator, Central Africa Advisory Board, Global Greengrants Fund, begins wrapping up the arguments made by the video. The indigenous people such as the Mbuti provide a wonderful service by protecting forests, not only for the native flora and fauna in them but also as a service to humanity by sequestering vast amounts of carbon. They ought to be allowed to continue to provide that service.

The Greengrants Fund is credited by YouTube as the producer of the video, “Saving Ourselves: a Story from the Bambuti People.”

Canada’s CBC Radio rebroadcast a documentary on January 4 about Elisapee Ishulutaq, a renowned Inuit artist who died on December 9, 2018. The program had first been aired in June 2014 when she was in her late 80s and was appointed to the Order of Canada.

Elisapee Ishulutaq painting on the floor (Screen captures from the video “Elisapee Ishulutaq” by Patrick Andrew Boivin on Vimeo, Creative Commons license)

As a child in the 1930s, Ishulutaq lived with her parents out on the land in Baffin Island. But when she was in her 40s, she moved into Pangnirtung, a community on the island that has become famous for its art scene, where artists do a worldwide business in the sale of traditional subjects depicted in sculptures, weavings, and prints. Ishulutaq, who loved to draw, helped establish printmaking as a prominent art form in Pangnirtung. According to the CBC, “her art has helped define how the Inuit are seen around the world.”

When David Gutnick from the CBC met with her, she was in her late 80s and mostly confined to a wheelchair which her grandson, Andrew Ishulutaq, pushed her around in. He also interpreted for her since she only spoke Inuktitut. The day they met, however, she was kneeling on the floor holding a paintbrush in her hand.

Ishulutaq’s painting shows scenes from her childhood

She was singing a song from her childhood, a song about the long, dark winters in an igloo in the North. She sang about children tossing a caribou skin ball for hours to one another, the only light coming from a seal oil lamp. And she spent that recent morning transferring her memories of those times into painted images that would outlast her. She spent over an hour on the floor and painted, as a result, an outline of the walls of an igloo and a girl with a very serious face, a caribou ball suspended above her.

Decades ago, when Canadian authorities decided that the Inuit would no longer be allowed to roam around on the land and had to stay confined to villages, it posed extraordinary hardships on them. Ishulutaq remembered that her father struggled to find enough seal at night to feed his family. They became so desperate that they were forced to eat seal skins. Their dogs were shot to prevent them from continuing to live nomadically. Ms. Ishulutaq had powerful memories to cope with.

Sylvia Safdie, a filmmaker, was also present during the CBC visit that day. She remarked on the deep-set emotions she could perceive in Ishulutaq’s face. The elderly lady has lived through so much, she observed. “It is the way her eyes move, they light up and then they become sad,” she said. She added that the artist does not function in theory. Instead, Safdie said, Ishulutaq functions “from within, and that is the essence of art.”

Ishulutaq suddenly remembered something else and stopped painting. Her memory was of her grandfather and how he used to play the Inuit violin, which nobody plays now. “So many people would be up on their feet, dancing,” she recalled.

A news report from December 2010 explained that about 30 years earlier, the Zapotec municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez had gained the right from the Mexican government to manage its forest resources themselves. Before then, outside interests had exploited the forests for their resources without much thought for the future. With the people of the municipality in charge, things were starting to change. The Zapotec were caring for the land. Enterprises run by the town employed 300 people in logging, making wooden furniture, and working in the forest.

Ixtlán de Juarez (Photo by Stephen Lea in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

A recent Inter Press Service news report from southern Mexico brings the story up to date. It covers a range of issues involving the forests of the Sierra Juárez, among which it devotes several paragraphs to describing the forest management practices in the Zapotec municipality. Forest managers feel that their strategies can help combat the effects of climate change.

Rogelio Ruiz, a silviculturist in La Trinidad, a community in the municipality, told IPS that native forests are exceptionally effective in mitigating the effects of climate change but they are also impacted by the rise in temperatures, variations in amounts of rainfall, and the spreading of insect pests that the changes bring about.

A worker in a pine tree in Ixtlán de Juárez, Mexico (Photo by Pablo Leautaud on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

People in the ecoregion, the Sierra Juárez, are well aware of the dangers posed by pests. The pine sawflies, which eat the needles on pine trees, are destroying forests in the mountains. Approximately 10,000 hectares of forests in the region are believed to be at risk. Ruiz told the reporter that out of 805 hectares of forest controlled by La Trinidad community, 106 have already been damaged by the pests. He explained that workers applied an aerial fumigation of a bio-pesticide back in September.

In the whole Ixtlán municipality, 600 hectares have been damaged by the insects. Forest managers have been experimenting with different species of pines in the nursery. Sergio Ruiz, a forest advisor for the Santo Tomás Ixtlán Forest Union, explained that they are trying to develop trees that grow faster and are more resistant to pests.

It appears from the details provided by the IPS news story that giving the communities the right to manage their forests was a very wise move by the Mexican government. While forestry professionals might argue about some of the details, the Zapotec treasure their forests and are attempting to do the right things for the natural community that surrounds them.

A veteran Malaysian politician was unexpectedly stranded in an isolated Semai community in the Cameron Highlands on New Year’s Eve. The sense of being trapped fostered feelings of sympathy for the poverty of the Orang Asli.

According to one news report, Lim Kit Siang, a long-time leader of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), entered the Semai village on Saturday, December 29, intending to leave on Monday the 31st. The DAP is one of the four parties that formed a coalition and defeated the Barisan Nasional (BN) Party in national elections in May of 2018. An earlier news story in May had examined the negative feelings of the Semai themselves toward the BN rule for 60 years.

But on Monday, New Year’s Eve, the 77-year old politician and his party decided that their 12, four-wheel drive vehicles could not make it out to the nearest paved road due to heavy rains that had turned the dirt access track into a sea of mud. So he and his party decided to spend the night near a river in the Cameron Highlands.

The approaching dark of night in the Cameron Highlands (Photo by amrufm in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

According to another news story about the experience, Lim and the rest of the party greeted the New Year on Tuesday morning with a simple meal of sardines, rice, and an omelet. “This was my first experience in 77 years at being trapped at a place, cut off from all access to the outside world,” he said in a statement.

The track into the Semai village, Kampung Semoi Lama, required the party to drive through the strong currents of a river—an “unforgettable experience,” according to the politician. These two experiences at the end of 2018 illustrated the lapses of the former government, he said, which had failed during its 60 years in power to do much for the Orang Asli. But not one to miss a chance to try for political gains, he stated when he got out that his experiences had convinced him of the importance of working to uplift the different Orang Asli communities.

A 66-year old Semai woman holding tapioca for sale in Kampung Rening, Cameron Highlands (Photo by tian yake on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Lim said that it was time for the government to eliminate the isolation, backwardness, and poverty of the Semai and the other Orang Asli in the Cameron Highlands, something he felt the BN had not bothered to do. “It is a symbol that after six decades, the majority of Orang Asli communities are still cut off from the outside world when they should have already been brought into the mainstream of national development,” he said.

He proposed that a National Orang Asli Conference be convened in the Cameron Highlands to prepare a plan for uplifting their communities. Such a conference would allow people “who had bravely stood up for the country by being witnesses of truth, justice and democracy against bribery, money-politics and voter-threats in the Cameron Highlands”—i.e., who had voted against the BN—to prevail in future elections.

Superstitious beliefs are deterring some pregnant women in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania from going to health facilities when the time comes to deliver their babies. According to a news story dated December 27, women are ignoring the advice of medical personnel and drinking concoctions of herbal teas to reduce labor pains, sometimes with serious consequences. Although the story does not mention the Fipa society, it comes from the region which has many of their villages.

A woman waiting with her baby at the Mtowisa Health Center (Photo by Katy Woods for The White Ribbon Alliance on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The reporter, Peti Siyame in Sumbawanga, pointed out that women in the area prefer to deliver their babies at home rather than in the available health facilities. Mariam Haji told the reporter that women were forced to deliver their babies at home because of a lack of public health facilities within a reasonable distance of their villages. The statistics support that belief: out of 339 villages in the region, 139 lack a public health center. As a result, the women deliver at home after drinking the herbal concoctions.

But at a regional health meeting, Dr. Boniface Kasululu, the Rukwa Regional Medical Officer, contradicted the assertion. In a report on maternal mortality and public health services, he said that 99 percent of the women who deliver at home do so because of their superstitions. He said that “85 per cent of all pregnant mothers in our region deliver safely without any maternal complications while 15 per cent of all pregnant women who deliver at home experience maternal complications during and after delivery…”

To further complicate the matter, the report indicated that even when women do go to a hospital or medical facility when they go into labor, some of them covertly bring herbal tea along with them in thermoses. Another doctor who sometimes substitutes as the Regional Medical Officer, Dr. Emanuel Mtika, a dentist, said that several incidents have occurred recently when women were caught drinking their tea before delivery in the facility.

Community engagement in the Sumbawanga Regional Hospital (Photo by the White Ribbon Alliance on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Dr. Mtika insisted that the superstition is a serious medical challenge. He told the reporter that the hospital in Sumbawanga has even banned relatives waiting for mothers to deliver their babies from bringing thermoses with tea in them into the waiting rooms.

Roy Willis, in his book There Was a Certain Man, describes another way that Fipa women used to deal with advanced pregnancies while he was doing fieldwork in their villages: through telling stories. He tape recorded a story told in the village of Mazwi on August 16, 1966, about a pregnant woman, the birth of her son, and the way she had to raise him. A brief summary will give a flavor for the stories the Fipa women told to help handle their fears about such issues.

It seems as if Luisa, the storyteller, told her audience about the time a pregnant woman saw a python lurking near a path she was following. It was consuming an innocent gazelle. She appealed to the python to spare the gazelle, which it apparently did. In his account (p. 22-25), Willis includes the interjections of the audience during the story. A few days later, the woman went into labor and delivered a son.

An African rock python attacking a pregnant goat in Zimbabwe (Photo by Mango Atchar on Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

She was worried that the python might enter her house and eat her son so she started carefully bolting the door whenever she had to leave. She never let him go out for fear of the python. From then on, as he grew older, she would sing out to him “Open up, open up, my Tominasi.” The youngster would unbolt and open the door for his mother.

But one day the wily python hid near the hut and overheard the mother’s song. The next day, while she worked in her field, it approached the door and sang out the song. The child opened the door letting the python in. It promptly ate him.

The mother discovered the door to her hut was open when she returned that evening. Seeing the track left by the fleeing python, she grabbed a knife and followed it. When she came upon the snake, she found it sleeping so she killed it with her knife. Then she cut open the python, pulled out her son, and found him to be still alive, though barely. She gave him a lot to eat which soon brought him back to full health.

We can’t conclude for certain whether Fipa women 50 years ago drank herbal tea to help them get through the pains of labor or whether they tell stories about dealing with dangers from huge snakes to this day. But in both cases, we can guess that they probably did and still do cope with their worries in traditional ways.

A news story published on the Tristan da Cunha website on December 23 has all the attributes of a nice yarn for the holiday season. It is an account by an Israeli man who won a contest and earned his dream: visiting the world’s most remote inhabited island. His narrative of his visit is a tribute to the Tristan Islanders.

The Settlement and the relatively level area it is on are dwarfed by the mountainous island of Tristan da Cunha (Photo from the CTBTO Preparatory Commission on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Gan Erez, from Tel Aviv, Israel, writes that he happened to spot Tristan on a map around seven years ago and started reading and watching everything he could find about the place. Then, about 18 months ago, he saw an advertisement for a contest sponsored by an Israeli travel company inviting people to submit entries about special, but largely unknown, dream locations. Gan prepared an entry about Tristan and, when he won first-place, he received an all-expenses-paid trip to the island.

He completed all the formalities and left Cape Town on the ship Edinburgh on September 12, 2018. After seven days at sea, he arrived at Tristan and was welcomed into the home of his hosts, Cliff and Lillie Swain. He writes enthusiastically about their indulgent care for their visitor, their cooking, and the way they made him feel completely at home.

The Potato Patches is a favorite destination of the Tristan Islanders — The Potato Patches is a favorite destination for the Tristan Islanders (Photo by Brian Gratwicke on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

He spent 16 days visiting the local sites—the 1961 volcano, the Pigbite, and the neighboring island of Nightingale, where he had close encounters with some yellow-nosed albatrosses, seals, and penguins. He helped the Swain family plant some potatoes at the Potato Patches.

He brought along a brand new metal detector. He clearly is an expert at using the device and he proudly gave to the museum on the island his findings, such things as a brass peg from a boat, two-hundred-year-old nails, and a jar lid dating from about 1850. He took the younger kids from the school out into the fields to use the metal detector and search for coins he had hidden in the grass. He gave a presentation about his country to the older school children.

The Tristan Islanders worked together to gather and burn harmful invasive plants, serving as a beacon to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee, June 4, 2012 — The Tristan Islanders worked together to gather and burn harmful invasive plants, which served as a beacon to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, June 4, 2012

He appeared to feel honored serving as an informal ambassador from his country to Tristan—he writes that he was the first Israeli on record as having visited Tristan da Cunha. Since returning home he has appeared on an Israeli TV show, given a presentation about his trip, and he is planning several more events. His article in the Tristan website includes numerous photos of his activities on the island.

His conclusion is very hopeful about what he feels is the “good of mankind” as exemplified by the isolated Tristan community. “The people of Tristan were the kindest and friendliest people you could ever meet in your life. Absolutely wonderful people with a very warm and loving heart and I enjoyed meeting them so much …” he writes in his tribute to them.

The reporter was clearly impressed with some aspects of a small Yanadi crab-fishing community located along the banks of an irrigation channel in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The community, consisting of just 13 houses, is near Vadapalem hamlet in the Machilipatnam Mandal of Krishna District. In a news report published by The Hindu on December 22, the people explain to the reporter that they very much appreciate the unpolluted fresh air in their isolated area.

Yanadi huts in Andhra Padesh — Yanadi huts in Andhra Pradesh (photo by the International Institute for Environment and Development in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Both men and women participate in crab hunting at the edges of the mangrove forests along the coast. The crabs are exported to other Asian countries and they are cultivated in brackish ponds in the district. They prefer to keep their children engaged in crab hunting rather than attending school—education has a lower priority in this community.

The reporter focuses the article on the construction and maintenance of their houses since the Yanadi, especially the women, are “masters” at constructing their homes out of cow dung and mud. Other family members and their Yanadi neighbors assist by building the pole frameworks of the houses and laying the roofs. The reporter examines the home of Eega Ramanamma. It has three rooms, including a bedroom and a hall under its thatched roof. It also has a kitchen designed for storing water and grains and of course for cooking, plus a fireplace made of mud bricks.

Three Yanadi men behind whom is a mud-walled house (Photo from Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 1909, vol. 7, following page 422. In the public domain)

Ms. Ramanamma tells the reporter that the thatched roof made of grasses obtained from the river would last for five years and the mud walls of the dwelling had the same life expectancy. The daughter of a crab hunter, she explained that they apply cow dung to the walls periodically to maintain their smoothness. The Yanadi decorate their houses with designs of birds and flowers using chalk powder on the walls and rice powder on the floors.

Stanley Jaya Kumar’s 1995 book Tribals from Tradition to Transition provides additional details about the Yanadi traditional houses and their construction. He writes that the people have been abandoning houses provided by the government since they have tended to collapse during the rainy seasons. Instead, they have been going back to their traditional styles of house construction which vary according to the availability of local materials.

Their houses are scattered about in pleasant-looking clusters that may take up a fairly large area but they tend to be arranged according to kinship relationships, with the homes of brothers being located close together. The huts are usually rather bare of furniture except for a modest number of cooking utensils. The people clean the insides of their houses and they periodically smear cow dung on the walls to help keep them that way.

A small Yanadi hut used for worshiping the gods, located in the Nehru Centenary Tribal Museum, Hyderabad (Photo by Adbh266 in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The cost of the houses is minimal since the people build them out of local materials available from the forests. The family members build them without any assistance from outside paid workers. The author indicates that a typical conical hut can be built by a family in a single day. It is easy to replace the roof as often as necessary.

The Yanadi studied by the author did observe some rituals when they first moved into a newly-constructed house. After marking the center with vermilion, they would break open a coconut or sacrifice a chicken to the deity of the household. They might invite relatives to a house-warming ceremony and dinner. Mondays and Thursdays are auspicious days for holding such ceremonies.

It appears from the recent news report as if Stanley Jaya Kumar’s description of the Yanadi traditional housing is still accurate.

The Nunavut territory was formally created by the government of Canada for the Inuit of the eastern Arctic nearly 20 years ago. Anticipating the upcoming 20th anniversary, Maclean’s, a popular Canadian news magazine, recently published a critical analysis of the failures and accomplishments of the new territory for fulfilling the needs—and the dreams—of the Inuit people.

An Inuit girl photographed in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, in 1960 (In the photostream of Rosemary Gilliat in BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives of Canada in Flickr, Creatiive Commons license)

The story of the new territory has included many failures, as the article points out in detail, but probably the most important aspect of the entire drama has been its peacefulness. Aluki Kotierk, the President of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc (NTI), tells Maclean’s, “It was Inuit who changed the map of Canada, all in a peaceful manner. When you look at how maps are changed around the world, it often involves war or civil strife. Yet we were able to do that within Canada with no war.”

The story of Nunavut began nearly a decade earlier when Inuit leaders and federal government representatives, after months of tense negotiations, finally came to an agreement around a conference table in Ottawa. The government would agree to the creation of a new territory for the eastern Arctic Inuit. A couple years after that, in 1993, a Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was given royal approval. It recognized the land rights of the Inuit, granted them political control of their lives, and established a plan for forming the new government of the territory. It came into existence formally on April 1, 1999.

But after 20 years of disappointments, Ms. Kotierk and NTI are wondering if there might be a better way for the Inuit to move forward. “If the territorial public government isn’t meeting the needs of Inuit, is there another way in which we can do that?” she asks. Can they devise a better model for Inuit self-government, especially since the government of the territory does not seem able to meet their needs?

Eetuk, an Inuit man, standing in a boat in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, in 1960 (In the photostream of Rosemary Gilliat in BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives of Canada in Flickr, Creatiive Commons license)

Criticisms of the Nunavut government are based on failures in dealing with three critical issues: employment, language, and education. The basic agreement between the Inuit and the federal government stipulated that the new territorial government would be staffed by a majority of Inuit employees. Ms. Kotierk maintains, however, that Inuit staffers and outsiders remain, after all these years, at a 50/50 balance. If the agreement they had signed were to be fairly implemented, the Inuit “would be in control and in a position to influence how programs and services would develop for Inuit.”

The use of Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit, has been declining over the past 20 years. Kotierk blames the schools for not providing educational materials and instruction in the language of the people. Each census shows fewer people in Nunavut using Inuktitut in their homes. Few teachers in the schools in Nunavut speak Inuktitut and last year the Nunavut government proposed a bill that would have further delayed effective instruction in the native language until 2030. Is the territorial government really committed to the preservation of Inuit culture?

Artwork by Iqaluit artist Jonathan Cruz on the Qikiqtani General Hospital (Photo taken in November 2016 by Fiona Paton in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

NTI has challenged the government for its failures. In December 2006 it filed a lawsuit seeking $1 billion in damages from the government of Canada for what the group claimed was a breach of contract. NTI argued that Ottawa was keeping the Inuit in a state of dependence and despair. But in May of 2015 the group accepted an out-of-court settlement that provided $50 million for job training for the Inuit. But Kotierk tells Maclean’s that the government has still not created an employment plan.

The 1993 land claims agreement, according to the news story, gave the Inuit title to 18 percent of the land in the new territory—350,000 sq. km.—plus two percent of the mineral rights. It also provided for $1.173 billion over a period of 14 years, plus of course the creation of the new territory. The Inuit were supposed to gain employment in mining, oil, and gas developments. Their rights to hunt, trap, and fish were guaranteed.

While some aspects of the agreement have in fact been realized, the Inuit are increasingly becoming discouraged with what is happening to their society. Social trends are going down. The infant mortality rate in Nunavut is the highest in Canada—17.7 per 1,000 live births, far higher than the rest of the country which averages 4.7. The territorial population is growing much faster than the rest of the nation: it is up 40 percent since 1999. Other problems plague the territory: suicides, family violence, and crimes have grown above the national average. Substance abuse and alcoholism are widespread.

Earth moving equipment working on a deep sea port for Iqaluit in August 2018 (Photo by Fiona Paton in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Maclean’s doesn’t paint an entirely bleak picture of Nunavut. The government has finally embarked on the construction of a deep-sea port for the capital city, Iqaluit. A large, $300 million Iqaluit airport terminal was finally opened in 2017. And Inuit arts are flourishing. Around 3,000 artists are earning at least some income from the sales of their creations, some of which are internationally recognized.

Inuit leaders such as Kotierk are not certain how or if a self-governing option could work, and it is not certain whether the people would support more self-government. But it is clear from the article that the Inuit are discouraged that they have not made more progress in the last two decades. Whatever happens, it appears as if they will negotiate their changes peacefully.

When the annual pilgrimage season to Sabarimala got under way in early November, protests by devotees of the Hindu god Ayyappan were threatening to disrupt the lives of the Malapandaram people along the way. The issue is that the Supreme Court of India had ruled that the ancient custom of prohibiting women and girls of menstruating age from visiting the temple complex of the god—he is celibate, after all, so he might be offended—is unconstitutional. The Malapandaram communities along the main road to Sabarimala were unavoidably caught up in the street protests against the court ruling and the ensuing controversy.

More recent news reports have continued to cover the protests and their impact on the Malapandaram. A news story in late November indicated that there had been so many street protests along the pilgrimage road that the Collector for the Pathanamthitta District, P. B. Nooh, had enacted an order that prohibited people from assembling, blocking the road, holding public meetings, marching, or protesting in any way whenever rumors spread that some women might be daring enough to travel to the temple. The order would not apply to devotees of Ayyappan on their way to Sabarimala, however.

A news report last week explored the impact all of this is having on the Malapandaram that have gained a lot of their annual income from the enormous numbers of pilgrims who normally travel up the mountain to the temple. According to the reporter, the order by the District Collector “has made life miserable” for the Malapandaram in Attathode, one of the tribal communities along the road.

Narayanan Mooppan, an official for the community at Attathode, told the newspaper, The Hindu, that the people are constantly being hassled by the police due to the security order. Anyone who wants to travel to other communities such as Nilackal, Pampa, or Pathanamthitta Town, the headquarters of the district, has to show their identity cards frequently.

Lady at Sabarimala, probably Malapandaram, selling traditional healing oils made from forest herbs (Photo by Ragesh Vasudevan on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Furthermore, the businesses and jobs of many Malapandaram who cater to the needs of pilgrims for much of their annual income—eateries, hotels, and shops—are suffering because so many people are just not traveling this year to the temples. The security curbs have cut back radically on the numbers of travelers, which is undercutting the livelihoods of the Malapandaram. Many of them in normal years would earn money by selling to the pilgrims such minor forest products as honey and frankincense—but not this year.

Another blow has been caused by the Forest Department, which has banned the sale of certain foods to the pilgrims, such as soft drinks, biscuits, pineapples and soft drinks packaged in plastics. This order has also cut into the incomes of the tribal people. A man named Pradeep told the newspaper that the uses of motor vehicles by himself and other Malapandaram in Attathode have been impacted by the increased security. He said that the tribespeople in the community own 50 two-wheelers, three cars, two pick-up vans, two jeeps, and 26 auto-rickshaws. People’s uses of their vehicles are affected by the increased security measures.

Mr. Narayanan, the tribal official, and another Malapandaram, Sujan, told The Hindu that they had addressed pleas repeatedly to the Collector, Mr. Nooh, but he has not responded to them. Mr. Narayanan has also sent a request to the State Human Rights Commission. He told the reporter that about 45 Malapandaram families who are camping in the Sabarimala forests are living in pathetic conditions because they are frequently being forced to move about from one place to another by the forest officials and the police.

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