Peaceful Societies

Last November, Nubians staged protests in southern Egypt to dramatize their arguments that they’ve been cheated out of their rights and of their lands by the government. They demanded a recognition of their right to resettle their historic territory in Old Nubia, especially since it is guaranteed in the Egyptian constitution.

A portrait of some Nubian women and girls in a village in Sudan (Photo by Carsten ten Brink on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

A news story in this website on November 24 covered only the beginnings of the November protests. Since the middle of that month, a variety of news sources have published updates about developments, including, at the beginning of last week, The Guardian.

The protesters in November had been blocked from traveling the highway out into the desert to demonstrate at the Toshka Project, a huge irrigation work on land which they claim, so they had gone south in a caravan of 25 micro-buses to the historic site of Abu Simbel and set up a highway blockade there. The blockade, a major action of what they called “The Nubian Return Caravan,” started on November 19 and lasted for four days. Security forces then blockaded the blockade, preventing the protesters from having access to food or drink.

Nubian protesters sitting on the Aswan to Abu Simbel highway, November 2016, men in the foreground and some women in the background (Photo from the news blog Egyptian Chronicles, Creative Commons license)

Probably because of numerous news reports about the protests, the Egyptian government decided to give the Nubians serious attention. On Wednesday, November 30, leaders of the Nubian protest movement met with Prime Minister Sherif Ismail and with Ali Abdel-Aal, speaker of the parliament, for seven hours in Cairo. The major demand of the Nubians was that the planned sale of what they consider to be their traditional territory at the Toshka Project must be cancelled.

They had made their point—the Nubians were serious about their basic issues. At their November 30 marathon sessions, the Prime Minister and the speaker of parliament decided to appoint a high-level committee which would include members of the cabinet, Nubians, and the one member of parliament who is a Nubian, Yassin Abdel Sabour from Aswan. They would be charged with revising the maps of the Toshka Project and removing disputed areas from it.

A Nubian man protesting on the Aswan to Abu Simbel highway, November 19, 2016 (Photo from the news blog Egyptian Chronicles, Creative Commons license)

The demonstrations apparently had a serious effect on the government. Mr. Abdel-Aal announced that he and the Prime Minister would be holding meetings with other Nubian activists throughout Egypt to discuss the demands of the protesters and the steps that should be taken. The Speaker of Parliament met a second time with the Nubian leaders on December 5 and announced that he had formed a committee which would work to implement Article 236 of the Constitution of 2014—the article which gives the Nubians the right of return to their lands.

The Nubian activists have not only organized nonviolent demonstrations, they also appear to have been reasonable throughout the period. After their initial four days of blockade in the desert and the clear willingness of top government officials to meet with them, Mohamed Azmy, the head of the Nubian Union and one of the central figures in the demonstration, announced that both sides would call a halt to the protests for one month. But if the government did not make any progress, “there would be an escalation in our protests,” he warned. He also said that if Nubian demands to be allowed to return to their historic territory are not met, they will appeal to international agencies.

Some Nubian houses along the River Nile near Aswan, traditional Nubian territory (Photo by Belmahdy in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The Guardian report last week described some additional events. In early January, Mohamed Azmy and several other young men were detained by the government for plotting to organize additional protests. Azmy was ordered to dissolve the Nubian Union, which he headed and which spearheaded the protests. If not, he would be arrested.

Another source, also published last week, gave more details about the threats the government made against him and the Nubian Union in January. The officials demanded that Mr. Azmy must resign as head of the organization and the government must have the right to designate his replacement. “They want to get rid of me because they think that will stop the movement,” Azmy said. In response, Azmy rewrote that demand by the government, saying that the organization would continue to choose its own leadership. He resigned his position anyway, but three days later the Nubian Union voted him in again as its president.

The Guardian reporter interviewed Fatma Emam Sakory, a Nubian rights activist, for her perspective on the dispute. Ms. Sakory’s activism was described by January and February 2014 news stories in this website.

A Nubian felucca captain works for tourists at Aswan (Photo by Katie Hunt on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

She told The Guardian rather cynically, “The case of Nubian lands shows that the government is unwilling to support its own citizens to develop their land, but prefers taking the easy way, which is selling to investors.” She added that the government was not living up to its obligations under the Egyptian constitution. Since the lands the Nubians claim as historically their own are rich in potential for mining, agriculture, and of course tourism, the government wants to take it all. Nubians have been important players in the vibrant tourist industry in Aswan and the rest of southern Egypt. “But,” Sakory argued, “if Nubians had access to it, they would do better than the government, so they could invest with us.”

If the Nubian Union and Mr. Azmy have plans for other actions to dramatize their demands, they are keeping quiet—for now.

Scholars have found evidence that about 800 years ago people used large, seafaring canoes to travel between the Society Islands and New Zealand, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. A report in a New Zealand newspaper last week explained why experts consider the long-distance travels of the Tahitians, and other Polynesians, back and forth over the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean to be a near certainty.

Maroé Bay on Huahine (Photo by dany13 on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

One of the primary sets of evidence has developed from two different large, but quite ancient, canoes that were excavated by archaeologists, one on Huahine in the Society Islands and the other more recently on the South Island of New Zealand. The author of the newspaper article, Gerard Hindmarsh, sets the scene for his piece by writing that Polynesians living in the Society Islands, who are generally known as “Tahitians,” refer to Huahine as “the wild island” because of its lush tropical vegetation.

Located just 192 km northwest of Tahiti itself, a short flight, the author was overwhelmed by the beauty of the island as his plane landed. Compared to other nearby islands, it has relatively few tourists. The islanders are proud of the fact that their ancestors were the last in the Society Islands group to accede to French imperialism and give up their independence. The other Tahitians say about the 6,300 people on Huahine, “Obstinacy is their diversion,” according to Hindmarsh. He does not mention that Robert Levy, a prominent anthropologist, did fieldwork in a small Huahine village as the basis for much of his important 1973 book Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands.

Maitai Lapita Village Hotel, where the Huahine canoe was discovered in 1978 (Photo by Roger on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The author stayed at the Maitai Lapita Village Hotel, a tourist lodge in Huahine’s major town, Fare, located on the northwest coast of the island. The hotel was built on the grounds of the older Bali Hai Hotel, which was destroyed by a massive storm in 1998. It’s an important location. When that older hotel was being constructed in the 1970s, workmen were dredging a swamp in order to construct some ornamental ponds when they encountered interesting objects in the muck.

According to Peter Owen, the owner of the Maitai Lapita lodge, the workers immediately contacted an archaeologist named Yoshiko Shinoto, who happened to be working on Huahine at the time. Dr. Shinoto conducted an excavation that uncovered hundreds of artifacts. One of the most important was a large, sea-going canoe, including the mast. Some of the artifacts he turned up are now in a museum in Tahiti, some are at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii and others were reburied to satisfy local concerns.

Mr. Hindmarsh compared photos of the canoe from Huahine with a more recent, nearly identical canoe that was found in 2011 on the northwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island. The Anaweka Waka, a large canoe (waka) found at New Zealand’s Anaweka Estuary, bore remarkable similarities to the Huahine canoe discovered many years earlier. Radiocarbon analysis indicated that they both dated from the 1200s and that they were technically quite similar.

Marae on Huahine (Photo by Veromortillet in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

More convincing even than the apparent similarities was a turtle design that was carved onto the hull of the New Zealand canoe. It was of considerable interest because sea turtles are normally found in tropical waters, not the temperate seas around the South Island. Sea turtles are relatively unimportant to Maori iconography as a result—they are much more important to the Tahitians. Finally, the turtle carved on the canoe is nearly identical to a petrograph carved on one of the Marae, a stone religious structure on Huahine.

The author pointed out that many other arguments have been made for the frequency of connections across the Pacific by the Polynesian peoples in prehistoric times. He cited a couple. In 1916, an ethnographer in New Zealand named Elsdon Best interviewed indigenous people from the Society Islands and produced a study of their language. Best found that many place names in New Zealand bore striking resemblances to place names from the islands around Huahine. He also argued that a myth about an island in French Polynesia named Motue’a, where a dreaded monster was reputed to live, was brought to New Zealand and is remembered locally, detail by detail, almost exactly like its sibling legend in the Society Islands.

A twin-hulled Polynesian canoe replica (Photo by Michael R. Perry in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The last bit of evidence covered by Hindmarsh is the familiar argument that sailing across the Pacific would have been difficult in open canoes without technological guidance devices and no way to return against contrary winds—but the Polynesians managed anyway. He reviewed the efforts of the modern father figure of the sea going heritage of the Pacific, Pius Mau Piailug (the newspaper article last week spelled his name “Piaileg”).

Piailug was born on the small coral atoll of Satawal, near Ifaluk in the Federated States of Micronesia, and took a strong interest in traditional navigation techniques by sea from an early age. Later in life, he shared his knowledge with the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii and fostered a resurgence of interest in traditional navigation across the ocean. As a result, large replicas of the ancient sailing canoes have been constructed and are used by Pacific nations interested in trying to keep alive a knowledge of their indigenous seafaring traditions.

A Batek man and his son were attacked by a sun bear in the forest near Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park on Tuesday last week and the nine-year old boy was seriously injured. Many Malaysian news sources reported on the incident over the next several days.

A forest river in the Taman Negara National Park (Photo by Peter Gronemann on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The attack occurred at a river near the National Park. The New Straits Times reported that the boy, Dee Usop, and his 39-year old father, Usop Ching, both from the community of Aring near the park, were searching for sandalwood in the forest when they were attacked by the bear. Another newspaper, The Star, indicated that the attack occurred around 3:00 in the afternoon. The father suffered minor wounds on his back but the boy was badly clawed around his face. The incident occurred in the forest near Aring 8, in Gua Musang District, the southern part of Malaysia’s Kelantan state.

Although they were both covered in blood, the father managed to carry his son for an hour until they encountered some farm workers. One, a 41-year old man named Fan, drove the pair to a clinic for help. The father told the rescuer that they had not seen the bear until it was too late.

A Malayan sun bear at a zoo in Malaysia (Photo by bob|P-&-S on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The Malay language news service Utusan added further details. Usop Ching told the paper that he did everything he could to try and save his son. He punched and kicked the bear repeatedly, he said, using stones and pieces of wood to try and beat off the animal’. After 30 minutes of fighting, the bear finally left the pair and fled into the forest. Usop told Utusan that he had just completed clearing some brush around his orchard when the bear attacked.

Usop was bathing in the Lebir River, while Dee was up on a cliff, Utusan reported. Suddenly the bear rushed at the boy and swiped him with its paw, causing him to scream. Dee was first treated at a clinic in Aring and was then transferred to the Gua Musang Hospital. A follow-up news story dated Friday, February 10, said that Dee was still lying unconscious in the intensive care unit of the hospital, though he had begun moving his hands and feet. The boy’s mother was staying with her son; the father was discharged from the hospital since his injuries were not very serious.

A Batek boy (Photo by Cleffairy from his blog Over a Cuppa Tea, Creative Commons license)

The news report from Friday provided a possible reason for the bear’s attack. One of Dee’s uncles, Neat Leaf, 27, suggested that a possible factor might have been the destruction of the forest habitat locally for the development of plantations—presumably the palm oil that blankets the region around Aring. In the words of the Google translation of the article, he said, “I think maybe the bear was out to look for food in the surrounding area.” Unfortunately, the hungry animal encountered the man and his son.

In a paper presented at a conference in November 2011, Kirk Endicott, an anthropologist who has done fieldwork among the Batek, said that when he studied them in the Upper Lebir River watershed in the 1970s, the Batek collected forest products such as fragrant woods and rattan to sell to traders and they harvested game animals and wild foods from the forest for consumption.

Deforestation in the Gua Musang District of Kelantan (Photo by Wakx on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

A more recent news report described the many damaging effects of rampant logging operations in the Lebir River drainage basin, especially the harm they are causing to the Batek. The literature supports the supposition by Neat Leaf, the boy’s uncle, that a possible reason for the attack could be the logging. An article in the Wikipedia mentions that sun bears can be quite fierce when they are surprised in the forest, even though they are the smallest members of the bear family, weighing anywhere from 60 to 176 lb (27 – 80 kg).

More to the point, a thorough journal article by Wong, Leader-Williams and Linkie (2015) on managing sun bear conflicts with humans in Sumatra pointed out that “sun bears rarely injure humans” (p.256), although they are known to attack farmers along the edges of forests. The authors came to the same general conclusion as the Batek uncle did: destroying forest habitat produces conflicts along the borders. In addition to their age-old fear of attacks by tigers in the forests, the Batek now may have to become more wary of the small bears.

An NGO in Thailand is helping Rural Thai girls from the poorer areas of the Isaan region form desirable career goals and then find ways to meet them. A news report last week described the work of the Pratthanadee Foundation and its Better Me workshops, which try to develop a sense of empowerment among teenage girls who come from disadvantaged homes in the Ubon Ratchathani province of Isaan, the northeastern section of the nation.

Thai pupils in scouting clothing gathering at the Na Wa High School, Nakhon Phanom province of Isaan (Photo by Mattes in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The foundation works in the rural schools of Isaan. Sarochinee Unyawachsumrith, the managing director of the foundation and of the Better Me workshops, talks to the girls in a rural school surrounded by rice paddies and tells them to imagine their futures. “What do you see in your mind? What feelings do you have? Now draw it!” the lady, nicknamed Beer, says to the group.

The girls sit on the floor drawing pictures of women professionals—or flowers or rainbows. But one, Fai, draws a picture of a bank surrounded by coins. Her dream is to earn as much as she can so she can support her family. Beer tells the reporter later that the girl is not atypical of the poor family backgrounds of young people in the region. “But we are here to tell them about the risks if they choose the wrong job, what options they have and, perhaps for the first time, to see their own [potentials],” she says.

Sex workers. Sex workers in Pattaya, Thailand — Sex workers in Pattaya, Thailand (Photo by Rak-Tai in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The fact is that many of the maids, housekeepers, waitresses and sex workers in major cities such as Bangkok come from the poorer parts of Isaan. Fai lives with her younger sister while both of their parents do construction work in another province. Fai’s friend Nan and her younger sister are cared for by their grandmother while their parents work elsewhere.

It is that sort of home life and hopelessness that the Pratthanadee Foundation is trying to overcome. The foundation, working with adult women in Bangkok, recognized the low self-worth and low self-esteem that many of the women in the city brought with them from their rural homes. So the foundation opened a regional office in Isaan.

A waitress at a street bar in Bangkok (Photo by Blemished Paradise on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

In addition to Beer, adults at the Better Me workshops include Ploy, the coordinator of the program and Nang, a 36-year old former student from an earlier workshop by the foundation in Bangkok. Before her training at the foundation, Nang was employed as a “bar girl,” a waitress in one of the city’s red light districts.

She told the reporter that she had known lots of women from her district who went to work at bars in the capital. “The feeling was that if you have children and your family is very poor, you have to do it.” She added that the hope among those women is to find a foreign boyfriend who would then provide support. Nang admitted that the work was financially profitable, but she also felt that it was dangerous.

A woman working at a computer in the Na Wa Public Hospital, Nakhon Phanom province of Isaan (Photo by Mattes in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

When the founder of the NGO asked her what she would see as her dream job, she replied that she wanted to work in an office situation. She wanted to work with a computer, wear a beautiful dress and never be scared. He helped her work toward her goal. The staff at the Better Me workshops don’t sugarcoat the realities, however. The girls live in harsh conditions and from a young age they are pressured to help support their families.

Fai, the student, said that the workshops had suggested new avenues for her to consider. She felt that they had taught her to think of her own future more as a journey than as a quick fix. Fai said she would like to focus on the possibility of computer science as a career. She recognizes it is a long shot—she is not sure how she could afford the costs of a training program—but a good career should give her funds so she could help her family and have a better life herself.

Thai women working in a typical factory (Photo by Josh Jackson in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

But Nang is realistic. She would like the girls to stay in school in order to get good jobs. But some will choose to work in factories. So the foundation tells them about the labor laws of Thailand and their rights as workers. In an ever optimistic spirit, she tells them, “If you like this work, then do it. But maybe, in the future, you can go to the next level. Why not see how far you can go?”

Beer emphasized to the reporter that the unique aspect of the foundation’s work is their emphasis on visualization and goal-setting. They believe it is essential to empower the girls to think of their futures in new ways. The staff emphasizes to them that they must devise their own dreams, then work out what they have to do to get there.

A seamstress repairs a pair of jeans at her streetside sewing stand in Bangkok (Photo by Mark Fischer in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

In essence, if girls really want to work on the streets, fine. That’s their choice. But the staff asks them to keep the pictures they drew with their images of hopes for their futures. They ask the girls to take the pictures out a year later, on the same date, and study them. They should ask themselves if they are getting any closer to their goals—are they on track to attain them? The staff emphasizes that they will still be there to help out, if needed.

The website of the Pratthanadee Foundation gives more information about the group and its work.

The drought that has plagued Namibia for the past few years has made the Nyae Nyae Conservancy especially dry, which has promoted many more harmful bush fires than normal. The fires have even destroyed desert vegetation that has survived the drought. But the good news, reported in a newspaper last week, is that the Ju/’hoansi and their land managers are steadily reducing the numbers of unwanted wildfires through careful range management.

Burned trees in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy (Photo by David Barrie on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The statistics the reporter cited are heartening: 50 percent of the Conservancy lands burned in 2012, causing extensive damage to the vegetation as well as some loss of human and animal life. However, in 2014 the damage was less: 22 percent of the Conservancy burned. But the numbers have kept improving, to 12 percent in 2015 and 11 percent in 2016. Lara Diez, coordinator of the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation, expressed justifiable pleasure in this 70 percent reduction over the course of just five years.

Ms. Diez also indicated that the bush fires have been occurring earlier each year, when they are not as hot and thus do not do as much damage. The peak of the season for hot fires in southern Africa occurs in September and October each year. Diez told the newspaper, “This 70 percent reduction demonstrates that by working in unison, the partners and the local community at Nyae Nyae and their interventions have actively reduced the fuel load.”

The management strategy the Conservancy uses with the Ju/’hoansi farmers is to actively burn patches of rangelands where fuel loads are high early in the year, particularly at places where the fires would threaten villages or important resources. This strategy of reducing fuel loads has allowed fires to be controlled better and has reduced the number of later, more destructive, fires. Raising awareness among the villagers of these management approaches has been important to Nyae Nyae Conservancy officials.

During this coming season the Conservancy will encourage the burning of larger patches of rangelands, again in mid-season. The input and support from the local villages will be essential for this strategy to work, Diez explained. The major goal for 2017, she said, will be to protect the villages and their farming and grazing resources. Diez indicated that this new management approach fits in well with the Ju/’hoansi cultural tradition of selectively burning the desert lands during May through July, the cooler months in southern Africa.

Two San men in Botswana demonstrate how to start a fire by hand (Photo by Ian Sewell in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

A perceptive article by Hitchcock et al. (1996) went into detail about Ju/’hoansi land and resource management strategies in northwestern Botswana. The authors made it clear that controlled burns have been an important management strategy used by the people to manipulate the resources they need from the desert.

Their informants told them that the burning was done in part to increase the diversity of food plants. The people also burned to reduce the numbers of bushes which hamper the growth of grasses used by their livestock. Furthermore, they burned to reduce the numbers of snakes, ticks, and other species they wanted to control. The Ju/’hoansi also wished to protect some plant species that they used. It sounds from the news story last week as if long-standing values of respect for the land and the wise use of natural resources persist among the people of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy.

A prominent educator from Massachusetts spent some time on Ifaluk Island 40 years ago so now he has decided to return there to live out the rest of his life. John Chittick was born and raised in the small city of Fitchburg, completed an Ed.D. from Harvard, and went on to have a career as an educator and an advocate for HIV/AIDS education.

John Chittick speaking with some women and children in Africa (Photo by Jazz14 in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

As part of his studies at Harvard, Dr. Chittick spent two years, starting in 1975, doing ethnographic filming on various islands in the South Pacific, including Ifaluk and neighboring atolls in the Federated States of Micronesia. He has since traveled to more than 85 countries attempting to promote his message of AIDS prevention. In 2010 he moved the headquarters of his AIDS prevention NGO from Fitchburg to Norfolk, Virginia, and in 2016 he decided to hang it up and move back to Ifaluk. The Sentinel and Enterprise, Fitchburg’s daily newspaper, carried a story about his plans last week.

He made it clear that he does not intend to ever return to the U.S. His goal is to live permanently on Ifaluk—or possibly Lamotrek, another atoll about 120 miles away—and to create a school for their young people, ages 16 through 20. At the present time, according to Sosis (2005), children can get educations through the 8th grade on Ifaluk but they have to go to the nearby islands of Woleai and Ulithi if they want to complete high school. The reason he wants to provide more training for the Ifaluk people is that they may someday have to abandon their island and they will need more advanced skills to survive elsewhere.

His friends on Ifaluk are telling him that when the tide is high and the winds are blowing, sea water is sweeping across the island. Sources of fresh water are becoming brackish and plants are beginning to die as a result. Within 10 to 20 years, he suspects, the islanders will be forced to move to another location on higher ground, like it or not. News stories in this website, such as one in December 2009, have reported on the harm that global climate change is causing on Ifaluk and the other Pacific atolls.

An Ifaluk child playing peek-a-boo with the photographer (Image captured from the “Women and Children” page in Edwin Burrows An Atoll Culture (1957) which is in the public domain, Google Digitized)

His answer to the dilemma of moving is additional advanced education. Chittick wants to establish an Atoll Academy, a free school in which young adults will write essays and have discussions in English. He plans to establish an Internet connection, powered by a solar electricity system he wants to set up. Given his worldwide connections, he hopes his students will be able to establish good relationships with mentors around the globe. He also expects to help his students prepare applications to colleges and universities in other countries.

But in addition, he feels it is important for the young people to preserve their culture. To do that, he wants them to use tablets in order to film their ceremonies and traditional events. He expressed pleasure at the memory of the islanders allowing him to film their lives when he visited 40 years ago for his Harvard project. He plans to ship a 950 pound crate of equipment from Virginia to Ifaluk so he can get these projects rolling when he arrives.

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

He impressed on the reporter the fact that, while he won’t miss having electricity, and wearing the traditional island clothing would be fine, the one thing about Ifaluk culture that he would really like to change someday is their penchant for eating dogs. He’s a dog lover and he hopes he could have a pet again on the island. He recognized that the chiefs on the island would make the final decision on that matter, as they do on most other issues of importance.

The literature about Ifaluk confirms what Dr. Chittick told the newspaper. Bates and Abbott (1958) observed that the Ifaluk sometimes ate dogs. Sosis (2005), who included studies of the food habits of the islanders in his fieldwork, wrote (p.19) that “pigs, chickens, and dogs are also raised for consumption and usually only prepared for bi-monthly feasts.”

A more serious issue is that of preserving the traditional Ifaluk culture when and if the people are forced to leave due to the rising seawaters. Dr. Chittick believes that preservation as possible with the use of modern equipment in the hands of educated young islanders. The anthropological literature implies that the issues may be more complex than that, and that preserving their value systems under changed circumstances will represent a severe challenge if the people do decide to move.

Sosis (2005) wrote that the Ifaluk maintained relatively little contact with the outside world on purpose in order to preserve their traditions. He said that the chiefs actively tried to slow the process of acculturation on the island by prohibiting Western clothing and by insisting that everyone continue to wear their traditional garb. Furthermore, Ifaluk is the sole island in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) on which the residents are not allowed to own motor boats. They must fish from their canoes. “Yap State,” Sosis wrote (p.13), “is unequivocally referred to as the most traditional state in FSM, and Ifaluk the most traditional atoll in Yap State.”

Lars Hässler, captain of a yacht visiting Ifaluk in 2012, interacting with some Ifaluk kids

The captain of a yacht that visited Ifaluk in 2012 confirmed the fact that traditions are still essential by writing in his blog that the chiefs on the island appeared to be keeping modern conveniences at bay. Men still did their fishing from traditional canoes, as the chiefs did not permit fiberglass boats and outboard engines. Men and women continued to wear their traditional clothing, he wrote.

And just why is preserving those traditions so important? A work by anthropologist Edwin Burrows (1952) suggested one answer. Writing about the traditional hierarchical order of people on the island, Burrows argued that the practical value of their feelings of rank is the maintenance of law and order. Subordinates defer to superiors and nearly everyone has a sense of pride in their position. This system seemed, to Burrows, to be responsible for the almost complete absence of crime and violence on the atoll. The highly placed chiefs, for their part, virtually never displayed any overbearing conduct or haughtiness.

This prompts the distant observer to wonder what might happen to the Ifaluk traditions and their values of peacefulness if they were indeed forced to move and became exposed to alien concepts that extol the importance of conflict and violence. Lutz (1988) described, for instance, how the Ifaluk reacted with horror to stories of violence and murder in America and the films that depicted such things, some of which they saw on visiting American ships. The people constantly reviewed and talked about the violent scenarios, reinforcing their own sense of their safety from violence.

Image of Ifaluk Atoll from space (NASA image on Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain)

In another work, Lutz (1985) wrote that the Ifaluk stress moral values in many of their basic concepts. For instance, they do not make a sharp distinction between emotions and thoughts, between the unconscious and the conscious. Their words are quite important in the structure of their morality. A person who leads an exemplary life possesses lots of nunuwan—a word which combines both emotions and thoughts—while social deviants are devoid of it.

Global climate changes will without doubt continue to raise the sea level of the Pacific Ocean in Micronesia, as Dr. Chittick says. It remains to be seen how well the Ifaluk concepts and traditions that help foster their peacefulness will survive if they do have to move away from their delightfully isolated, but unfortunately quite low-lying, atoll.

The Dalai Lama recently said in a speech, “Here in Ladakh, I am happy to see that Buddhists and Muslims have good relations and live together in peace.” He added, “This is something very precious about Ladakh that you must preserve. It’s a treasure that others in India and the world at large may admire.” A most interesting 2,700 word travel essay on Ladakh by Tom Downey, published by the Wall Street Journal in WSJ.magazine on January 25, reported those words by the Buddhist leader.

The Thiksey monastery looms on a hilltop near Leh (Photo by Radheshbhat1982 in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Mr. Downey began his Ladakhi journey in the village of Thiksey, where a major monastery stands on top a prominent hill not far from Leh. It looks very much like the Potala Palace in Tibet. When the author arrived, the monastery was preparing to welcome a visit from the Dalai Lama.

Downey was struck by the youth of the monks at Thiksey, some of whom are as young as six or seven years of age. On his first morning in Ladakh, he climbed up to the monastery rooftop to join two teenage monks who picked up brass horns and blew them out over the valley. Monks came out of their cells below and filed into a prayer room where they sat and chanted for an hour. Then, the youngest monks began to pour cups of yak-butter tea for everyone, and the older monks started eating handfuls of roasted barley that had been ground into powder.

Monks at the Thiksey Monastery with a cellphone (Photo by Sanish Suresh on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

After the prayers were finished, the author sat and spoke with a 37-year old monk named Chamba Norfail, the uncle of his Ladakhi guide. He told Downey that there were 56 students at the monastery 30 years ago, but now there are only 15 or 16. Other things are changing too: many of the monks now carry cellphones. Norfail spoke fluent English and he said he enjoys talking with foreign visitors at the monastery so he can learn about the outside world. The monk reflected on modernization by stating that “people today are taking the short route to happiness,” rather than cherishing “internal things” which provide real contentment.

Determined to gain perspectives from a Ladakhi Muslim, the author met Gulzar Hussain, whose family has lived in Leh for seven generations. Hussain introduced him to his grandfather, Muhammad Hassan, a man in his 90s who remembered Ladakh before the advent of motor vehicles, when tax officials and police chased criminals on horseback.

Leh old town (Photo by Christopher John SSF in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Mr. Hussain led the author through the alleyways of Old Leh. He pointed out that the city is considering a controversial proposal to rebuild the central marketplace. Downey, recalling a visit to Ladakh more than 20 years ago, noticed that street vendors still sit next to their dried fruits, exotic nuts and spices, and traditional Tibetan medicines that were produced locally.

On a darker note, Hussain said that the atmosphere in Old Leh has deteriorated in the past few decades. There used to be little if any tension between Muslims and Buddhists. Interfaith marriages used to be common. “We still live together peacefully,” he said, “but marriage between Buddhists and Muslims has become much more difficult.” He added, contradicting the sentiments of the Dalai Lama, that everything has become more difficult lately.

Vendors' stalls displaying jewelry and trinkets along an alley outside the Alchi Monastery — Vendors’ stalls displaying jewelry and trinkets along an alley outside the Alchi Monastery (Photo by Antara Sarkar in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The author described his visits to other places in the valley of the Indus River, such as Stakna with its monastery and Nimmu, where the Zanskar River empties into the Indus. He then traveled to Alchi, the site of a Buddhist monastery that is about 1,000 years old. There he found an alleyway near the monastery, which was lined with vendors selling amulets and trinkets. He also found a restaurant called the Alchi Kitchen, which takes pride on offering a true Ladakhi menu. He was intrigued by the thangthuri, green leafy vegetables with buttermilk, and ngamthuk, a soup made from tsampa.

Mr. Downey concluded his narrative by describing his visit to the rural campus in the Alchi area of Sonam Wangchuk’s Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL). During the trip to SECMOL, the driver told him about the accomplishments of Mr. Wangchuk and the author suddenly remembered that he had met the brilliant inventor during his earlier visit to Ladakh in the mid-1990s.

On the day that Downey visited the SECMOL campus, Wangchuk was working with some architects, looking over some plans for the new university he envisions. The inventor said, to Downey and the rest of the assembled people, “We have to imagine not just what this place will look like in 20 years, but how it will look in 50. Or a hundred.” Envisioning a peaceful future is exactly what the late patron of this website, Dr. Elise Boulding, and many other peace people have advocated so effectively. It sounds as if Mr. Wangchuk’s vision is quite comparable.

Despite protests by the Lepchas that the Teesta River and its tributaries are sacred, the Government of Sikkim continues to press for additional hydroelectric dams. India Climate Dialogue published a review last week by Athar Parvaiz of the reasons for Lepcha opposition to the dams, which are in various stages of planning.

The Teesta River flowing through Sikkim (Photo by Athar Parvaiz on India Climate Dialogue, Creative Commons license)

The government of India’s state of Sikkim has signed letters of intent to construct 27 power projects in the Teesta River drainage system with a total generating capacity of 5,494 megawatts of power. Opposition by the Lepcha people over the years has caused four of them to be scrapped, though two have been built. Several others are pending.

The Lepchas added another dimension to their arguments last July when UNESCO declared Mt. Kanchenjunga as a World Heritage Site. Kanchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world and is the source of some of the Teesta River tributaries. The mountain and surrounding massif, looming on the western border of Sikkim and already protected within India as the Kanchenjunga National Park, is at the heart of Lepcha religious beliefs. The UNESCO designation clearly bolsters the case for their opposition.

A prayer ceremony for the Teesta (Photo by Affected Citizens of Teesta and International Rivers on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Mr. Parvais quoted from the UNESCO website entry about Kanchenjunga: “Mythological stories are associated with this mountain and with a great number of natural elements (e.g. caves, rivers, lakes, etc.) that are the object of worship by the indigenous people of Sikkim.” It is clear that the rivers draining the mountain range are also sacred.

The Lepchas maintain that the UNESCO recognition points up the fact that an environmental impact assessment and an Expert Appraisal Committee report, both of which approved the most recent scheme, the Teesta Stage IV project, ignored the sacred character of the Kanchenjunga range.

Teesta IV dam construction site (Photo by International Rivers on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Gyatso Lepcha, the general secretary of Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), a group that has opposed the dams on behalf of the Lepcha for many years and has gotten extensive coverage in the news, argued that the UNESCO designation provides added importance to their stance. He said that his group is anticipating a decision by the government to scrap the Teesta Stage IV project. If it does not, ACT will submit a written petition to UNESCO pointing out how designated sites are being treated within India. Gyatso said that two of the completed projects, Teesta III and V, produce over 1,700 megawatts of power, only 112 of which are used within Sikkim. The remainder is sold to the rest of India.

Officials in Sikkim disagree with Gyatso, arguing that the power projects will help the remote regions of the state become more prosperous. According to Namgyal Tshering Bhutia, Secretary of the Sikkim Energy and Power Department, some of the communities in North Sikkim favor the project. Several of the elected village councils have approved it, and he hopes that others will too.

A local Lepcha boy gathering wood in the Teesta River valley — A local boy gathering wood in the Teesta River valley (Photo by International Rivers on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Gyatso responded that the local people are being ignored. “[The developers] are only interested in constructing the power projects at the cost of the destruction of our environment and disrespect to our religious beliefs,” he said. Mr. Parvais, the journalist, interviewed a local farmer, Sonam Lepcha. He spoke reverently about the Dzongu Reserve, the heart of Lepcha territory in North Sikkim: “Dzongu is the place where our race (Lepcha) was created and [Kanchenjunga] is our mother mountain where our souls ultimately get salvation,” he said. He added that Lepchas firmly believe that after they die their souls will travel up the River Teesta to the sacred mountain.

Mbuti living on Idjwi Island must cope with discrimination and hardships in their struggle to survive on the fringes of Bantu society. A Reuters feature last week described the conditions that they endure and the causes of their troubles.

Sunset over Lake Idjwi (Photo by Julien Harneis on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

At 43 miles long and 131 square miles in area, Idjwi is the second largest island in Africa’s inland lakes. It is located on the eastern border of the D.R. Congo in the middle of Lake Kivu, one of the Great Lakes on the continent. The article last week estimated that about 7,000 Mbuti live among over 270,000 Bantu people on the island. While they have not suffered as much as the other pygmy peoples living in the interior of northwestern Congo from the incessant wars of the past several decades, they have had to endure discrimination from their Bantu neighbors and overlords. They are entering the sunset of their culture and society.

The Mbuti on Idjwi used to live in the forests but around 1980 Bantu people forced them out and took over their land for houses and farms. Without any education or experience for surviving in the alien society, they settled into refugee camps and were forced to try and cultivate non-arable lands on the coastal fringes of the large island.

Forest life for the Mbuti (Photo by Marc Louwes on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Habimana, an Mbuti woman of 45, told Reuters, “before, in the forest, we had everything we needed for an easy and happy life: food, shelter, medicine, clothes.” She added, “it’s in our nature to live like that.”

Local Congo authorities denied to the reporter that anything had changed for the Mbuti. Gervais Rubenga Ntawenderundi, a customary Bantu chief, said that there are no problems between the two different societies. He added that the pygmies had always lived at the fringes of the Bantu villages as they do now, and that they “have never been driven out of the forest.” Other Bantu people insisted that the discrimination the Mbuti complain about is a result of the colonial period.

Adolphine Byaywuwa Muley, the minister of agriculture and the environment for Congo’s South Kivu Province, in which Idjwi is located, said that the basic problem for the Mbuti is that they don’t have their own land. Acting as the head of a local group seeking empowerment for indigenous women, she said she has not seen much progress since 2013. As a rejoinder, the customary Bantu authorities argued that the Mbuti sold their forest lands.

Mbuti women doing day labor, getting firewood — Mbuti woman doing day labor, getting firewood (Photo by Terese Hart on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

About 300 Mbuti live in the Kagorwa Camp on the island where they were resettled from their ancestral forests. Crops do not grow there. The children looked, to the reporter, to be undernourished and gaunt from their diet of “sombe,” cassava leaves boiled in water without even the addition of salt. The head of the camp said that that was all they had to eat—their days of eating birds, snakes, and game meat were gone.

Habimana, the Mbuti woman, said that she weeds the fields of a businessman who is building a hotel on the coast. But she earns only one-third as much as the other workers. As a result, she also has to sell pottery at a market to earn extra money. A fisherman, Manguist, told the reporter he had given up the idea of ever returning to their former forest existence, “but we don’t deserve this misery,” he added.

Ms. Muley argued that a general awareness of the situation endured by the Mbuti is growing. She said that the prevalent attitude, that the pygmy has less human value than the Bantu, is not helped by the fact that the pygmies themselves assume that discrimination is normal. But the official concluded that the indigenous people are learning: “that they have rights like everyone else.”

A Pongal in India is normally a three or four day festival in which rural people express their gratitude to the sun for a bountiful harvest. But among some of the Paliyans of southern Tamil Nadu State, a Pongal expresses their desires for good rains. The Hindu last week published an article that provided some details about the Paliyan ceremonies.

New Year and Pongal Celebration in Tamil Nadu (photo by Thamizhpparithi Maari in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The “Mazhaippongal,” as the reporter called it, is observed in April or May each year, months when rain is sparse in that part of India. The Deputy Director of the Southern Regional Office of the Anthropological Survey of India, C. R. Sathyanarayanan, told the paper that the Paliyan Pongal “is a rain-invoking ritual beseeching the deity Palichiyamma to bestow showers. The members make Pongal from grains and rice and pour it over the stone, which, they believe, is their chief deity. The deity then blesses them with rains.”

A news story in this website last April described the “Mazhai Pongal” ceremony in detail; it included a video about it released by the Anthropological Survey. The article last week provided additional information. It quoted Latha Rajan, a Paliyan from Paliyankudi, who said that they take millets and rice into the forest when they want to celebrate a Mazhaippongal. “It is a long ceremony where all our members are present,” she said.

The newspaper briefly described the ceremony. The pot in which the rice and millet is cooked is placed in front of the rock that symbolizes the deity, and the water is heated with a fire made from twigs. When the Pongal pot boils over, the priest whips himself with a wild creeper, marulikkai, in order to appease the deities. Pouring the hot porridge on the rocks then promotes rain. The entire ceremony was portrayed by the video, which is included on the Paliyans page in the Videos Section of this website.

A scenic view of the Palni, or Palani, Hills of Tamil Nadu (Photo by cprogrammer in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

An important book by Gardner (2000) on Paliyan society provides an excellent overview of the landscape of southern Tamil Nadu that helps explain their obsessions about rain. The mountain ranges in that portion of the state vary in the amounts of rainfall they receive from one area to another, but rain is an important factor in determining what will grow. He added that one mountain, the summit of the Palni Hills, receives 1,680 mm (66 in.) of rainfall per year while some of the surrounding lower hills where the Paliyan locate their villages were lucky to receive a fraction of that. Gardner cited one community that annually receives only 660 mm of rainfall per year and another that reportedly gets as little as 250.

The group Gardner studied endured dry periods but they were able to cope mostly by foraging among beds of yams at different elevations. If necessary, they could climb to the wetter areas higher in the mountains during drought periods. The people “complained regularly to their protecting gods about the baked earth and prayed earnestly for rain, but they saw no need to take emergency measures,” he wrote (p.50).

Later in the book he described their actual prayers for rain. One person he recorded (p.125) petitioned the gods by saying, “the forest is catching fire owing to excessive heat. Why don’t you give us rain?” Gardner quoted other prayers as part of his lengthy discussion of Paliyan religious practices—for good health and for protection from malevolent spirits as well as for more rainfall.

A Paliyan woman with her kids in the Sirumalai Hills of Tamil Nadu (Photo by vdakshinamurthy in Wikipedia, in the public domain)

Gardner’s 1991 article on Paliyan shamanism referred to a deity that he spelled as Paliciammā (p.369) rather than Palichiyamma as the newspaper spelled it. Gardner mentioned that the deity is accepted by some of the Paliyan groups living to the south of the area where he did his fieldwork. The anthropologist indicated in that article that the samis, their term for their deities, are often called into the Paliyan villages by shamans to provide healing, to give personal advice, and to help solve the problems of subsistence.

Gardner suggested that when samis visit the villages, people may interact with them as much or as little as they may personally need. He concluded that the relationships of the Paliyans with their samis are quite in line with their nonviolent social structures. They may elevate their samis above everyone else, but the shamans are not given any special treatment. “Paliyans are quick to deny elevated status to the samis’ mouthpieces,” Gardner wrote (p.381).

Denial of status to shamans is just part of their antipathy toward anyone have more prestige than others. The shamans derive no special recognition or authority from their roles. The shamans need to remain as self-effacing as everyone else in order to keep up their good relations with others. The article by Gardner is available as a PDF in this website.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Update on Nubian Protests

Seafaring Canoes Tied Polynesians Together

Attack of a Sun Bear

Rural Thai Girls Get Help

Managing Fire in Namibia

Ifaluk Atoll Has an Uncertain Future

The Future of Ladakh

The Sacred River

Mbuti Hardships on Idjwi

Paliyans Implore their Gods for Rain

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