Peaceful Societies

When she approached the microphone at an international conference in Kuala Lumpur, Fatimah Bah-sin wasn’t intimidated by the fact that she could not speak English. A part-Semai, part Semak Beri woman from a village near Kuantan, Malaysia, she wanted to tell the ASEAN Women’s Forum meeting about the problems she witnessed in her community.

After apologizing to the crowd for the fact that she couldn’t speak English, she asked her audience, as translated by a news report last week, “if indigenous women in other countries face the same problem as I do.” She told the audience that since she has interacted with some NGOs, she has learned a little about the rights of women.

She said she was from a village without good access to information about women’s rights. She had not even known that women had rights. She received a round of applause from the participants when they heard her say, thorough the translation service, “I want to fight for my right[s].”

She spoke with the reporter later and said that she had only received schooling through form three. A mother of five, she indicated that indigenous women in Malaysia were being deprived of their rights to own land. That is contrary to her traditions, she explained, in which women have equal rights to men. “The current system is making it hard for us indigenous women,” she said. She added that women’s lands are being taken without compensation.

The ASEAN Women’s Forum, held on Wednesday morning last week, was one of numerous sessions scheduled for the four day ASEAN People’s Forum conference, April 21 – 24. The overall conference was expected to attract over 1,200 participants.

The newspaper article raises the question of gender relations today in Semai society. Robarchek (1989) observed during his field work among the Semai that their society included a gendered division of labor that was clear but not rigidly applied. They did not have separate ideals for women as opposed to men, and there were no jobs that only women or men would do. He summarized Semai gender relations by writing, “there is no separate cultural ideal of womanhood against which an aggressive ideal of manhood might be cast in structural opposition (p.36).”
Orang_Asli_book_cover

But their society has been changing. Nicholas, Chopil and Sabak (2010) in their book Orang Asli Women and the Forest explore the gender relationships of Semai women and men in the context of social and economic conditions that are quite different today. It is clear from their book that Semai women have their problems with being dominated by the men in their villages. The men often ignore the points of view of the women.

The corollary is that the women frequently tend to accept the idea that they are weaker and of less importance than men, so they often accept domination meekly. Some women accept the premise that the man is the head of the family, and it is his role to make decisions. Semai men appear to believe that they rightfully should have power and authority over women. The men feel that women don’t need to attend meetings—the men should go instead.

The authors advocate the idea that women and men should work together to address issues and make decisions. To some extent, they say, this is starting to happen. Women are getting exposed to some workshops and learning to make positive changes, but in some cases their assertiveness is being condemned by the men.

The newspaper article last Thursday does not mention these three authors, but doubtless they would approve of Fatimah Bah-sin approaching the microphone at the conference and speaking about the land issues in her village. Above and beyond the importance of the land issues she addressed, her courage in overcoming recent trends toward male domination in Semai society is noteworthy.

Royal /Ui/o/oo, the only Ju/hoan person to be elected to the Parliament of Namibia, has been appointed to a position as deputy minister in the office of the Vice President. However, his detractors are unhappy with the appointment.

According to an article last week in The New Era, a major newspaper in Namibia, critics claim he is unsuitable for the office and incompetent. Ju/’hoansi supporters of the newly appointed official reply angrily that the critics have a hidden agenda, which is to try and continue oppressing the San people, a marginalized society in the southern African nation.

His supporters assert that even some of the ministers appointed by the President have shortcomings, but they are not criticized in the same biased ways as Mr. /Ui/o/oo’s appointment has been. They ask why he is being singled out and criticized for his imperfections, when the others are not.

The Ju/’hoansi supporters add, “it would be better if people could wait and stop their criticism with his current position because he has authority in terms of decision making, implementation, monitoring and evaluating marginalised people’s affairs unlike the previous post he held.”

A detractor evidently commented that there is a hidden agenda in appointing members of disadvantaged groups like the Ju/’hoansi into high government positions, and “in the long run we are doing ourselves grave disservice.” Mr. /Ui/o/oo’s supporters responded that this kind of appointment is not intended to prove to the world that the government of Namibia is necessarily always perfect, but it does demonstrate that disadvantaged groups like the Ju/’hoansi are, in fact, participating in the agendas of the nation.

Another news source, One Africa Television, a TV station in Namibia, carried a three minute segment about the appointment of Mr. /Ui/o/oo. The station published its “News on One” segment to YouTube on March 26. Entitled “Deputy Minister Royal /Ui/o/oo on Representing Minorities in the Vice Presidency Office,” the news segment includes video scenes of San people living their daily village lives, as well as of Mr. /Ui/o/oo speaking into a microphone.

The narrator introduces the news segment by telling viewers that the constitution of Namibia forbids discrimination of ethnic minority groups. However, she admits, the rights of indigenous people such as the San are not always recognized.

Mr. /Ui/o/oo then appears and reminds viewers that they have a saying, “one Namibia, one nation,” but he makes it clear that reality does not always live up to that promise. He appreciates the president appointing him to the new position, he says, and he reminds viewers that he is a San person himself, so he really does understand minority issues better than others might.

He tells Namibian viewers that there are many issues about which he is concerned relating to minority peoples in the nation, among which are hiring more indigenous applicants into government positions. He also wants to work with appropriate agencies to make sure the San people are able to participate in popular sporting activities, the same as other Namibians do.

He suggests, however, that it is essential to sit down with the elders in the indigenous communities to solicit their opinions about suggested changes. Officials need to balance planned developments with established ways of doing things. If you just focus on development projects without paying attention to traditional cultures, he concludes, “at the end of the day you might lose out.”

The word “redshirt” has very different meanings in the United States and Rural Thailand. In the U.S., student intercollegiate athletes normally are permitted to play on their teams for only four years. If they are in five-year undergraduate programs, during that fifth year (often the first one) they may be part of a team but not actually participate in sporting events. They are referred to as “redshirts.” In Thailand, however, redshirts are supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Redshirt protests in Bangkok, September 2010 Photo by Takeaway in Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons license

Members of the so-called “redshirt” movement mounted massive demonstrations in Bangkok in 2010 in an effort to remove the prime minister of Thailand at the time, Abhisit Vejjajiva, and force a call for elections. This movement succeeded in prompting an election in 2011 that brought Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, into office. Yingluck was the leader of the Phuea Thai (PT) Party, which embodied redshirt ideals.

Thaksin became prime minister in 2001 on a platform of supporting changes in Thailand. He said he wanted to develop a new economy and society that would provide more support for the Rural Thai people rather than for Thailand’s urban elites. Thaksin’s initiatives caused him to be ousted by a coup in 2006. After that, the redshirt movement sought to continue promoting this concept of a nation divided by these two classes—rural poor and urban elites.

A recent journal article by Yoshinori Nishizaki seeks to challenge the widely-held notion that the redshirt movement, formally known as the “United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship,” has universal support in Rural Thailand.

The redshirts argue that the rapid economic growth of Thailand since the 1960s has preponderantly benefitted urban elites at the expense of the rural poor. Furthermore, they have sought to convince their Rural Thai supporters that they need to think of themselves in antiquated terms from the 1930s. They label urban elites as ammart, aristocrats, people who conspired to overthrow Thaksin. They describe rural people as phrai, serfs, a class term for downtrodden poor people stuck in grinding poverty because of the urban elites .

The solution advocated by the redshirts: overthrow the system through class struggle. Their arguments have resonated with many rural Thai, for a lot of them turned out wearing red shirts at the Bangkok protests in 2010. The redshirts clearly had a lot of support.

Nishizaki argues in his paper that support for the redshirt movement in Rural Thailand has not been as universal as their promoters would like the rest of the world to believe. He discusses differing points of view held by the Rural Thai peasants in northern Chiang Mai Province where, not coincidentally, Thaksin was from.

The author argues, and provides ample figures to demonstrate, that while the redshirt party may have won elections, the results have not been as overwhelming as their supporters contend. Then, he examines the opinions of the peasants in two small, rural villages in the Mae Ai District of the Chiang Mai Province.

Nishizaki did his fieldwork during numerous visits to the two villages from 2009 through 2012, and he had many opportunities for discussing with the villagers their opinions of the issues being raised by the major parties and their candidates. Since the campaign in 2011 received extensive coverage from the media, the redshirt movement was a constant topic of conversation. Many of the peasants, he found, are strongly opposed to the redshirts.

Nishizaki found that while his informants, all of whom identified themselves as peasants, were significantly poorer than the people of the cities, many of them were opposed to Thaksin and to the redshirt movement. The reasons were that they were critical of the claims made by the redshirts because of their own life experiences. What they have perceived about the redshirts did not square with what they, themselves, have experienced. The fact that they may be poor and relatively uneducated does not diminish their critical faculties in any way, the author argues.

The rural people would not deny that they benefitted from some of Thaksin’s policies. But they also pointed out that some of his policies jeopardized their incomes, such as his decision to sign a free trade agreement with China in 2003. It opened up Thailand to a flood of cheap fruits and vegetables at prices that the farmers in Mae Ai District couldn’t compete with. Many farming people blame Thaksin for deserting them.

Villagers told the author that, while Thaksin claimed to understand the problems of the Rural Thai farmers, he really didn’t. He did not institute any real land reforms, an issue that frustrates them. One informant told Nishizaki that the reason no effective reforms have taken place is that Thaksin, himself, is a large landholder. He is a hypocrite who has vested interests in seeing that the landholding system in Thailand does not change, the informant said.

The informants were also highly critical about the integrity of some of the local government officials who were appointed by the redshirt politicians. They were, critics said, firm supporters of Yingluck’s party in order to channel government development moneys into local coffers so that they could then be redirected into private accounts. These critics also claimed that redshirt activists sometimes funneled money into vote-buying schemes, activities that strengthened their opposition to the redshirts.

The peasant informants were particularly incensed by the phrai rhetoric of the redshirts. Rural people who have worked hard, saved carefully, lived modestly, and slowly gotten ahead have tended to resent being lumped into this antiquated “serf” category. It is true that Mae Ai was quite secluded and impoverished up until the 1970s, but as roads were built into the remote area, the economy began to slowly improve. People began getting jobs in urban areas and to send remittances back to their rural families. Farmers were able to start planting crops for export, and they began to have more money to invest in additional plots of land.

One peasant that Nishizaki interviewed, Hendee, a staunch opponent of the redshirts, finds their rhetoric about phrai particularly offensive since he and his wife have managed to pull themselves up through their lifelong hard work. They do not see themselves as helpless, rural poor. They now straddle the divide between the lower, poverty-stricken class and the increasingly affluent middle class. The social classes into which they were born do not necessarily represent lifelong shackles.

Nishizaki concludes that his analysis reports on only two villages in a corner of one province of Rural Thailand, so his results can’t be generalized. But they are, obviously, indicative of at least some of the forces at work in the rural regions of the country. Because of the incredible variety of people and situations in Rural Thailand, the situation, he writes, “cautions us not to accept wholesale the prevailing class-based [redshirt] analysis of the movement (p. 24).”

Nishizaki, Yoshinori. 2014. “Peasants and the Redshirt Movement in Thailand: Some Dissenting Voices.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41(1, 2): 1-28

The Hutterites at the Viking Colony in rural Alberta, 75 miles southeast of Edmonton, constantly look for ways to use their business intuition to develop new enterprises. They are also seeking to preserve their unique values as they adapt to new challenges.

Country Guide, a Canadian farming publication, focused an article last week on Paul Wipf, the farm leader at the colony, and the ways the Hutterites there are trying to innovate. With 110 people, the colony runs a variety of businesses, including raising hogs, producing eggs, selling broiler chickens, plus running a dairy, a grain farm, and a custom feedlot. Looking beyond those businesses, they are open to starting new ventures.

Wipf argues that the reason the 10,000 acre colony diversifies into numerous different farming operations is that he wants to make sure the businesses are sustainable. The colony takes care of all of its members from birth to death—a large financial commitment—so it needs to focus on its long-term economic health. Diversification is a practical approach to managing risk, he reasons.

While the individual families don’t build up private savings, they all live reasonably well. To be sure that the colony can continue to care for its members, it realizes it needs to constantly work to build up its assets. Furthermore, the colony has an obligation to help provide at least short-term support for a daughter colony when it becomes too large and decides to split.

Mr. Wipf compares it to parents providing enough resources to help their own offspring get a start in the world, except that the Hutterite colony sees the prospect on a much larger scale. “The whole plan of a colony is to take care of the next generations,” he says.

One of the interesting aspects of the report is the way the colony fosters innovation. Mr. Wipf believes that the colony has an advantage over the typical family farm in that the Hutterites have a lot of people to contribute ideas to the group for everyone else to review. The colony has a lot of “thinking power,” he argues.

Colony leaders typically have meetings in the morning to discuss important issues such as possible business ventures. If the group decides it likes a proposal, they will research the idea and run it past their accountant. If, after further review, they still like it, they will bring it before the membership for a vote. Sometimes, another member will suggest a different idea, which may be a viable alternative for everyone to review and vote on again.

Similarly, they constantly evaluate their present range of products to see how they can improve them. What factors make the chickens they raise competitive over the chickens raised by other growers? Their edge comes from the fact, Wipf maintains, that their chickens are fresher than other birds in the grocery stores.

He also keeps tabs on trends in the larger society. When he realized that people were doing less cooking at home, the colony moved into producing smoked chickens. Furthermore, he is conscious of the fact that the Hutterites have a recognizable brand. “People seem to trust Hutterites and the way that they do a good job of raising their food,” he says.

The leaders of the Viking Colony consult outside professionals, such as nutritionists and agronomists, for advice on ways to improve their farm products. But he talks to the journalist about more than just ways to improve their farming operations. He expresses concern about the importance of raising young people with the character, faith, and morals that the Hutterites prize.

He looks on his farm management skills as very similar to the abilities that parents have in raising children. He tells the reporter that if people have the ability to be good parents, they can also use those skills as farm managers or enterprise leaders. He is familiar, he says, with raising children and the stresses that teenagers experience.

He welcomes youngsters into the working team, both as a friend and as a person who sets expectations, a mentor who will deal with issues that come up. New workers rotate into different businesses run by the colony so they can get a sense of their strengths and interests. He handles problems directly. He says that when people don’t do their work properly, their colleagues will notice and correct them. He encourages workers to participate in decision-making. He doesn’t micromanage the workers or their operations.

Wipf feels that changes no one can anticipate will happen regularly. New colonies may not continue to go into the same types of farming as the older colonies have done. They will have to think in new ways, outside the box, to develop businesses that will be successful. One possible business he suggests for new colonies might be to provide service for equipment, such as personal vehicles or farm machinery. “Where there’s a will, there’s going to be a way,” a truism that he repeats to the journalist.

He does believe that adapting to the inevitable changes in colony businesses will pose challenges to the culture and faith of the colonies. He concludes that the future of the Hutterites will depend on their ability to adapt and modernize their technologies, and yet to keep them in harmony with their commitments to their beliefs and their faith.

Nearly 17 months after writing a report about a Malapandaram community in Kerala, Radhakrishnan Kuttoor, a reporter for The Hindu, returned to see how the same community is doing. The reporter, focusing his story last week on issues similar to the ones in 2013, referred to the situation in the community as a “tale of poverty, tears, and exploitation.”

Sabarimala4 He brings an urban bias to his article when he describes the campsite of the Malapandaram. They hang a hurricane lamp from the branch of a tree, their only source of light at night, the journalist writes, “and they live in perpetual fear of wild beasts and anti-social elements.” He speaks with Bhavani, a woman he describes as middle-aged, who tells him about their life in the forest. The streams dry up so they have to venture deeper into the woods for water, “braving the threat posed by wild animals.”

Bhavani tells Mr. Kuttoor that they have not been receiving provisions from the authorities for five months, so their children have taken to picking up stray bits of food discarded by passersby along the roads. She tells the reporter that they could go into the town of Attathode to purchase groceries and rice, but they don’t have the money to buy such provisions.

The people are reluctant to give up their lives in the wilds, but sources of forest-based income have dried up, says P.S. Uthaman, a Malapandaram leader. The reporter hears allegations that middlemen are exploiting them by buying the forest products they bring out for sale, unfairly paying them low rates and then selling the products for much more. Mr. Uthaman also tells Mr. Kuttoor that the Malapandaram in the camp have health problems, especially malnutrition and anemia among the women and children

Mr. Uthaman believes that the people should be rehabilitated at a new settlement, near a place called Laha. There, they would be close to their beloved forests but they could still have the advantages of outside human products and services. The reporter adds that Tribal Welfare Department officials frequently have a hard time locating these people because of their nomadic ways.

Another news service reported later the same day that the piece in The Hindu had prompted administrators of the district Tribal Welfare Department to take very seriously the criticism. District Collector S. Harikishore said that his administration would see that the Malapandaram people in both communities discussed by the story in The Hindu, Nilackal and Chalakkayam, were provided with food, water, and appropriate health care services.

K. Mukundan, the District Tribal Development Officer, told the reporter that the department intended to set up a new settlement for 25 Malapandaram families from Nilackal, Plappally, and Chalakkayam on a 4.04 hectare tract at Manjathode, near Laha. This appears to be the same plan that another District Tribal Development Officer had described in the 2013 news story, though that earlier official had said that 26 families would be rehabilitated.

Mr. Mukundan said the Malapandaram seldom wanted to live in permanent communities, but he indicated that some of the young people are interested in the proposed tribal settlement near Laha. The Tribal Welfare Department has forwarded a request to the Forest Department for permission to divert the 4.04 hectares of forest land to the new tribal settlement, but the proposal is still pending.

He added that his department has deposited 13,300,000 rupees (U.S.$213,000) with the Kerala Police Housing Construction Corporation for establishing the new tribal settlement.

The owner of a quarry in west central Pennsylvania has given up trying to overcome U.S. federal bureaucracy in order to protect the beliefs of his Amish employees. A couple news stories last week covered the controversy over whether or not Amish workers in the quarry had to remove their broad-brimmed hats and wear hard hats along with the other workers.

The Allentown Morning Call reported that last fall, Dan Russell contacted his congressman, Rep. Glenn Thompson, for his assistance in working out a seeming conflict between the regulations of two different U.S. government agencies. The owner of Russell Stone Products, a sandstone quarry located a few miles outside the borough of Grampian, in Clearfield County, Mr. Russell had allowed his five Amish employees to not wear hard hats while working in the quarry.

He felt that they were excellent employees and he believed that the regulations of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) applied to his workplace. Those regulations require the use of hard hats by workers in construction areas. However, the regulations allow exemptions for Amish workers whose religious beliefs require their men to all wear broad-brimmed straw or felt hats.

But officials at the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration have a different take on the safety of workers in quarries, which fall under their jurisdiction. That agency insists that all workers have to wear hard hats when they are working in areas of a mining operation where there is a danger of being hit by a falling object. Mr. Russell was notified that his Amish workers had to comply.

In order to not violate the law, he had to reassign the five men to another part of the quarry and replace them with non-Amish people—or face having his business shut down. He fails to understand the logic of allowing religious exemptions in construction areas but not in quarries. “What’s the difference if a piece of steel falls on your head versus a stone in our quarry?” he asked rhetorically.

Last year, Russell contacted Congressman Thompson, who in turn asked relevant officials in the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate. Officials there delayed responding to the congressman, but they finally got back to him—prompted by the Congressman’s repeating his question to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez at a budget hearing on March 18. Four days later, the department officials ruled that the quarry owner must be guided by the mine safety regulations, not those of OSHA. The Amish workers must be transferred out of the areas where rocks might fall on them. Neither Mr. Russell nor Mr. Thompson plans to appeal the ruling.

The reporter contacted Donald Kraybill at Elizabethtown College to find out why the Amish men feel they must wear their broad brimmed hats. Kraybill indicated that wearing felt or straw hats is not optional for Amish men. It is an essential aspect of their culture, one which they are loath to change.

He said, “The Amish view their hat as a religious symbol and don’t want to acquiesce to outside requirements. They don’t want the loss of the hat in construction areas to lead to an erosion of wearing the hat elsewhere.”

Another news report covering the issue also quoted Kraybill as saying that the Amish see their manner of dressing as a way of expressing their commitment to Christianity. “It’s not a matter of personal preference or even tradition,” Kraybill said. “For them, it has religious mandate and religious meaning.”

In his book The Riddle of Amish Culture, Kraybill (1989) goes into a bit more detail about the threat, as the Amish perceived it, in the nineteen seventies when federal regulators were first proposing the requirement that all workers in construction industries must wear hard hats. Kraybill relates that a representative for the Amish National Steering Committee made several trips to Washington to plead the case for an Amish exemption.

That representative argued with regulators that for the Amish, their unique clothing, including their hats, are part of their witness against worldliness. Wearing the traditional hat is a religious belief for them, the person reportedly said. An Amish person who attended one of the meetings said that the Secretary of Labor at the time asked one of the Amish men in the room to pass his hat around the table.

When the hat reached the hands of the Secretary, he reportedly remarked, “That hat is pretty stiff by itself, it is no use in us fighting you. We’ll see what we can do (p. 59).” The decision at the time was that if Amish employees are willing to sign written waivers, they can be exempt from OSHA hard hat regulations. To judge by the news reports last week, OSHA still accepts the concept that, for the Amish, their clothing is a religious expression, though the other agency does not.

The Nunavimmiut, Inuit from the northern third of Quebec called Nunavik, are a strongly united and determined people, according to a report from Nunatsiaq News last week. The news service reported that the Makivik Corporation, the governing body of the Nunavimmiut people, had just adopted a forward-looking declaration at their annual general meeting in Kuujjuaq. The Makivik Corporation declared that they are determined to protect and promote the Inuit culture and language and to strive toward greater autonomy.

Jobie Tukkiapik, the President of Makivik Corporation, said, “with the adoption of this Declaration, we have clearly stated our commitment to protect our culture and language, improve our socio-economic situation and work towards a new governance structure.” Fortunately, the text of the declaration is available as a PDF on the Makivik Corporation website.

The powerfully-written declaration states many obvious truths, ones that need repetition: that the Inuit people of Nunavik have lived there for thousands of years, and that they have “suffered from the grip of colonialism,” but that they must reassert their pride, their strengths, and their commitment to protecting their “unique Inuit culture, language and identity.”

The declaration indicates that its statements are founded on earlier reports and documents. It insists that Nunavimmiut relations with industrial developers and government bodies must be focused on improving the quality of life of the people of Nunavik, and they should be based on a pervading sense of mutual respect and equality.

Many of the specific issues the document addresses are of current economic importance. The high cost of living and the poverty of many families are concerns that need immediate attention. The people need safe, adequate, affordable housing. Health and social services need to be strengthened.

The document addresses some fundamental social concerns of the Nunavimmiut, not just in terms of what governments must do for them, but in terms of what they, the Nunavimmiut, must do for themselves. For instance, one paragraph of the document states, “We must recapture our core family values and traditions. Ilagiit means being part of a family and this concept defines us. We need to clearly state these values and traditions, and apply them in our homes and communities.”

The declaration advocates investing in education for the Nunavimmiut. It recognizes the need for community groups to work together better in order to improve social services and justice systems, so that communities will be able to ameliorate pervasive social problems.

The Makivik Corporation advocates regional approaches to planning which will better develop tourism, mining, and public sector jobs. It recognizes the need to provide electrical power, develop new forms of energy production, and harvest wildlife in a sustainable fashion. It argues for real, but sustainable, development in Nunavik.

According to the news report in Nunatsiaq News, Geoff Kelley, the Aboriginal Affairs Minister for Quebec, attended the March 27th Annual General Meeting of the Makivik Corporation in Kuujjuaq. However, the news service reports that the government of the province has not, as yet, responded to an earlier discussion from the same group, called the Parnasimautik Consultations of 2013, or the resulting Parnasimautik Consultation Report dated November 14, 2014.

Opaletswe, a young San man, tells Daniel Koehler at New Xade that even though he is poor, “when you dance, you feel like you are very rich.” Koehler has posted three new entries to his blog about the G/wi and the G//ana people living in New Xade, the resettlement community in western Botswana where he is producing a documentary film as part of a Fulbright-National Geographic fellowship.

His three earlier blog posts described his first impressions of the San people from November through January. To supplement them, he described, on January 28, the happiness of his new friend when he is dancing. Koehler related his conversations with Opaletswe, one of the few young men who holds a job—in his case, as a community liaison for the local police force. The work is not terribly fulfilling, Opaletswe tells Koehler, nor does it pay very much. But at least he is employed.

Before he got his job with the police, he was employed by a lodge where tourists went to experience the “authentic” culture of the San at a cultural village. But he wondered, in his conversations with Koehler, why his community shouldn’t develop their own cultural village. Others whom Koehler met expressed similar desires—to foster their own tourism ventures, as musicians, as crafts persons, perhaps as language tutors.

Opaletswe’s specialty, though, is dancing. He hummed to himself and danced a step or two whenever he walked around the village with the author. But Koehler asks critical questions: the dances the San used to perform had deeply spiritual meanings. But now, are they much more than just entertainments for tourists? Do such performances help keep the old culture alive, or do they help deprive their traditions of any meaning? Koehler’s filming project appears to be exploring in depth astute questions such as these.

His blog post of February 25 describes the challenges and rewards of trying to prepare a documentary film about a community in a foreign land. He doesn’t minimize the difficulties. Many journalists have dropped into New Xade, stayed a day or two, and quickly left. The results of their visits have rarely been sent back to the community. Koehler intends to treat the people differently.

The most important thing to achieve, he writes, is a sense of trust between himself and the people he is trying to film. He may spend a week hanging out with people in order to gain their confidence and support, which will make another week of filming and interviewing much more rewarding than if he had just filmed for two weeks. He has been completely transparent about what he is doing with everyone that he contacts. Building effective relationships is essential, he believes.

His goal is not just to produce his own film. Rather, he sees the project as a collaborative one. He wants it to empower the community so the San people can tell their own story in partnership with him. He intends to present the resulting film at screenings in New Xade as well as elsewhere in Botswana. Koehler has yet to mention John Marshall, the late filmmaker who pioneered in making films about the San 60 years ago.

His most recent blog entry, posted on March 28, projects a more downcast mood. Koehler describes helping a dozen people dig a grave in the New Xade cemetery. Somehow, while digging down a couple meters with the others, he threw out his back. At least temporarily, he had to abandon his shoulder-carried camera and use his tripod to conduct interviews.

Older people who had been initially reluctant to talk about their past lives out in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve changed their minds about him. “The white man works hard,” they said in appreciation for his honest efforts to help, to fit in. As a result, he found the interviewees to be incredibly honest about their former lifestyle, which many of them dearly miss. They recalled how they, or their parents, had gathered wild foods in the desert, or hunted small antelopes.

They related their pride when they visited the desert pans—which their own ancestors had named. But Koehler sensed a bitterness in their voices when they told him, “now, we are looking for life.” This search for identity, expressed by his friends and contacts in New Xade, will be the theme of the film, which now has a working title, “Looking for Life.”

While very few of the younger people express any desire to live in the desert again, they do feel quite uneasy—they act as if something is missing in their lives. They are searching for a way to reinvent their society, Koehler argues, in such a way that they will be able to take charge of their own futures.

An unusual architectural design competition was launched last week by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to create a more sustainable future for the people of Tristan da Cunha. The Independent, a prominent British newspaper, reported that architects worldwide have been invited to submit their ideas for ways to redesign buildings in The Settlement, the village on Tristan. While they’re at it, the designers need to find ways to improve the physical living standards and energy efficiency of the infrastructure on the island in a cost-effective fashion.

Alex Mitham, the administrator on Tristan, called upon the professional association to handle the process of identifying an architect who would be able to design an overhaul of not only the private dwellings but also the government buildings on the island. Mr. Mitham referred to the government facilities as basically agricultural sheds that “are nearing the end of their useful life.”

The Independent quotes him further as saying that improvements to the agrarian systems on the island will be needed to better support grazing operations and to provide a year-round production of fresh vegetables. The success of the competition, presuming it identifies a sufficiently visionary plan, will give the community, in Mitham’s words, “a chance to thrive.”

Mr. Mitham added, “Tristan is truly unique, and offers a fantastic opportunity for designers from around the world to have a beneficial impact on how Tristanians live and work for years to come.”

Another news source also quoted Mr. Mitham: “As the community nears its 200th Anniversary, it is a perfect time to not only reflect on the past, but also look to the future and ensure the community’s viability for generations to come….Tristan is truly unique, and offers a fantastic opportunity for designers from around the world to have a beneficial impact on how Tristanian’s live and work for years to come.”

Several other news sources described the new venture, but the most detailed source of information is on the RIBA website devoted to the competition. RIBA makes it clear that preliminary, anonymous proposals, which are due by June 2, 2015, must be prepared by teams headed by qualified architects. It gives detailed specifications for the formats of the preliminary proposals. The successive stages of the competition, the criteria for acceptance, and the judging process are all described in detail.

The “Competition Brief” page may be the most interesting for those who do not plan to enter the competition—i.e., non-architects—since it effectively summarizes current conditions on Tristan and it prompts reflections on the social conditions of the island 50 years ago. The page provides an overview of the economy of the island: the government is the largest employer, with about 140 people working in 11 different departments. The second largest is the fishing industry.

But then, the description gets even more interesting. The islanders, we are told, still sound a bell on mornings that appear to be appropriate for fishing, and the majority of the workforce will abandon other tasks to help land and process the catch of fish. Even with only 12 small fishing boats, each with a two-man crew, virtually all the men will leave their government jobs to help with the fishing for the day. “Losing 24 men from the Government each fishing day,” the RIBA text states, “is a considerable drain on the limited resource base.”

Those sentences in the RIBA document might remind a reader familiar with the history of Tristan of an incident related by Munch (1971), in which an administrator in the mid-1960s was determined to bully the islanders into ignoring their traditional subsistence activities and accept the needs of the money economy. The idea that the people could take off to work for community projects, such as annual trips to a nearby island to gather sea birds, or that they would work cooperatively on their fishing and farming projects, was opposed by this man.

While the islanders resisted the demands of the administrator only weakly at first, Munch relates, after a year of submitting to his directives they began to realize that they would be controlled by the outside, western world, the same as they had been manipulated during their enforced sojourn in England a few years before. The alternative was to take matters into their own hands to prevent being exploited.

By January 1965, the islanders had been a year without their annual bird-gathering trip to the neighboring island because of the demands of that administrator. They had very much missed the gathering of meat and oil—as well as the strengthened social ties—that had always resulted from the trips. One day everyone knew from the weather that it was the right time to leave, and, in the middle of the morning, men began to dropping their tools and walking off their jobs.

Since almost every man walked off and went over to the other island for several days, the administrator could not fire the entire male work force. Subsequently, the men felt freer to ignore his orders and to walk off as a group when they needed to do things together.

As Munch summarized the story, in a community that lacked much in the way of an internal leadership structure, this instance of a mild form of labor conflict simply reaffirmed that the islanders valued their own social values—freedom, integrity, and reciprocal relationships—more than they did the material comforts of western civilization.

In any case, the RIBA document makes it clear that the Tristan men still walk off their jobs to participate in community work projects such as fishing days. And, it implies, the administrators still look askance at the economic losses those unscheduled activities may pose for the community.

The Competition Brief describes the fact that the economy of Tristan is shrinking. It emphasizes the need for the Islanders to be extremely cost conscious in order to avoid as much as possible being dependent on financial support from the UK. Hence, redesigning buildings so they will be highly energy efficient is essential—and one of the important aspect of the design competition. Furthermore, the water and irrigation systems must be redesigned so they can better cope with possible future demands.

This design competition website is, itself, a creative mix of information and guidance for a process that envisions a strong future for the Tristan Islanders.

While some Semai emphasize retaining their ties to their natural forests, others accept, and value, forest-destructive practices that will secure for them the benefits of the consumer economy. A review in this website last Thursday discussed a journal article that analyzes the importance of the forest environment to three Semai communities in the hills just east of the town of Tapah, in Malaysia’s Perak state.

Also last week, a major Malaysian newspaper published a report about a different Semai community, this one located about 16 miles northwest of Tapah—farther away from the mountains and the original forest environment. It is a community where the villagers have converted much of their lands to oil palm plantations. They are evidently happy that they now have a lot of disposable income.

Whether they are pleased that they no longer have any forests, the journalist for the The Star, Sheela Chandran, does not say. She was impressed that the roads into Kampung Chenderong Kelubi had been paved for decades and that the community had electricity and access to water. There is a primary school for the 170 children in the village as well as a kindergarten facility for the preschool kids. Education beyond the primary level is available in nearby towns.

Over 1,300 people live in the community, most of whom have brick houses with modern appliances and furnishings, including flat screen TVs, hi-fi systems, plush furniture, and air conditioning. Their kitchens include food processors, stand-alone freezers, and water filters. Teenagers are well dressed, stylish consumers with their tablets and smartphones. Pick-up trucks, cars, and motorcycles are parked outside most of the homes.

Ms. Chandran intends a compliment when she writes that the “village could easily be mistaken as a developed Malay settlement in Perak.” The land was first cleared for paddy farming during the years of the British rule; in the late 1950s, the villagers planted rubber trees, and in the 1980s they invested in oil palm plantations. They are making a lot of money off of their latest venture.

The reporter talks with villager Alang Chot, a 59-year old mother of four, who owns about 1 hectare of oil palms. She says that the villagers own between one and five hectares per family, and if they work hard, they can make a lot of money. Like other villagers, she has taken on additional jobs to earn extra funds. She has become a skilled tailor, and makes clothing to fit her customers. Ms. Chandran finds that her prices are quite reasonable compared to hand-made clothing in Malaysian cities. Ms. Chot also runs a catering business.

She tells the writer that she and the other Semai in the village are striving to improve their living standards in order to keep up with other communities. “While palm oil is our lifeline, we are constantly thinking of ways to earn extra income. Our needs have become complex, as we need extra resources to fulfil our wants.”

Another villager, Azmi Dongkin, 44, manages four hectares of oil palms and runs a family business, a shop in the village. He admits it is challenging running the shop and doing the work on his plantation, but he is happy to have the funds all the work brings in. He is earning money that will help pay to educate his children, and he saves some so he and his family can take vacations.

Ngah Uda, 52, tells the reporter that he catches giant freshwater prawns from a pond in the village in order to supplement the income he gains from his oil palm plantation. He feels that by managing his time well and by working hard, he is able to earn extra income. He views his work catching prawns more as a hobby than a job—he likes rowing his boat and enjoying the scenery.

Ms. Chandran would agree, for during her drive to Kampung Chenderong Kelubi, she noticed the lush green scenery along with the oil palm plantations. One might suspect that these Semai are far enough removed, both in space and time, from a forest-based existence that some of the traditions still held by the people in the hills 20 miles to the east may no longer mean as much to them.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Semai Women Making Progress

Ju/hoan Man Appointed to Government Position

The Popularity of Redshirts [journal article review]

Hutterite Innovations and Commitments

Resettlement Plans for the Malapandaram

Hard Hats for Amish Workers

Nunavimmiut Face the Future

Searching for Life in the Kalahari

Designs for Energy Efficiency

Oil Palm Prosperity

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