Peaceful Societies

The economic situations of two separate groups of Yanadi were described in starkly differing terms last week, as one community has been suffering extreme privation while the other is beginning to prosper.

A news report in The Hindu described a group of 16 bonded Yanadi laborers, people who, with their families, had been held in servitude for decades by unscrupulous upper caste people. The news report does not name the caste or family who “owned” the laboring people. Several NGO representatives reported the situation to local government officials in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh, and the local official ordered an immediate inspection of the remote Yanadi village.

Representatives for the two NGOs involved, the International Justice Mission and the Association for Rural Development, found that the laborers, including children, were required to work 18 hours per day, 6 a.m. to midnight. They had to walk into forests and collect branches to be sold by their owners. They were forced to produce bundles of the branches amounting to hundreds of kilos every day. For their work they were paid Rs.500 (US$8.00) every two weeks, far below a living wage.

The victims reported that even children as young as eight years old, who were born into bondage, were forced to gather the sticks. They had never attended school. One child was afflicted with seizures, so the family was pushed further into debt in order to pay for the child’s hospital care.

The NGOs discovered the situation and, upon further inquiry, they were told that some of the laborers had been loaned Rs.13,000 in 1994 and had become bonded laborers as a result of those debts. The man who had originally lent the money later sold the laborers to the recent owners. Those people would not permit the Yanadi to leave the premises or to work for others. On occasions when men were permitted to return to their native villages, they could only do so if they would leave behind family members who would serve as collateral.

Abishek Joseph, the team leader for the International Justice Mission, reported on a conversation with a Yanadi. “I talked to a man in his twenties who said his family came there when he was only a small boy. I cannot imagine what it is like to grow up like that, but at least now his kids won’t have to.”

As a result of the intervention by the NGO staff members, the government officials issued release certificates for the 16 indentured Yanadi, which entitle them to Rs. 1,000 each for support. An additional three children and their families were also rescued from the situation.

The Hindu has also covered the implementation of an innovative program from India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP), an effort which was designed to help poor tribal people become more successful in agricultural endeavors. The agency began what it called the “Maa Thota” program in a rural AP village in May 2011.

According to a news story at the time, the project would ultimately benefit 30,000 tribal families over the course of seven years. The point of the effort was to provide agricultural facilities and training for the tribal farmers. It also assisted in bee keeping, dairy production, and various kinds of horticultural efforts.

Another report in The Hindu just two months ago about Maa Thota indicated that it has already improved the lives of 2,100 tribal families in AP, many of whom live in infertile, hilly areas of the state. The newspaper reported on the training given to tribal people on advanced technologies that would foster higher yields from their crops. Some of the farmers were reporting up to Rs.30,000 (nearly US$500) income per year from growing vegetables, amla fruits, cashews, and bananas.

Finally, a news report last week described the successes of the Maa Thota program among some Yanadi farmers in the Chittoor District of the state. A Yanadi man named Doraswami is described by the reporter as proudly owning, along with 50 other Yanadi families, a successful orchard of mangos and amlas, developed with the assistance of the program.

Doraswami worked as a contract laborer for 20 years in various places but he finally sold everything he owned in order to buy a few acres of land and settle in the village of Thimmayagaripalli in 2007. Along with the other Yanadi in the new settlement, he tried to cultivate land around the community, but he failed. However, in 2008, he planted 43 mango and 44 amla trees on his acre and began to investigate more advanced horticultural techniques.

Officials representing the Maa Thota program offered their assistance in 2009, if the 54 families were willing to pool their labor and work as a team, raising one acre of crops per family. They bored four holes for water and the program provided the mango and amla plants for the entire community orchard. They also planted, on the edges of the orchard, agave, teak, seethaphal, and curry leaf plants. According to the reporter, out of 60 Yanadi farming families now, 50 of them have half an acre of mangos and half an acre of amlas.

However, as the plants are getting to the point where they are starting to produce fruits, the Yanadi are becoming worried about the fact that there is no road to their orchard. Their concern is that they are expecting to harvest 50 to 60 tons of fruit this season. They are asking officials to develop a 1 km road into the orchard so they can transport their produce to markets. They are also requesting electric power for their four bore holes so they can upgrade their water sources from hand pumps to a better, drip irrigation system.

Doraswami has evidently led the local Yanadi people into accepting and developing this new orchard, and he and his wife have been recognized for their successes.

El Universal, a major Venezuelan newspaper, published a feature last week on the reasons for the recent disruptions and threats to the Piaroa people south of the Orinoco River. The major reason, according to the paper, is coltan, which is now being mined in the area.

“Coltan” is short for columbite-tantalite, a scarce mineral ore which produces the elements niobium and tantalum. The tantalum derived from coltan is used in the manufacture of tantalum capacitors, which manufacturers include in cell phones and other electronic devices. For years, the mining of coltan in the northeastern D.R. Congo has fostered warfare among various armed factions—violence which has seriously affected the people of the Ituri Forest region, including the Mbuti.

The Wikipedia article on coltan refers to the recent patterns of violence in the DRC as an example of a “resource curse,” a term suggesting that rich resources can produce poverty, corruption, and civil wars in areas where the riches are mined. It appears from the El Universal article as if this “resource curse” is also developing in Venezuela in the coltan mining region.

Alvaro Rotondaro, the owner of a large farming operation located about 180 km south of the town of Caicara del Orinoco, in Bolivar state, near the border with the state of Amazonas and on the northern edge of the traditional Piaroa territory, alleged that the illegal smuggling of coltan is fostering the presence of armed men in his area. He said that they are members of the Colombian guerilla group FARC, which has almost completely taken over control of the region.

The illegal mining operations employ Piaroa youths to transport the coltan ore by motorbikes to urban centers such as Puerto Carreno on the left bank of the Orinoco in Colombia, where it is purchased by buyers. This activity conflicts with the harmonious ecotourism that the Piaroa communities are trying to develop in their beautiful region, El Universal states. The mining is also causing serious harm to the natural environment around the indigenous villages.

Sr. Rotondaro says that protests have been lodged with appropriate government agencies, but so far nothing has been done to protect agricultural producers such as himself or the Piaroa communities. The newspaper writes that this situation has been repeatedly denounced by the Piaroa and other indigenous organizations. Stories carried by this website in July and November 2013 have described these developments. More recently, Piaroa women publicly protested the increase in violence in and around their villages caused by the mining and the armed guerillas.

El Universal quoted from a Piaroa statement published on May 15, 2013, which indicated their unequivocal opposition to the illegal mining and the presence of the FARC fighters. In their document, they clearly defined themselves as a people without arms and as a peaceful society (“tradicionalmente y ancestralmente somos pueblos sin armamentos y pueblos pacíficos”).

Education is the best way to prevent child trafficking in Rural Thailand, argues Mickey Choothesa, the founder of the anti-trafficking group Children of Southeast Asia (COSA). In an article published last week in the online magazine Vice.com, Mickey points out that he devotes himself to saving one kid at a time, day by day, village by village. “I may help one girl,” he tells the journalist, “but that girl could go on to educate and save more.”

The journalist preparing the news report for Vice.com, Adam Ramsey, traveled to rural Northern Thailand to visit Baan Thatafang, an extremely remote village in Mae Hong Son province that is quite difficult to reach. It is located on the Salween River across from Burma. Trafficking in this area has become a serious problem, especially among the Karen people. The point of the news report was to investigate the issue.

The writer, basing his information on interviews with NGO officials, teachers, police, and authority figures, concludes that trafficking is rife among the hill tribes of Rural Thailand because many of the people do not have legal identity cards. He writes that there are approximately one million ethnic minority people living in rural North and West Thailand, and officials estimate that about 50 percent of them do not have any forms of identification.

They often live in informal, shifting village conditions, subsisting on swidden agriculture. The people without any identity documents are not allowed to legally own land, travel freely, work outside their own provinces, access medical care from the state, gain legal marriage licenses or school certificates, or have the right to vote. They are often desperate people, for whom selling themselves, or their children, to traffickers appears to be a viable way of improving their lives.

Mickey Choothesa explains to the author that his group tries to protect vulnerable girls who come from communities that are attractive to traffickers. Rather than rescuing girls, he tries, with the approval of their parents, to take them to his shelter, get identity papers for them, and prepare them for viable futures. “Usually, if they have opportunities to stay at school, a strong community base, or any other opportunities really, you find that they will not get mixed up with trafficking,” he says.

At its base in the Northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, COSA not only maintains a large shelter, it also provides outreach programs for the hill tribes, school bus services to remote villages, and educational opportunities. The girls live at the shelter and attend schools nearby. Asked how he identifies children that are at risk of being trafficked, he points out two girls whose mother is a sex worker. The girls lived at home and had never attended school. They were thus at a high risk of being trafficked, so he took them into his shelter.

Phensiri Pansiri, the program office for another Thai anti-trafficking group, says that it is essential for the NGOs to work closely with the Thai authorities about trafficking issues, a perception that Mickey agrees with. They both recognize the risk that some officials or police may be corrupt and in the pay of the traffickers, so they must be careful with whom they speak and how much information they share.

Pansiri told the journalist, “we have had times before where we have given details to some police and the details were leaked. Then you know that person cannot be trusted.” Mickey adds that there is lot of corruption, because there is a lot of money involved with human trafficking. They both feel strongly about the importance of working with the authorities, however.

When Mr. Ramsey, the journalist, accompanies Mickey and a police official, Captain Pauridet, whom they do trust, in the trip to Baan Thatafang, they visit a local primary school. A couple 13-year old girls, Karen sisters, are shy and hesitating in their responses to questions. Mickey tells the journalist that he will be meeting with their parents the following week to see if they will be allowed to come to the COSA shelter. “It’s just not safe for them at their homes now,” he explains.

Outin, a teacher at the school, tells the writer about the important work of the NGOs in helping to get children registered. But a huge number remain unregistered, she says. She is quite aware of the crime of human trafficking and she adds that, in different ways, a majority of the children are vulnerable to it. The only solution is for them to gain legal IDs and then to go on to high school.

Donald Kraybill, famed expert on the Amish, announced last week that he will retire as of the end of June from his positions at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He has taught college classes and has served as Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at the college. He will continue to pursue his research on the Amish from his home in the community of Elizabethtown.

Donald Kraybill

An article in Lancasteronline.com described Kraybill’s relations with the Amish and the many highlights of his academic career. He grew up in a Mennonite family on a farm in Lancaster County. As a young man, he worked as a research assistant to John Hostetler at Temple University in Philadelphia. Hostetler was one of the leading authorities on the Amish before Kraybill.

Kraybill gained notice as an expert on the Amish when the 1985 movie “Witness,” filmed in large part in Lancaster County, was released. He received many requests from media representatives about how the Amish reacted to the movie. He personally thought it tried to give a sensitive portrayal of Amish society, but many local plain people resented the fact that the leading actress, Kelly McGillis, had spent a week living with an Amish family under false pretenses. She had not been honest with her hosts by telling them she was going to have a leading role in a movie, and when they found out later, they resented her deception.

Kraybill’s book The Riddle of Amish Culture, published in 1989, became a standard reference source on the society. That same year, the Young Center opened its new building on the Elizabethtown campus, with Kraybill as its director. He has continued to turn out scholarly books about the Amish in rapid succession ever since then.

In October 2006, when a gunman opened fire in a one-room Amish schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, in Lancaster County, Kraybill and others at the Young Center worked hard to keep up with calls from the news media around the world. Kraybill, of course, using the trust he had gained from the Amish community, could serve as a spokesperson for them as well as an interpreter of their views to the outside world. The Amish parents of the slain children trusted him to convey to the news media one of the essential tenets of their belief system, the importance of forgiveness, in this case for the murderer and his family—a message that inspired the world.

Six years later, a much more negative, but also widely publicized, news story about the Amish occurred in Bergholz, Ohio, when a renegade sect attacked dissident members of their group by forcefully cutting their hair and beards. Kraybill once again was called upon as an expert on the Amish. “I see Nickel Mines as a story of the best of Amish belief and faithful to the highest virtues. I see the renegade Bergholz Amish as the negative side,” Kraybill told the reporter last week.

Kraybill also reacted to the hype about the so-called reality television show “Amish Mafia.” While many people in the Lancaster area are appalled by the false images that the show creates, Kraybill has a different take on it. According to him, the program serves to show the Amish themselves “how foolish and crazy the outside world really is.”

Lancasteronline quotes numerous people who have nothing but praise for the scholarship and integrity of the retiree. Sam Stoltzfus, an historian and owner of a machine shop in Gordonville—who is, himself, an Amish man—said that he has always trusted Kraybill. “He was sensitive and he was also sympathetic. He just knew how to put it in words,” Stoltzfus said.

Other scholars of the Plain People also praised Kraybill to the news service. Jeff Bach, who is currently the director of the Young Center, said that Kraybill has gained his amazing access to the Amish due to his integrity. The Amish people respect him because he is able to understand the complex forces that guide Amish thinking—the ways they change, yet their various reasons for sometimes not changing.

Karen Johnson-Weiner, a co-author of books with Kraybill and herself an expert on the society, said that he effectively serves Amish interests because he translates their culture so well to the “English”—the rest of the people of North America. He saves the Amish from being invaded by the press, and he fosters an interest in their society. Steven Nolt, another collaborator with Kraybill, praises his colleague for being sensitive and not idealizing or sentimentalizing the Amish.

The reporter quotes Kraybill as saying he does not see himself as an advocate for the Amish or as their protector. As a result of his face-to-face visiting with them, he says he has learned to really understand them well. “I see my vocational responsibility to try to interpret their beliefs and practices with sympathetic understanding of what they do, why they do it and try to explain it in truthful fashion without sensationalism and hyperbole.”

According to the article, Kraybill has so far authored or co-authored 28 books on the religion, culture, economy, and society of the Amish.

A scholarly analysis of a 2004 French Polynesian novel suggests that there are different ways of understanding the history and culture of the Tahitians, especially in contrast to those of the French colonizers. The scholars, Andrew Cowell and Maureen DeNino, appear to suggest that the novel Hutu Pāinu: Tahiti, Racines et Déchirements by Marie-Claude Teissier-Landgraf may represent, at least broadly, the relationship of Tahitian culture with French colonialism.

Hutu_Painu1 The opening of Hutu Pāinu describes the arrival in Tahiti of a young girl, Sophie, with her French mother, Amélie, on a ship from war-torn France immediately after World War II. They have come to Polynesia to be with the girl’s Tahitian father. Contrasts between the cultures of France and of Tahiti quickly become apparent in the different ways the major characters understand humanity.

One difference between the Tahitians and the French is in their perceptions of smells, sights, sounds, bodily functions, and sexuality. The novel privileges the sense of smell, the scholars argue. It represents a more Polynesian approach than a French one: the sense of smell has a higher priority to the Tahitians and a lower value to the French, with their more orderly, logical, European way of thinking that places the highest values on sight and sound.

To many Europeans in the 19th century, the sense of smell became associated not only with perfumes and flower gardens, but also with bodily and sexual functions, and beyond that with animals and savages. Smells came to be associated with the lower classes, assaultive and difficult to control, undesirable—threats to the established social and aesthetic order.

But Tahiti was different to the Europeans, who thought of it as a fragrant, floral paradise. The Tahitians themselves place a very high value on the sense of smell, according to the two authors—it is arguably their most highly valued sense. In essence, while there has been a denigration of the sense of smell by Europeans, in French Polynesia, people privilege it.

As Sophie explores the island and grows older, she is frequently confronted with the fragrant and the foul—idyllic lagoons and awful-smelling places in Pape’ete, the capital city. Sophie is only filled with wonder, even at the less than desirable spots: she is not repulsed by them. Her reactions contrast with those of her French mother, who has a strong desire for sanitation. In essence, the character of Sophie suggests a Tahitian openness to sensual experiences, in contrast to the European prudery and control of her mother. Sophie wants to explore the experiences of all the senses and she seems to reject European values.

The neighborhood in Pape’ete where Sophie and her parents settle is filled with unpleasantly loud noises and onslaughts of odors, but Sophie is enthralled by the spectacle, even with those smells and sounds that her mother finds offensive. The vocabulary in the novel suggests the invasive, even the violent, nature of those smells and sounds, but the descriptions also draw attention to the variety and the contrasts. Sophie’s reactions to the sensual onslaughts range from curiosity to wonder and amazement.

But the novel does not really posit clear contradictions. Instead, as a chapter on a July 14th festival shows, boundaries are blurred and distinctions are not crystal clear. Cowell and DeNino write that the July 14th chapter describes a multitude of sensual experiences that echo one another, as they range from delightful to disgusting. The Tahitian senses, at least in this novel, are extremely unstable, ephemeral, and mobile. They merge and confuse, defying any simple categorization or organization. The senses of the festival are highly invasive into the human body.

While Sophie may be delighted by it all, her French mother is tormented. She, and the Catholic school that the girl attends, represent the French social and religious powers in Tahiti that have a hard time dealing with these overwhelming sensations. They attempt to block Sophie’s interests in Tahitian sensory experiences. Every time she transgresses their barriers, they punish her. Her mother would like her to be a proper French girl, but she cannot get her daughter to abandon her interests in the smells of Pape’ete. The girl rejects proper, respectable, odorless French culture and asserts “a positive, Tahitian, olfactory identity (p.123).”

According to the authors, a broader view of the novel is that it examines the utopian view of Tahiti in the Western imagination. Ever since the French captain Baron de Bougainville stopped there in 1768, Europeans have imagined Tahiti as a place where nubile young women swim out to European boats and eagerly offer themselves to sex-starved sailors.

Cowell and DeNino argue that, of all the places that Europeans colonized, Tahiti and French Polynesia became identified with sexual liberty. If the roles of colonizers, in other places, were to suppress violence, ignorance, or disease, in French Polynesia the role of Europeans, especially the French Catholic missionaries and officials, was to suppress sexuality.

The novel makes the contrasts between French civilization and Tahitian culture quite clear. The French feel that the Tahitians should progress from their lower state of civilization to the higher one represented by themselves. They should abandon their more primitive practices, such as bathing naked, speaking in a local dialect, using traditional, indigenous medicines, blowing their noses with their fingers, and dancing provocatively.

Sophie longs, in fact, for the music and dance of the Tahitians, and the smells and touches of people. She associates touch with pleasure, love, and happiness as expressed by a series of contacts with Tahitian women. In contrast, her mother represents denial and harshness.

Sophie’s struggle to be free of her mother’s controlling influence suggests the struggle of women in Tahiti to escape from the domination and definitions made by Frenchmen, such as the successors of Bougainville. The arrival in Tahiti of Sophie, who is of course herself half Tahitian, parodies the arrival 250 years earlier of European discoverers. Like the French, she explores and discovers, but in a non-acquisitive, non-judgmental fashion.

Cowell, Andrew and Maureen DeNino. 2013. “Reading Tahitian Francophone Literature: The Challenge of Scent and Perfume.” International Journal of Francophone Studies 16 (1&2): 113-133

India has three national holidays, one of which, Republic Day, is celebrated every year to mark the date on which the national constitution came into effect, January 26, 1950. The primary focus of the nation’s annual celebration is a Republic Day parade, held along a major avenue in New Delhi.

The Prime Minister lays a floral wreath at a monument to India’s unknown soldiers, military units march past the dais where all the dignitaries sit, and a variety of floats go past, prepared at considerable expense and trouble by selected states and union territories around the nation. The festive air of the grand parade is augmented by presentations of the social and economic activities of the vast country. For instance, the Border Security Force, with its camel-mounted band and troops, are a regular highlight of the event.

Each year a different chief of state is invited to be present as Chief Guest, and this year for the first time, on Monday last week, a U.S. President, Barrack Obama, was on the viewing stand with India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Despite the rain and drizzle that day, the camel corps was resplendent in its gay, floral decorations. President and Mrs. Obama, other members of the U.S. delegation, and many Indian dignitaries enjoyed the floats which were paying tribute to the different cultures and traditions of India.

According to one news report, Sikkim was invited this year to participate, and the state chose to base its presentation primarily on cardamom production, especially by the Lepchas. The theme chosen by the state for its float was “Cultivation of Large Cardamom in Sikkim.”

The tableaux on the float portrayed the cultivation of a cardamom field, with a traditional Lepcha house in the background. It also portrayed the drying of the cardamom so it would be ready to market. In the foreground, a statue of a Lepcha lady showed her carrying a basket with a ripe cardamom in it.

The Nepalese and Bhutia communities in Sikkim also cultivate cardamom, so ten living representatives of all three groups were included on the float, each dressed in their native costumes. In addition, 34 Lepcha dancers, both men and women, performed traditional dances on the float for the crowds, the television networks, and the dignitaries on the main platform.

According to a recent study by Kumar et al. (2015), cardamom has, for many years, been the most important cash crop of the Lepchas, though they also grow rice, millet, maize, buckwheat, wheat, vegetables, and pulses. Around their homes they grow sugarcane, yams, sweet potatoes, garlic, cucumbers, beans, chilies, and ginger. Lepcha farmers also raise livestock.

But in recent years, the authors write, the cultivation of cardamom has been declining and the production of ginger, another spice, has been taking its place. Nevertheless, “both the crops play a vital role in the state economy in terms of direct and indirect employment and income generation (p.37).” The research project by Kumar et al. consisted of surveying 100 farmers in five villages in the Dzongu Region to determine the extent of their knowledge of farming techniques and the constraints on their crop production of cardamom and ginger, such as insect and disease dangers, problems with seeds, and the like.

Kumar, Ashok, Gopal Shukla, Nazir A. Pala and Sumit Chakravarty. 2015. “Knowledge Intensity and Problem in Ginger and Large Cardamom Production Technology of Lepcha Tribes in Dzongu Region of Sikkim.” In Innovative Horticulture: Concepts for Sustainable Development: Recent Trends, Edited by Partha Sarathi Munsi, Swapan Kr. Ghosh, Nilesh Bhowmick and Prahlad Deb, p. 37-41. New Delhi: New Delhi Publishers.

Tensions in Ladakh over the fact that Muslims are producing more babies than Buddhists bubbled to the surface once again last week. The Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) sent a letter to the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, plus other officials protesting what it calls a “love jihad” by Muslims.

A journal article by Sara H. Smith, reviewed in 2014, pointed out that interfaith marriages in Ladakh had historically been permissible by both communities. In such unions, Buddhist and Muslim men and women adhered to their own faiths, yet they cherished the harmony of the overall Ladakhi community as they attended each other’s sacred festivals and respected their differing traditions. However, the interfaith harmony was severely challenged by strife and violence in the late 1980s, and groups such as the LBA have forbidden such marriages since then.

An earlier article, also by Smith, described how the fanaticism of Ladakhi religious leaders, especially the LBA, was leading them to not only try and prevent interfaith marriages, but also to try and discourage Buddhist women from making their own decisions on the sizes of their families. The LBA made it seem like a sacred duty for Buddhist women to marry Buddhist men, and to then produce more and more babies.

The most recent letter from the LBA was described in a news article last week published by Rising Kashmir, a major daily newspaper in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The letter restated the LBA position—their absolute opposition to interfaith marriages: “Buddhist girls have been lured by [the] Sunni Muslim community in Zanskar forcing them to embrace Islam. Young girls are being lured by Muslim boys to marry and [then they] finally convert them to Islam,” the LBA wrote.

Zanskar, a subdivision of the Kargil District, is composed of Sunni Muslims and Buddhists. The people living in the rest of Kargil are mostly Shia Muslims, while the Leh District is predominantly Buddhist with a minority of Muslims. The LBA letter claimed that Muslim activities had converted some Buddhists to Islam, “which ignited resentment and anger among the Buddhist community all over Ladakh.”

The letter described specific incidents late in 2014 and early in 2015 in which Buddhist females were lured away from their families by Muslims. The LBA appealed to Prime Minister Modi to intervene. As yet, it said, no arrests had been made.

The letter, signed by Sonam Dawa, the General Secretary of the LBA, warned that serious intercommunity tensions would be the result if the situation is not stopped, and government officials would be at fault. For their part, Ladakhi Muslims are denying that they are perpetrating any forceful conversions. Representatives of their community protest that the Buddhists are the ones who are enforcing a social boycott against them.

Ghulam Rasool, a retired Muslim official, said that Muslims form only a minority in the Zanskar region, and they have no reason to try and convert anyone. He admitted that some Muslim and Buddhist young people do marry one another, but he asked the obvious question: “so what role does the whole community play in it?” He concluded that the social boycott is basically at fault, and if individuals convert from one faith to another, isn’t that their own, private business?

The Rising Kashmir journalist, Rahiba Parveen, did not indicate if she made any attempt to find out how the LBA letter was viewed by Prime Minister Modi, but she did contact the local Member of Parliament, Thupstan Chhewang. He said that these issues have been brought to his attention. He mentioned that 20 to 24 families had been converted a couple years ago. “Ladakh has been very peaceful but such isolated incident[s] could lead to tension,” he said.

The San living in the desert of Botswana are still strongly attached to the land, Daniel Koehler wrote last week, a value which they hope their children will embrace. Koehler is one of five grantees chosen from a field of 864 people who applied for a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship. He is living with the San and writing about his experiences in a series of blog posts.

His project is to prepare a documentary film about the social and cultural adjustments that the San people—the G/wi and the G//ana—are making in New Xade, one of the resettlement camps located near the town of Ghanzi in the Ghanzi District of western Botswana. He is comparing their new lives with their former subsistence lifestyle in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), where now only a few of them are able to subsist. His first four blog posts describe his project and his adventures in Botswana so far.

In the first one, dated October 16, 2014, Koehler introduces himself, his project, and the San people. He spent the early years of his life in Uganda, got an education at Elon University in North Carolina, and has focused on documentary filmmaking as a career. He took an interest in the way the Botswana government removed the San people from the CKGR starting in 1997. During his projected nine-month stay, he intends to prepare a film that will explore how the resettlement has affected the cultural identity of the affected people.

He rejects any romantic image of the San people as helpless victims of government oppression. Those kinds of portrayals “deny the San their agency,” he writes, and they overlook the possible long-term intent of the Botswana government to provide a viable future for its minority citizens. He intends in his film to address such questions as how much the San traditions can be adaptable to the processes of modern life. What identities do the San have for themselves? How do they see their futures? How can government policies support their senses of identity? He intends to produce what he calls a character study film, focusing on the lives of individuals, whom he will observe and interview for the final product.

In his second blog post on November 6, 2014, Koehler describes his long trip to Gaborone and his introductions to some San people in the capital of Botswana. He meets Ketelelo, a San man who attributes his own advancing career to the resettlement of his family in New Xade. He was afforded the opportunity, in the resettlement village, of going to school and he proved to be an apt pupil. He then graduated at the top of his class in the town of Ghanzi, and won a scholarship to a major institution of higher learning in Gaborone.

His future seems promising. “If resettlement hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now,” Ketelelo tells the author. Koehler plans to focus his camera on him in order to allow him to share some of his experiences and thoughts with viewers.

In the third blog post of December 8, Koehler briefly describes filming Ketelelo on his campus, and then his drive across the desert to Ghanzi. There he met Kuela Kiema, a San man who has gotten an education and become a published author. He is working to promote instruction in New Xade in the indigenous languages—G//ana and G/ui (or G/wi)—rather than in Setswana, the nation’s national language.

Koehler describes New Xade as a village mixed with traditional and modern living facilities—modern cement buildings and beehive-shaped huts. He quickly got permission from village elders to work on his filming project in the community. He writes that he was attending a traditional dance when he noticed a young man texting on his cell phone. He explains that the nexus of his project is to find out if there is a distinction between the opportunities and the mechanisms of daily life and the deeper issues of cultural identity.

The filmmaker can only upload entries to his blog when he ventures out to larger communities with Internet access, so his fourth post was delayed until last week, January 20. He indicates he plans to write a lot more about New Xade, but he devoted much of his most recent post to a description of a trip into the CKGR, to a small village named Metsiamanong, where a handful of San live without modern facilities—without even running water. These are people who were allowed to return to their former desert homes after the landmark victory of the San in a court case against the government in 2006.

He writes that, unlike New Xade, Metsiamanong has no food shops and no charitable food baskets. The people keep small livestock such as goats, which they supplement with other food sources in order to survive. They use rainwater for drinking and melons for liquid when the water runs dry—as it often does. However, even there, the people are not completely cut off from modernity—they have flashlights, vehicles, and modern clothing.

But more importantly, the San living in the CKGR are firmly connected to the earth they live on, a way of life they wish to continue despite the obvious reality that it is becoming less and less likely. Koehler writes evocatively that they fervently hope their children will be able to “strike a balance” between modernity and tradition, and that the younger generation will wish to go on living in the place of their ancestors.

In Metsiamanong, Koehler met Kitsiso, a young man who moved back to the CKGR to help his father live in the desert. Kitsiso loves the land but he also is pulled by a desire to have a job and to participate in the economy of modern Botswana. He believes that there is more to life than desert subsistence.

Kitsiso’s father is not so ambivalent. “I want my children to live here,” he tells the author. “Every time Kitsiso leaves, I feel a pain. Every time, I wonder if he’s going to come back.”

In December 2006 the government of India passed landmark legislation that recognized the rights of traditional societies to continue to subsist in the forests. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, usually referred to simply as the Forest Rights Act of 2006, came into effect on January 1, 2008.

A news story posted on the website of WWF-India last week describes how that NGO has been working since 2007 with the Kadar and with the Vazhachal Forest Davison (VFD) in India’s Kerala state to help the tribal people protect their forests and their rights to traditional Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP).

The unsigned news story eloquently describes the fact that the mountainous region in which the Kadar live includes “some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes filled with waterfalls and deciduous as well as evergreen forests, which are home to hornbills, elephants and over 200 animal species.” The Vazhachal Forest Division helps protect both the Parambikulam and the Annamalai Tiger Reserves.

Roughly 850 Kadar live in colonies within the VFD, into which they were resettled some 50 years ago. WWF-India argues that, since the Kadar still depend on forest resources for many of their needs, conservation work is essential for their own livelihoods as well as for the health of the ecosystem.

The news release indicates that the Kadar have never been agriculturalists. They depend on Non-Timber Forest Resources such as bees wax, honey, tubers, and fish from the rivers for their subsistence. A recent journal article discussed the importance of the NTFPs for the Kadar. They are, themselves, aware of the dangers of overuse of the resources, and are eager to learn how to better preserve them for their future generations. Furthermore, the Kadar are interested in learning to use technologies that will help them preserve the forest environment.

Because the Kadar are highly knowledgeable about the native flora, especially the uses of medicinal plant species, outsiders realized that they could effectively monitor the health of forest plants. Their expertise could lead to better understanding of the impacts of NTFP harvesting on the long-term protection of the forests.

In the beginning, WWF-India conducted data collection activities with the Kadar to investigate their dependency on forest resources. The NGO also wanted to determine the socio-economic status of the nine Kadar communities in the VFD. WWF conducted meetings in the tribal settlements to share information about the best, most sustainable, ways to use forest resources, as well as strategies for preserving the ecological integrity of the region.

Then, WWF initiated a process of community mobilization that encouraged the Kadar to map the forest resources. As a follow up, administrators overlaid the maps to identify collection and depletion areas. That process promoted inter-community dialogs, so the tribal peoples themselves could decide on ways to correctly harvest resources that would give them maximum long-term sustainability.

The WWF held what the news story refers to as “capacity-building workshops,” programs which sought, over the course of a year, to train 30 Kadar from the nine different colonies to do ecological monitoring. WWF also worked with the VFD in the use of modern technologies such as GPS equipment so forest officials and the Kadar could work together on appropriate conservation programs.

In 2012, all nine Kadar settlements filed claims for their Community Forest Rights, as provided for by the Forest Rights Act of 2006, a story which an earlier news report covered. All were subsequently approved by a district level committee. The titles for these forest rights were finally signed in January 2014 and distributed the next month, on February 26, to the Kadar communities by the Kerala Tribal Minister.

These new Community Forest Rights Kadar groups are, with the help of WFF-India, setting up coordinating mechanisms to ensure that the forest resources will continue to be monitored and used sustainably in the future.

I was delighted when Jody and her husband Mark sat down at our table at the Christmas Bird Count dinner on Saturday evening, December 20th. Before we had even started eating, Jody asked what I was doing during my retirement years, so I told her about peaceful societies and this website. She expressed interest and asked what observations I could make about them. I replied by quickly sharing some hasty generalizations.

Although talk in the banquet room among the other 25 birdwatchers from the local Audubon chapter focused mostly on red tails and winter wrens, I was hardly paying attention. I kept thinking that I needed to find better answers to Jody’s question. So I’ve spent the last month looking over a decade’s worth of news and reviews published in this website—well over a thousand stories at this point. I wanted to see what developments and changes have occurred among the 25 peaceful societies portrayed here. What generalizations could be safely made as of January 20, 2015?

The website was based on the best scholarly evidence available as of 2004. The News and Reviews feature was conceived as a way of keeping the website up to date and of providing a freshness that should help appeal to visitors. But the stories since this website opened to the public on January 20, 2005, have also added some new perspectives about the processes of building peacefulness.

One generalization that emerges from this month-long review is the fact that some of these societies are committed to developing better, more advanced schooling for their children. At the same time, they want to preserve the best of their own peaceful traditions. People want their kids to be able to make choices about the most important aspects of modernity available to them, yet to continue to value their own cultures. For example, several news reports described the development of some schools in a Buid community. It is a story about a commitment to both worlds.

A news report in 2006 referred to the death of a generous, elderly Buid farmer named Laki Iwan who had donated land so his community could build schools. The Buid got behind the project, the schools thrived, and the people came to realize that schooling was an excellent way to help them cope with the dominant Filipino people. Buid elders saw modern education as a key to the survival of their own way of life.

But the Buid also made sure that the school staff came from their own communities, or from the other Mangyan societies, the indigenous peoples of Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Everyone involved with the local schools emphasizes the importance of teaching the children the usual Western school subjects, but within the context of their traditional cultural values. There is nothing wrong with teaching the poems of Shakespeare, but the kids should also learn about their own love poetry, called ambahan, which is still sometimes written by the Buid themselves.

Another example would be the Ju/’hoansi, who have made a similar commitment to teaching their children about their own culture and traditions as well as the subjects of the modern world, such as math and Western languages. However, some of the peaceful societies, such as the Semai, have not been as fortunate, since states like Malaysia have been indifferent to the educational needs of the Orang Asli (indigenous) people. In other words, the news is not all positive, by any means.

News stories during the past decade point to the possibility that the processes of maintaining peacefulness themselves can change for some of these societies. A good example was a report in 2012 that discussed the beliefs of the Paliyan people, who are known for resisting aggression passively. They turn the other cheek when threatened, as one Paliyan man said, an approach that is clearly similar to that of nonresistant Christians such as the Amish and the Hutterites.

That passive nonresistance differs significantly from the active nonresistance, Satyagraha, which Gandhi advocated—marches, sit-ins, and the like. He considered passive nonresistance as a sign of weakness, while Satyagraha, in his view, was a better way of resisting oppression through shows of strength. But he probably didn’t know about the peaceful peoples of India such as the Paliyans.

That 2012 news story made it clear that Paliyan reactions to oppression by the dominant peoples of India—fleeing into the forests—were not necessarily the only courses of action open to them. Some Paliyans participated in a massive march by tribal peoples on New Delhi, protesting for their rights to fair treatment and for the lands that are due to them by law. Satyagraha. However, the active nonviolence of Satyagraha and the passive nonresistance of the Paliyans were not as widely different as Gandhi apparently thought.

It was now clear from that news, and the successful conclusion of the march a few days later, that Gandhi’s approach did work, at least to some degree, although one Paliyan woman was dismissive of the government’s promises. When they returned to their homes, the Paliyans could more easily move back and forth between both approaches to resisting oppression in order to improve their own situations.

The news stories have also highlighted an outstanding feature of many of the peaceful societies: a deeply-held respect for women and girls. This sense of respect appears to have strengthened in some of them over the past decade. A news story from 2012 reported that there are signs in both the Birhor and the Yanadi communities of eastern India that women and girls are highly valued, at least by many men and boys in their societies.

An even better example was provided by a news story about the situation of women in Ladakh compared to the rest of India. In most of the nation, they often act in a servile fashion toward men; in contrast, Ladakhi women are normally confident, self-possessed, and highly respected in their communities. But the reporter described the changes that are taking place.

Ladakhi women are forming self-help groups in their villages to advance their own issues and to protect their already reasonably secure positions. After completing household tasks each morning, women join the village self-help groups, where they make their own products to further increase their personal incomes. These self-help groups are assisting the women to keep up with changing economic forces that affect rural Ladakh, and in the process they are spreading awareness of much-needed improvements such as better sanitation and health practices. And, just as critically, they are helping the women maintain their confidence and self-respect.

The news and reviews over the past ten years have provided examples of an aversion for conflicts, and strategies for resolving them, that still characterize many of the peaceful societies. For instance, a news report from Southwestern Tanzania described a rural Fipa village where a farmer was impounding the cattle of neighbors when the animals wandered onto his fields. He was attempting to fine his neighbors for damages.

Instead of acting aggressively toward him, the community went to considerable lengths to avoid more trouble. They organized a conflict resolution meeting with a regional official to try and resolve the situation. Similarly, on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, the people reportedly retain to this day their historic aversion to conflicts and violence: crime is almost nonexistent among the Tristan Islanders.

The news reports have touched on issues that were not initially included in the 25 encyclopedia entries about the individual societies, though they are interesting nonetheless. A number of articles have covered the ties of these peoples with the land they live on, the forests they cherish, and the wildlife with which they share the earth. Some peaceful people are birdwatchers: many Amish in Ohio are enthusiastic about the hobby and a group of Kadar in southwestern India excel as field assistants in a hornbill research project.

However, the people in many of these societies must cope with threats to their existence from outside forces such as dam builders, loggers, government agencies, armed rebel insurgents, invaders, military units, and mining companies. News stories point out that some of those people are aware of the potential benefits of solar energy and the perils of global climate change.

The stories are not 100 percent hopeful or positive—some of them record acts of violence and the erosion of traditional beliefs and practices. But they are human societies after all, so imperfections can only be expected. The website and its updating news stories highlight what those 25 societies really are. How they used to be peaceful is important, but so are the ways that they are struggling to maintain their traditions and to cope with the changes that they see around them, or hear on their radios, or read about on their mobile devices.

If I see Jody at one of the Juniata Valley Audubon Society meetings this spring, or at next December’s CBC dinner, I will be prepared to provide a more thorough answer to her question. I’ll also remember to tell her about the help provided over the past ten years by the four academic reviewers for this website, Robert Knox Dentan, Douglas Fry, Dale Hess, and Leslie Sponsel, and the frequent assistance provided by our two technical consultants, Jeffrey Suydam and Matthew Albright, without whom the website could not exist. Of course, perhaps my half-formed answers back on December 20th were good enough for her, so we may confine our conversations to blue jays and bluebirds instead.

Bruce Bonta, Website Author and Administrator

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Yanadi Economic Tragedies and Successes

Coltan Mining Fosters Violence

Human Trafficking in Rural Thailand

Donald Kraybill to Retire

A French Polynesian Novel Portrays Tahitian Culture [journal article review]

Publicity for Lepcha Cardamom Crops

A Love Jihad in Ladakh

A New Blog about the G/wi

The Kadar Preserve their Forests

Some Peaceful People Are Birdwatchers [a tenth anniversary reflection]

Subscribe to our weekly digest

Subject Listing

Previous News and Reviews