Peaceful Societies

Forest officials in Madurai, in southern India, are preparing to include 16 Paliyan young people in a new eco-tourism venture in the mountains of western Tami Nadu state. According to a news report from the Times of India last week, the youths in the settlement of Kurinji, located about 27 miles west of the city near the Western Ghats, are being trained as trekking guides.

Forest Division officials have laid out three different trekking routes to scenic spots in the nearby mountains. One is to the Kutladampatti Falls 16 miles north of Madurai in the Sirumalai region, another is to Kiluvamalai near Natham, and the third is near Thottappanayakanur, a community close to their settlement. Nihar Ranjan, an official with the divisional forest, feels that with their experience hiking in these mountains, the young people will be well qualified to coordinate the trekking expeditions.

The recent plans fit in well with tribal development schemes and with a Tami Nadu biodiversity project. The new venture will also utilize the talents of physically disabled women who will prepare food packages for the trekkers. The department is planning to launch the project in February. Training began for the youths selected as eco-guides on Monday, January 5th. It focuses on techniques for leading and coordinating groups, interacting with tourists, and taking people out of the forests.

The fees collected from the trekkers will be used to pay the guides. Another news report, also by the Times of India, quotes V. Solairaja, a Paliyan youth who is the leader of the 16 trainees as saying, “We think this effort by [the] forest department will be of great help for us.”

When Ratni Birhor starved to death in her hut in September 2011, the story made headlines due to allegations of government neglect of the Birhor people. Last week, the Hindustan Times, a major English language daily newspaper in India, provided an update to the story.

An investigation in 2011 shortly after the woman died had concluded that she had not received government welfare rations for many months. The roof on her hut was leaking, her job card showed that she had not had any work, and she had not received any old-age pension support. The government had completely abandoned her.

Government officials in Jharkhand State, where her village, Tilra, is located, responded that reports in the media were incorrect—the woman had simply died of natural causes. She and her family had all received appropriate pension payments, they said. A subsequent investigation, however, pointed out that government agents had tried to circumvent the outcry by surreptitiously placing food grains in her hut in order to cover up the fact that she had, in fact, starved to death.

Abhishek Saha, a reporter for the Hindustan Times, visited Tilra a few weeks ago and found Ratni Birhor’s husband, Bhola Birhor, lying in his hut, paralyzed from a severe illness. He is 60. Saha writes that his condition reflects the Birhor as a whole: paralysis due to inattention. The cause, he suggests, is due to the fact that the former hunting and gathering people were forced to abandon that lifestyle and to settle into permanent communities. However, they have few skills with which to earn livelihoods and to adopt modern ways. They mostly subsist on welfare.

The journalist quotes Gopi Nath Ghosh, a human rights activist, who had led an investigation in Tilra of the passing of Ratni Birhor and had concluded that the her death “exposed the loopholes in the implementation of policies meant to benefit the vulnerable tribal groups.” He filed a complaint with an anti-corruption ombudsman agency in Jharkhand called the Lokayukta.

The Hindustan Times reports that the Lokayukta has recently acknowledged that government agencies had, indeed, fallen short in the implementation of policies that would benefit the Birhor in Tilra. It proposed the establishment of a committee to monitor the situation.

Saha was told by the Tilra Birhor that since Ratni’s death and the ensuing outcry, the supply of food grains and access to healthcare in the village has, in fact, been better. But they also pointed out that the houses built for them by the government had not really been kept up. Meena, a Birhor woman in the village, said, “many of the houses here do not have doors. We use clothes or tin sheets to cover the space provided for the door to shield ourselves from wind and rain.” Meena makes ropes for sale out of jute or used plastic bags.

Since new houses are not being built, older people in Tilra are moving out of their small block homes into what the journalist refers to as make-shift housing—essentially, temporary, decrepit shacks, in order to make room for younger family members in the more modern houses. The story in the Hindustan Times includes a couple pictures, one of which shows a shack for the older people and a more modern house near it. Government agents recently provided blankets for the villagers, but some of the Birhor asked how a family of ten could share one quilt.

Saha spoke with Ram Bopal Pandey, the development officer for the local block in which Tilra is located, about the situation. He replied that pensions are regularly paid to the villagers, and that blankets were distributed according to the sizes of families. He said he had not been notified by the Birhor that they had any problems with the doors on their huts.

Tupakula Munemma, the young Yanadi woman who made a big impression in India during an election campaign rally in Hyderabad in 2008, is back in the news again. Ms. Munemma gave a speech at a political convention in the fall of 2008; then she ran for a seat in the state legislature of Andhra Pradesh as a candidate representing a new political party headed by the film star Chiranjeevi.

Both were subsequently defeated, but Ms. Munemma has continued to develop a career as a leader in tribal and women’s rights issues. Ms. Munemma started a website in May 2011, but it has not been updated since August that year. A news story in 2012 reported how she was working with a human rights group to champion the poor Yanadi people who had been cheated out of parcels of land by the wealthy land barons of the state.

A news story last week describes her participation at an event held in December in Delhi called the “Women’s Parliament.” Ms. Munemma (her name was spelled “Monemma” in the recent news story) provided an update on her campaigns to improve the rights of women and girls, particularly in her native district of Nellore, in Andhra Pradesh.

She emphasized that she is anxious to promote the cause of women’s rights. “Too much time has been lost already” she said. “Women themselves are oblivious of their value and are mock spectators to the unfolding of their destinies. Even though I lost the Andhra Assembly election in 2009, by a narrow margin of 6,000 votes, I am committed to giving women a voice and unleashing their inner potential.”

She said that 25,000 Yanadi families in the Nellore District live under conditions of bondage. Furthermore, over 12,000 acres of land that should belong to them is held illegally by the wealthy land barons of the district, called “zamindaars” in the news report. She decried the fact that no one in the government is working to restore those lands to their rightful owners.

Ms. Munemma urged appropriate government officials in the labor and revenue departments to visit the Yanadi villages in Nellore in order to assess the situation for themselves and take actions to right the injustices. The journalist reporting on the Women’s Parliament writes that “there was a lot of passion, conviction and hope in her voice.

Ms. Munemma joined about 80 other women from throughout India as a delegate to the first Women’s Parliament. The purpose of the event was to empower the women’s movement in the country with a more active, physical voice, particularly with an approach that would suggest a firm political purpose. The movement that initiated the Women’s Parliament was focused initially on the child sex discrepancy in the nation, but it has since become an advocate for a broader range of issues in India that affect women and girls: child marriages, trafficking, domestic violence, physical attacks, female infanticide, and discrimination relating to land distribution. The news report indicates that there is some awareness of those issues in India, but not much firm action is being taken.

The Women’s Parliament was held in the national capital in order to demonstrate for the real parliamentarians issues that they should address. It was structured to resemble the real parliament, with mock government ministers, opposition members, and a Speaker chosen to preside. While rallies and boycotts for women’s rights have had their place in the Indian political and social scene, this mock parliament evidently had an impact.

The Women’s Parliament provided a venue for women such as Ms. Munemma to use their oratorical skills and articulate their issues effectively enough to gain the attention of the nation’s decision makers. Issues such as the access of Dalit (untouchable) women to land, equality of rights to property for women, participation of women in the political process, disability issues, social security, and many more were presented. For just one example of the existing situation in India, the lower house of the national parliament, the Lok Sabha, has 543 members, of whom only 11 percent are women.

In line with one of their age-old traditions, the Tristan Islanders helped out a Dutch sailor who limped into their harbor with his damaged yacht in mid-December.

Tristan2 According to Alex Mitham, the British Administrator of Tristan da Cunha, the homemade yacht named Way to Brisbane was sailing from the Netherlands to Australia when it ran into problems in the South Atlantic. It had last landed in Salvador, a city on the coast of Brazil, and was headed for Cape Town, South Africa. Piloted by Willem Klass Merten Van Rij, the sole occupant of the vessel, the yacht had a broken rudder, an engine that was not functioning, and some problems with its rigging.

The sailor wisely decided to seek shelter in the Tristan harbor. It arrived in Tristan waters on Friday, December 19th, at 11:00 in the morning. Despite the fact that it was “Break-Up Day,” the traditional beginning of the three-week holiday period, the Islanders quickly went out to rescue the sailor and his vessel. They towed it in and took the man to the island hospital so he’d have some time to recuperate.

Once he was well, the Islanders helped him repair his boat, gave him water, provisions, clothes, and a radio. They wished him well and sent him on his way to Cape Town. Mr. Mitham names, in his news report posted on the Tristan website on December 29th, 20 different Tristan Islanders who had assisted with the project, but he indicates that many others were involved.

For almost 200 years, the Islanders have frequently helped save people from shipwrecks, some of whom have stayed to become residents. Helping others has become a tradition in their community. As recently as 2005, the Islanders took in two men who had to abandon their yacht when it was broken up in the crashing surf. Even more recently, in March 2011, they hosted, temporarily in their community, sailors from a large commercial ship that had crashed in Tristan waters.

This January 1st, Mr. Mitham also posted an end of the year report on the website, the text of comments that he shared with the Islanders at their annual get together on December 31st. He described their accomplishments during 2014 and mentioned necessary projects they anticipate working on in 2015.

He briefly discussed work that has gotten under way to fence the Potato Patches, the principle farming area on the island that is located about one and one-half miles southwest of the Settlement. He told the Islanders that a joint venture with the Isle of Man to produce Tristan beer may generate some needed additional income for the island. He also said that Tristan is going to be exploring renewable energy possibilities with a pilot project in January, which he hopes will help reduce island expenses. A new hospital is in the planning stage for later in 2015.

Piaroa women, and their colleagues in surrounding communities, are becoming increasingly concerned about the violence that illegal miners and armed rebel gangs bring into their territories. The Organización de Mujeres Indígenas de Autana(OMIDA), a group based in the Amazonas State of Venezuela and composed primarily of Piaroa women, though with the support of females from neighboring indigenous groups, published on its website on December 14th a statement condemning violence.

The declaration by the women, prepared at the Second Assembly of the organization held in October, denounces the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which is operating in their territory. Quoting from the Google translation of their document, the women say, eloquently, that the armed gangs “hound and harass and threaten the wise elders, leaders and active members of indigenous organizations. These forms of violence undermine our right to a life free of violence and are acts that aim to silence our voices.”

The next paragraph is equally hard hitting. The Piaroa women denounce illegal miners, who are also operating in their territory. The miners are “using coercion, threats and intimidation as a tactic to generate fear and contribute to the displacement of indigenous communities.” The women urge indigenous females of all ages in the region to be alert to the possibilities of being captured and abused by the armed groups and the miners.

They warn specifically about the dangers of enforced prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies, and the other results of sexual violence to women and adolescent females. They express special concern for those living in areas near the illegal mining operations. They urge the Venezuelan government to investigate the situation.

The women not only decry the violence that these outsiders bring to their communities, they argue that their presence in Piaroa sacred places has an impact on their spiritual welfare.

To help control the situation, the women urge the government to reactivate the process of granting land titles to the Piaroa in their traditional territory. This will allow them to promote mechanisms for defending their sovereignty within the existing state structure. They ask the government to investigate the violence against indigenous women, teens, and girls. Finally, they propose that the government establish a committee composed of representatives of various agencies and organizations which should be charged with preparing an action plan to deal with the situation.

The statement garnered recognition in the press and among other organizations. The Venezuelan publication Gente de Hoy interviewed Betsy Arana, from OMIDA. She said that the organization arose out of concerns for indigenous women and their issues that are related to the struggles of the people.

She said that the organization, at its October assembly, discussed issues concerning indigenous lands, education, and health. But they agreed that contending with the illegal miners and the invading armed forces was their paramount issue. Their concerns prompted them to draft the resolution that Gente de Hoy reprints in its news story.

Survival International, the London-based tribal rights organization, issued its own statement on December 18th. The SI release cites not only the Piaroa but also other indigenous peoples in the forests of southern Venezuela who are highly concerned about the illegal mining and the FARC guerillas, and the havoc that those invaders are causing.

SI indicates that the Piaroa and the other peoples living fairly near the border with Colombia have been agitating about the situation for a while. A news report in 2013 reported on this story. SI writes that the activities of the armed gangs have now spread well beyond the border areas with Colombia into the indigenous territories of the Eñepa and Hoti peoples. So far, despite the continuing protests, government agencies have done nothing.

SI urges President Maduro to recognize the territories of the indigenous peoples, as the Venezuelan constitution provides, and to the take action to protect the tribal lands of the Piaroa and the others.

Five years ago, news stories cited Chewang Norphel for figuring out a smart way to preserve water for Ladakhi farmers, despite increasingly arid climate conditions in their region. The approach developed by the then 74-year old former civil engineer—building artificial glaciers in the high country in order to preserve water into the late spring for the farms below—was innovative for the time and received the support of the government.

In January 2010, over 200 villages in Ladakh were able to take water for springtime farming needs from the artificial glaciers they had built higher in the mountains. For the most effective results, they needed to be built above 4,000 meters in elevation, and they worked best if they were located in shady spots.

But according to an article published last week, the project was soon stopped due to “technical difficulties.” Sonam Wangchuk, another engineer and the founder of the SECMOL Alternative School, decided to address the problems that plagued Norphel’s artificial glaciers. Wangchuk had founded the Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) on a campus run entirely on solar and student power.

He observed that Mr. Norphell’s artificial glaciers were often hard for the villagers to reach, and the irrigation ditches built to carry the water down to the farms needed a lot of maintenance. When the ice melted in the spring as temperatures warmed, there was a risk of flooding.

According to a news report last week, Mr. Wangchuk noticed that ice did not melt nearly as rapidly when it was frozen into a conical shape, so less of the surface would be exposed to solar radiation. The artificial glaciers melted rapidly because the entire surface of ice was horizontal, and thus had maximum exposure to the sun.

He calculated that a cone of ice 20 meters wide and 40 meters high would store approximately 16 million liters of water. Wangchuk figured that a glacier two meters thick and storing the same amount of water would have a surface area five times as great as the cone—so it would melt five times faster. The cones of ice that he proposed would allow water to be frozen and stored right where it was going to be used later—near the villages.

Early in 2014, Wangchuk and some of his students built a 6-meter high prototype ice cone. The process was simple. They brought water down to a barren spot in the village via an underground pipe. With temperatures well below zero Celsius, the water froze quickly as it came out of the pipe (see photo). The first “ice stupa,” as the villagers called it because it resembled a Buddhist monument, lasted in the springtime heat until May 18th, when the temperature finally reached 30 degrees Celsius.

News of the success of the ice stupa spread through neighboring villages. A local Rinpoche blessed the work and hung traditional prayer flags from it. Wangchuk and his supporters founded the Ice Stupa Artificial Glacier Project in October 2014. They plan to erect five large ice stupas in Phyang, a large village with about 2,000 inhabitants, which will store enough water to irrigate 50 hectares of land next spring. Eventually, he says, he hopes to erect 80 large stupas to supply the spring water needs for the entire valley.

Wangchuk might have relied on the traditional Ladakhi means of volunteered village labor (see Pirie 2007, p. 46-48 for a description) to erect the ice stupas. Instead, he and his supporters have launched an Internet crowdfunding appeal on Indiegogo for funds to continue the development of the project.

By November, the team had laid 2.5 km of pipes, overtopped with reinforced concrete. At the present state of development, the water pipes at each stupa have to be manipulated manually, but Wangchuk wants to develop solar-powered machinery to automatically build the ice stupas. Evidently, the Rinpoche has become so committed to the ideas of alternative energy, he is working with another local NGO, Go Green Go Organic, to design a sustainable development project for the Phyang monastery itself.

An article published last week argues that the wedding customs of the Nubians living in New Halfa, a resettlement community in Eastern Sudan, are unchanging. The author, Abdalla Hassan Al-Haj, writing an essay for the magazine SudaNow published in Khartoum, which was reprinted in AllAfrica.com, asserts that the Sudanese Nubians are desperately trying to prevent their customs, social traditions, and language from dying out. They cling to their traditional wedding ceremonies as a way of preserving their cultural heritage.

This interpretation differs somewhat from an earlier, more scholarly, analysis of the marriage ceremonies of some Egyptian Nubians living at their resettlement camp to the north of Aswan. That analysis, written by Samiha al-Katsha and published in the book Nubian Ceremonial Life in 1978, describes the elaborate details of the wedding customs, and the ways they have changed, in a resettlement community called Kanuba.

Katsha argues that changes in the wedding customs practiced in the Egyptian resettlement community have occurred due to a secularization process, which opened up a willingness to accept outside stimuli and innovations. And perhaps more directly, the Egyptian Nubian resettlement camp is subject to the process of cultural borrowing. “New ideas were introduced from the cities and upper Egyptian towns, and they were quickly adopted,” Katsha writes (p.202). A news story in 2012 briefly reviewed the Egyptian Nubian customs, though without the detailed analysis that Katsha provides.

Last week’s article offers a useful Sudanese perspective. The author does admit that some changes are, in fact, occurring. Traditionally, the parents of a pre-pubescent boy would choose his bride, the daughter of another member of the extended family. This custom is abating, “as the winds of change [continue] to blow,” Hassan writes.

One of the differences among the various resettlement communities is the ancient Nubian ritual of applying henna as an integral part of the wedding ceremony. In New Halfa, the Sudanese Nubian community, the inner palms of the groom’s hands as well as his feet are painted with henna by his sisters and mother the evening before the wedding ceremony. This henna ritual is performed in the presence of close friends.

At the same time, in her house, female relatives of the bride cover her hands and feet with careful drawings made with henna. Unlike for the groom, the henna ritual for the bride is performed with only women and girls participating.

By 1978, when Katsha was preparing an analysis of the Kanuba wedding customs, the henna ritual was already starting to change. Henna was no longer the primary substance used for beautifying or adorning the bride and groom. Only symbolic touches of the substance were applied to the couple. Evidently, a Kanuba woman who had lived in an urban area substituted for the henna rituals at her own wedding some songs and a procession she had learned about. Weddings since then followed her example.

Brides in Kanuba began preferring to use cosmetics, substances that they felt were more modern and appropriate, instead of the henna. Also, grooms who had to go back to work didn’t want to appear on the job with their hands stained. In the traditional villages, they would not feel embarrassed by the decorations, as they would in mixed groups of Arab and Nubian workers.

Both articles, plus the news report from 2012, emphasize that the wedding ceremonies provide happiness to the Nubian people. In New Halfa, Hassan writes, the gatherings before the wedding ceremony “are meant to express happiness and to tell neighbouring villagers that a happy occasion is [imminent].” While wedding customs were clearly changing in Upper Egypt nearly 40 years ago, they appear to remain fairly traditional in Sudan.

Although Hassan’s article uses the present tense and it appears to be based on the Nubian resettlement community of New Halfa, it also refers, in its conclusion, to participants, at the Nubian weddings, processing to the River Nile, which in fact is over two hundred miles away. So it is not entirely clear how much the piece reflects the prevailing wedding customs at the Sudanese resettlement community and how much it reflects past practices. In any case, wedding ceremonies are still essential elements of Nubian society, however much they may or may not have changed.

A Philippine congressman from Northern Luzon, Representative Teddy Brawner Baguilat, Jr., has decided to champion the land rights of the Buid people of southern Mindoro Island. Mr. Baguilat, who represents the Ifugao Province, indicates on his Facebook page that he is, himself, an indigenous person, an environmental advocate, a believer in ethical, transparent government, and a champion of the rights of indigenous peoples.

He issued a press release last week, which was also picked up by a Philippine news service, about his latest effort to secure indigenous rights in his country. His action was to file a House Resolution seeking a congressional inquiry into the implementation of an agrarian reform project in the traditional territory of the Buid. The resolution requests the National Cultural Commission and the House Committee on Agrarian Reform to investigate abuses carried out under the auspices of an administrative department of the government, the Department of Agrarian Reform.

Evidently, land reform procedures were not followed correctly, and titles to lands traditionally used by the Buid were awarded to non-indigenous, lowland Filipino farmers. The deeds, called Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs), were established by Philippine law on June 10, 1988, Act No. 6657, which set up the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

The law sought to redistribute both public and private agricultural lands to landless farmers and farmworkers. Section 2 of the act provides for “a more equitable distribution and ownership of land, with due regard to the rights of landowners to just compensation and to the ecological needs of the nation.”

But the law also sought to protect from this process indigenous peoples. In Section 9, it states, in part, “The right of these [indigenous] communities to their ancestral lands shall be protected to ensure their economic, social and cultural well-being. In line with the principles of self-determination and autonomy, the systems of land ownership, land use, and the modes of settling land disputes of all these communities must be recognized and respected.”

It is clear from a previous news story, and from Rep. Baguilat’s bill last week, that the land rights of the Buid have not been “recognized and respected.” In 2004, the local office of the Department of Agrarian Reform had started distributing Buid lands to landless lowland farmers as part of the CARP program. The Buid protested—peacefully, or course. The distribution of their lands had been delayed due to a local insurgency, but it had been resumed in 2010. Hence the protests at that time.

The congressman said in his news release last week that in September 2010 Buid leaders filed a petition with the Department requesting it to cancel the distribution of the CLOAs, since the law prohibited that distribution within the ancestral territory of the Buid people. Rep. Baguilat indicated that the Secretary of the DAR, Gil Delos Reyes, issued an Administrative Order to streamline the process of cancelling the awards of the CLOAs in indigenous territories.

Baguilat wrote that, “for several years the Buhid Mangyans have remained patient and followed all the steps necessary for the proper determination of the merits of their claims.” He said, in his press release, that despite that administrative order, agency officials in the provincial offices have not taken action.

His conclusion could not have been written more strongly: “We should determine the efforts exerted by the DAR officials to protect and promote the rights of Buhid Mangyans who were unduly affected by the erroneous awards of CLOAS to non-indigenous persons in Oriental Mindoro.”

One of Thailand’s daily newspapers, The Nation, published a story last week about the Mechai Bamboo School, an innovative institution which is mostly run by the students. The students select the incoming applicants, hire the teachers, promote patterns of community service, and foster student enterprises. They are involved with such school business issues as purchases, procurements, and audits.

According to the article, the students do not pay any tuition. Instead, they and their parents—many of whom are local farm workers—pay by planting trees to help restore the natural environment of the community. The students and their parents also split half and half the responsibility of performing 800 hours of community service. The school is intended to serve as a model for education in Rural Thailand.

The Mechai Bamboo School, located in Buriram Province of northeastern Thailand, tries to be a lifelong learning center for all members of the community. Its curriculum includes not only the typical subjects taught to secondary level students but also practical, occupational programs such as water purification, preventive heath techniques, solar energy development, family planning, agricultural subjects, and information and communication technology.

Instruction in information technology is at the core of the curriculum. Careers in information and communications technology, people at the school believe, are the best ways to bridge the digital divide and to offer employment opportunities for rural people.

In order to achieve this aim, the Bamboo School has forged a partnership with Microsoft to provide Internet-based educational programs and to expose students to technological possibilities. Volunteers from the company instruct the teachers and students in uses of their software so they can share their work in the cloud and expand the horizons of participants beyond their rural classrooms.

The school participates in Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program, through which teachers and students are able to access resources that give them training in useful skills. Students are using the technology to help create new products. The school, and the corporation, work with an association of educational institutions in the country to spread the model widely.

The intent is for the school, partnering with Microsoft, to act as mentors to develop the uses for technology in other schools in Thailand. At this point, the Mechai Bamboo School is seeking to develop comparable technological effectiveness programs in 46 schools in the upcoming year. It has a goal of reaching 150 schools over the next three years. IKEA, the furniture conglomerate based in Sweden, and the Ikano Group, another European corporation, are providing financial support.

Kesebonye Roy spoke about San life in Molapo, a Kalahari Desert village: “If someone gets sick, we go to the grave site of that person’s ancestor to ask for help.” However, another San person, Mmolawa Belesa, who lives in a resettlement camp called New Xade, located just outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), said that he appreciates the health clinic there, where his sick father can get proper care. There are no longer any traditional healers in Molapo, while there are modern health workers in New Xade.

Last week, two South African news services published two different articles about the San people—the G/wi and the G//ana—who were removed by the Botswana government between 1997 and 2002 from their traditional homes in the desert and forcibly required to live in New Xade and two other resettlement camps.

Some San have returned to villages like Molapo in the CKGR, where they live without modern facilities such as running water, while others remain in the resettlement camps. The two reports, one from News24, the other from Independent Online, present a variety of opinions and facts about the two San societies and how the people are adjusting—or not adjusting—to life in the resettlement camp, or to subsistence back in the bush.

Both reports contrast conditions in New Xade—the reasonably modern community of 1,500 people, though beset with problems that the San are not sure how to cope with—and Molapo, the traditional village of 50 people in the bush. They both make it clear that the San people had been living in the resettlement camps for some years before the Botswana Supreme court ruled in 2006 in favor of a suit brought by the San people which allowed at least some of them to return to their ancestral desert homes. The government’s attempt to force the people to adjust to modern life was illegal, the court decided.

Molapo is one of the reestablished communities, a place to which people returned after the 2006 ruling in order to rebuild their lives without modern conveniences. Despite the hardness of life in the desert, the G/wi there have reestablished, at least to some extent, their traditional ways. The residents of Molapo are still able to gather foods in the desert—roots, herbs, and wild berries.

They are not permitted to hunt, however, because the Botswana government has forbidden hunting, at first in the CKGR but more recently throughout the nation. Molapo residents have no source of water other than what they can save from the sparse rainfall and the melons they gather in the bush or grow in their gardens.

Molapo also has a chief, a direct contradiction to their traditional egalitarian social practice, though the incumbent is not recognized as chief by everyone in the village. Molapo and the other desert renewal villages exhibit other contradictions. Jumanda Gakelebone, a noted San leader, argues that hunting by the people, now banned by the government, is an integral aspect of San life.

“The government is trying to turn us into pastoralists, which we are not. We are ecological hunter-gatherers who have a lot to teach the world about how to coexist peacefully with Mother Earth,” he says. But the reporter observes that Molapo residents are already pastoralists: they live with their goats and cattle.

The ambivalence about life in Molapo is expressed by others. Xamme Gaothobogwe argues, “we want the same opportunities as everyone else.” Children must go back to one of the resettlement camps in order to attend school, a fact which Gaothobogwe deplores.

Life in New Xade is different from the bush, but it is not necessarily easy. A few San young people have been able to get educations but, according to Gakelebone, they become ashamed of their heritage. “They even change their names to appear more civilised,” he said. The bar in New Xade fills with customers every afternoon. The attendant at the bar, Kgomotsego Lobelo, says that everyone drinks because “there is nothing else to do.”

Survival International has provided documentation on over 200 cases of abuses of the San people by Botswana government agents, but one of the news reports last week published government statements relating to this issue. A government spokesman denied the allegations made by SI. He indicated that there may have been some instances of abuse, “but most such charges were false,” he stated.

Despite claims that the government has been motivated in its treatment of the minority peoples by its eagerness for royalties from diamond mining, officials deny that argument. The government spokesman said that the hunting restriction in the CKGR was imposed simply to protect the game—it had nothing to do with diamond mining or royalties. The government says that it simply wants to provide modern services to the G/wi and the G//ana people, which it can do best at the resettlement camps.

In New Xade, in addition to the heavily patronized bar and the health clinic, there are some shops and a school. But there are few jobs—most of the residents live on permanent government handouts. It is clear from the two articles that while New Xade provides some services, it also fosters a culture of dependency and cultural degeneration; while Molapo offers some freedom, dignity, and a chance to rebuild a culture of pride, at least for some of the San people, it also provides few of the benefits of modern life.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

New Opportunity for Paliyan Youth

Update on a Birhor Tragedy

Yanadi Woman Advocates Human Rights

Review of the Tristan Year

Piaroa Women Protest Violence

Ice Stupas in Ladakh

Changes in Nubian Wedding Ceremonies

A Congressman Champions the Buid

Pioneering Rural Thai School

Life in the Desert, or Life in a Resettlement Camp

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