Peaceful Societies

Five months ago, a Malaysian newspaper, The Star, accompanied a celebrity to the Semai village of Kampung Ulu Tual and last week it published a story about a follow-up visit. The village is located in the Cameron Highlands, a mountainous region in the northwestern corner of Malaysia’s Pahang state.

In mid-July, The Star sent a reporter to go along with the prominent Malaysian sports figure Nicol David, a world champion squash player and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations World Development Programme, in her daytrip to the Semai community. Ms. David was impressed with the hospitality she received in Ulu Tual.

The July report in The Star described the progress that the village was making on the development of a community center, but the major focus of the article was on the difficulty the children face in getting to school every day. The article indicated that the kids have to walk 10 km (6 miles) each way to the school.

However, the report of the event in this website took issue with the statement by The Star reporter in July to the effect that formal education is frequently not a top priority for the Semai. Peaceful Societies cited scholarship by Dentan and Juli (2008) that maintains the Semai are indeed quite enthusiastic about the education of their children, despite the impediments to their attending school.

The Star decided to visit Ulu Tual five months later to review the schooling situation again, with a particular focus on how the children are actually able to travel to their nearest school. To judge by the latest report, the situation is not getting much better.

The department of education provides two pickup trucks, with drivers, to transport the children to the school in Senderut, another village. The kids begin climbing into the backs of the trucks by 4:00 am, they are so eager to be among the ones who are, in fact, able to go. The trucks are heavily overloaded, with about 30 children piled in each vehicle when they leave. Even with the two badly overloaded trucks, the two vehicles are still not enough and once they are both filled, the other children don’t get to go. Every morning, children are turned away.

Simggol, a 39-year old father of two girls who have gotten on one of the trucks, gives his opinions to the reporter: “We are upset with the transport situation. To make matters worse, one of the two vehicles isn’t in a roadworthy condition … it often breaks down.” He adds that the community has asked the education department for more vehicles. “Our children are really keen to go to school,” he says.

When it rains, the four-wheel drive trucks can’t navigate the dirt track, so the children don’t go to school at all. And since the trucks are so overloaded, sometimes children have fallen off, but fortunately there have not been any really serious injuries so far.

The Star reporter quotes Simggol extensively. He expresses his opinion that education is essential for success and change. Although many Orang Asli are uneducated, they should have the advantage of education open to them. He argues that “there are opportunities everywhere and being a rural community all we ask is for a ‘lift’ up.” He believes that the children in remote rural communities should have just as many educational advantages as those living in urban areas.

He adds that since there are already over 100 school age children in Ulu Tual, the village should have its own school. Harun Siden, the chief of the village, agrees that a school in Ulu Tual would be the best solution. He is concerned that the numbers of children attending school are diminishing due to the problems. If nothing is done, he feels, the entire village could become populated with dropouts.

Jenita Engi, who coordinates a learning center in the village, says she is baffled that the school authorities haven’t opened a school in Ulu Tual. A nearby Semai village, Pos Betau, which reportedly lacks good communications with the outside world, has a primary school with hostels for the students, she says.

She adds that nearly half of the children in Ulu Tual have recently stopped attending school because of the difficulties with transportation. She believes that the children of the community will do well in their studies if they are ever able to attend school every day.

The Star reporter interviewed the former Member of Parliament for the area, S. K. Devamany, who said that the department of education should get involved in solving the problem. “Immediate measures should be taken to improve the transport system. It is a crime if children are not sent to school,” Devamany said.

The director of the department, Hasnan Hassan, admitted that while one of the vehicles is not really roadworthy, “the department is looking for a reliable transport operator who will be hired in the immediate future.” That administrator added that it is important to upgrade the roads connecting Kampung Ulu Tual and other villages with Senderut, so that busses and vans can provide improved services.

Last week, Utusan Online, a Malaysian news service, made a return trip to a Batek community that the paper had visited a year ago while reporting on logging in the nearby forest. The story published last week is an update to the three articles carried by the paper in January 2014.

Many of the Batek in the community, whose lives were disrupted by the logging and clearing of the land 12 months ago, have moved away. The logging, according to one of the reports in January, had just taken place during the previous two months, and according to the newspaper story last week, it still continues near the Taman Negara National Park, called locally Kuala Koh National Park.

During the most recent visit, the reporter found that only 37 Batek families remain in the village at Kuala Koh, about half of the 70 families living there at this time last year. Hamdan Yam, whom the paper identifies as the headman of the village, told Utusan Online that conditions have deteriorated from what they used to be like.

Things used to be quiet, and the people derived their subsistence from the nearby forest. Now, many have migrated to Tasik Kenyir, a resort area developed around an artificial lake 20 miles northeast of Kuala Koh, to earn money.

The reports nearly a year ago and the one last week indicated that the Lebir River at Kuala Koh is now frequently polluted. Anglers who try to fish in the river find the water quite turbid after a rain. The Kuala Koh section of Taman Negara National Park is being increasingly visited by foreign tourists, the reporter was told, but the development activity next to the park threatens the natural environment as well as the lives of the Batek.

Although Babar Afzal comes from the city of Jammu, he is devoting a lot of energy to saving and revitalizing pashmina goat wool production in Ladakh. He founded the Pashmina Goat Project in 2012 to address the concerns and promote the interests of the goat herders in the Changtang region of Ladakh, near the southeastern border with Tibet.

The wool from the goats, which live in both Ladakh and Tibet, is six times finer than human hair and has been a highly prized export for centuries. It is gathered by the goatherds living in the high mountains, exported by middlemen, and fabricated in city factories into a highly prized wool called cashmere. A single scarf on the international market can cost several thousand dollars.

The Changpa goat herders in the Changtang region see little of that money. Most has historically gone to the middlemen and the manufacturers. The middlemen buy the raw pashmina wool for US$40 to $80 per kilogram, then sell it to dealers for five times as much. A 39 year old goatherd named Tsering Dolma tells the journalist writing a story for Time magazine last week that “there’s so much struggle in our lives.” She motions to her three-year old son playing nearby and adds, “Why would we want our children to continue in this trade.”

Babar Afzal, 38, learned of the plight of the Changpas a couple years ago when thousands of their goats died in unusually heavy winter storms. He had left his native city—Jammu, the winter capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir—in 1996 for a business career in New Delhi. But he returned to Jammu with his family in 2008 and started new business enterprises, such as restaurants that promote local foods and handicrafts.

He became focused on the effects of climate change on the state, and particularly on the Changtang region of Ladakh. He was especially affected by the unusual winter kill in 2012: “The horrific sight of thousands of dead goats and bewildered Changpas haunted me for months,” he says.

So Mr. Afzal started the Pashmina Goat Project, a cooperative that seeks to improve the lot of the Changpa goatherds. He holds workshops to teach them about the consumer market and ways that they can deal directly with international buyers. He also teaches them how to spin their pashmina wool into fabric, thus adding value themselves. They are organizing a knitwear brand called Village Pashmina so they can sell their products directly to consumers.

Sonam Dorjee, a Changpa, reflected on the changes the project is bringing to the Changtang. “If we asked for more money, the traders laughed at us because we had nowhere else to go, [but] now we do.”

Mr. Afzal has also campaigned against the use of machines for spinning the raw wool, and the adulteration of the pashmina with lower quality wool, arguing instead for top quality production and the use of handlooms. Obviously an energetic individual, he organizes fair trade sessions, fashion shows, and other events to promote his obsession. He plans to develop software that will send weather alerts to the goatherds, so they can be aware of storm predictions and better react to changing weather patterns.

Pankaj Chandan, an official with WWF-India, says of Babar Afzal that his “is the first voice speaking up for the poor and marginalized in the Himalayas.” Afzal responds that the Changpa goatherds are not really able to fight the battle on their own—so he has made a cause of helping them.

Pond Inlet has a spectacular setting. An Inuit community located along the northern edge of the enormous Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, the residents of Pond look out across Eclipse Sound at the mountains and glaciers of Bylot Island to the north. It is one of farthest north human settlements on earth.

A reporter for the British newspaper The Telegraph, Martin Fletcher, visited Pond Inlet recently to investigate the Inuit people—their culture, history, social problems, and possible solutions to their difficulties. After describing in detail how bleak, yet beautiful, the landscape appeared to be, he discusses the friendliness and welcoming spirit of the people. The children ran up to greet him—they were eager to get the stranger involved in their fun.

But he does not avoid reviewing the social problems of the town. Other than jobs in the public sector, there is virtually no employment. Few young people complete high school, and fewer still go south to attend Canadian universities. Housing is limited—extended families often crowd together in small dwellings. The abuse of drugs and alcohol help cause rampant domestic violence.

A nurse in the town, Sherry Parks, discusses the malnourishment that 15 percent of the community suffer from. “When people say they don’t have food in their house they literally don’t have any,” she says. The people of Pond, about 1,500, have little access to their traditional diet of fish and meat, so most of them live on junk foods. Diabetes and obesity are serious concerns.

The author encounters instances of a dysfunctional society everywhere he goes. He talks with a 17-year old boy who says he dropped out of school—it bored him—so he tells Mr. Fletcher that he sniffs propane. He encounters a Mountie with two handcuffed prisoners, convicted of committing assaults while high on drugs or drunk. Posters warn against the abuse of elders.

Suicides are “part of life up here,” according to Colin Saunders, the economic development officer for Pond Inlet. His sister killed herself. Fletcher speaks with others about the problem. Three teens committed suicide in just the first five months of 2014. Sheeba Simonee told the author that two of her brothers and three different nephews had killed themselves. Mr. Saunders says that he could point to 20 different graves in the town cemetery of people who had committed suicide.

The reporter considers the causes of these social issues. Some are obvious: the isolation of the town, the pressures of living in a small place with few opportunities and little hope of escape, the three months of polar darkness in the winter. But he passes over these minor concerns and focuses on what he argues is the major issue—the destruction of the Inuit way of life. Nothing has really replaced it.

Ms. Parks explained that in the past, when the people lived out on the land, everyone knew what was expected of them—they understood their importance to their families. “Now they’re conflicted about where they fit into this world,” she says. Mr. Saunders agrees. “We have one foot wearing a work boot and the other still wearing a sealskin kamik [a shoe],” he says.

The Telegraph reviews the history of white interference in the ways of the Canadian Arctic people. Whalers and explorers introduced fatal diseases that the Inuit had no immunity against. Fur traders fostered dependence on the money economy and on outside goods, but provided no security when the prices of furs collapsed. Missionaries replaced the traditional shamans; the Mounties introduced a system of justice that was alien to the Inuit.

Since World War II, the Canadian government has promoted permanent communities for the Inuit in order to end their nomadic lifestyle. The government encouraged them to settle in such places by offering welfare, health care, housing, and education. Some Inuit were forcibly relocated to new settlements. The police slaughtered about 20,000 sled dogs, supposedly for health reasons, but the Inuit believe that the real reason was to destroy their ties to the land.

Government agents took children away from their homes and sent them to residential schools farther south. The children were usually forbidden from speaking their own language, Inuktitut. Some were subject to emotional, physical, and even sexual abuses during their childhoods in these residential facilities. Some people in Pond spoke with the author about these abuses.

The Inuit see the European Union ban on the import of seal parts as evidence of the continuation of this repressive history. Charlie Inuaraq, the mayor of Pond Inlet, tells the writer that the price of a seal skin has dropped from $50 to $10 since the imposition of the EU ban in 2010. He argues that it is part of the pattern of keeping the Inuit in a position of begging.

Fletcher agrees. He refers to conditions in Pond Inlet as a “dependency culture” that helps explain the social problems in the community. A potential solution? To restore, as much as possible, the traditions of the people. Some Inuit still go out and hunt, but many others don’t know how, or don’t want to, or can’t afford to. A snowmobile, an essential vehicle for getting out into the country in the absence of sled dogs, costs $15,000 in Pond Inlet, twice as much as farther south in Canada.

The traditional Inuit culture survives in small pieces, like bone fragments in a polar bear carcass shot by a hunter. For instance, hunters who have successfully taken seals will invite other Inuit, via the local radio station, to come and have a share of the meat. Women still carry their babies in amautis, pouches designed for the purpose. Some women still make traditional seal-skin mitts and boots. The author, talking with a young woman selling home-made jewelry in a hotel lobby, enjoyed her demonstration of Inuit throat singing.

Fletcher concludes by considering the possibility that changes—perhaps improvements—will come about due to outside forces. Cruise ships might arrive—because of climate change opening up the waters—bringing tourist dollars. A giant iron mine is being developed about 100 miles away, which might cause environmental disasters as well as providing lots of jobs.

Inuaraq, an experienced Inuit hunter, concludes that the old days are past. He suggests that the Inuit of today must hunt for money as well as for animals.

According to Kachyo, police officers stationed at the entrance to the Dzongu Reserve in Sikkim have hardly any work to do—there is very little crime among the Lepcha people. One of the reasons might be their ancient ceremony, called the thoursu, which is performed to keep the peace among them by appeasing the “quarrel” gods: Soo Maang, enmity of speech, Ge Maang, enmity of thought, and Thor Maang, enmity of action.

However, others have written recently that the Lepcha no longer perform that ritual. Whatever the case, E. K. Santha, a research scholar at Sikkim University in Gangtok, visited the Dzongu Reserve with Kachyo, a Lepcha friend, to gain some impressions of the culture of his society. The author described the visit in a brief article published last week in the prominent Indian magazine Economic and Political Weekly.

Santha stayed overnight at the home of Kachyo and his family. They live in the hamlet of Passingdang, four hours by rough roads from Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim. Kachyo’s sister-in-law, with help from the children, prepared dinner with vegetables they had picked from the family gardens.

While they visited, Kachyo told Santha about his ancestors, who were shamans before the Bhutias brought their Lamaism into Sikkim in the 17th century. The Lepchas, however, retained some of their earlier beliefs. They have numerous gods, whom they call rums, plus various rites and rituals. The gods and goddesses, who can bring pain and suffering into the daily lives of the people, need to be propitiated through proper sacrifices and ceremonies.

A hunting god is placated with a Mutrum ceremony to protect the hunters from attacks by wild animals. A fertility god, Sakyou Sakyourum, protects seasonal crops and vegetables with the help of the bongthing, the Lepcha spiritual leader. Together they help bring about a bountiful harvest. The Lepcha protect their children by praying to Run Si Mung.

The author describes the ceremony performed by the mun, the female priestess, on the birth of a child. Tang Bong Rum, the god of birth, is offered chicken, ginger, beaten rice, and fried fish to help the child have a safe, bright future. If a family has a male baby after already having three or four female children, they might sacrifice an ox. The mun places a drop of chi, the popular local beverage, on the tongue of the baby at the end of the ceremony.

Santha writes of feeling a touch of fear at the approaching nighttime darkness, and the possibility of bears entering the hamlet from the nearby forests. Kachyo and his contemporaries are part of a generation of learners, Santha writes, people for whom the old ceremonies have somewhat less meaning. But the rites and rituals of the ancient ceremonies still have some meaning in the home.

In the morning, the author noted prayer flags fluttering in the breeze, and noticed the maroon robes of a monk hanging on a clothesline. Kachyo’s father, a monk, visits a Lama monastery every morning. Unfortunately, he spoke no Hindi, so the only possible conversations had to take place through Kachyo’s interpretation.

The author and Kachyo prepared for a visit to Gurudongmar Lake, about 17,500 feet above sea level. They roasted popcorn and dug up ginger in the garden, foods which would help them cope with the very high altitude. But the highlight of the visit for Santha was the gleaming view of Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world and the protective deity of the Lepcha people. It dominated the western horizon in the morning sunshine for a short while before clouds obscured the view.

Halloween is almost a month past but memories of ghost stories told around the open fire—along with the s’mores—will live in children’s memories for a lifetime. Polly Wiessner, an anthropologist who has studied the Ju/’hoansi since the early 1970s, decided to focus a research project on that subject: the importance of campfire stories for the Ju/’hoan people. Her results, published at the end of September, provide some fascinating insights into the ways they managed to maintain their relatively peaceful society.

She opens her report by emphasizing the impact on humanity of the control of fire. Cooking increased the value of foods to people and fostered anatomical advances in the human frame. Fires protected people from predators and, most significantly, by encouraging them to bring food to a central location for cooking, they altered their socializing tendencies. Firelight allowed people to have time for social interactions after sundown, to engage in activities that could be different from the economic and productive work of the daylight hours. Activities, after dark, could include telling stories.

Wiessner mentions archaeological evidence showing that the human use of fire may extend back a million years, but her focus is on the Ju/’hoansi. She is careful to explain that the ways of a hunting and gathering people of 1974 cannot be used to extrapolate the habits of our hominid ancestors of 400,000 years ago. She uses the past tense in her article since many aspects of Ju/’hoansi society have changed over the past four decades, though since they have retained at least some of their social practices, neither the past tense nor the present tense is completely accurate.

She gathered data during conversations, both during the day and at night around a fire, for three months: July, August, and November 1974 at /Kae/kae and Dobe, Ju/’hoansi communities in northwest Botswana near the border with Namibia (then Southwest Africa). She recorded conversations that included five or more adults and that lasted for at least 20 to 30 minutes. She noted the topics that were discussed, the names of participants, principle points made, people who were the subjects of the conversations, the time of day and settings, whether there was praise or criticism involved, and so on.

When she went back to her old notes in recent years, she found some of the details to be lacking, so she made return trips to the same communities to revisit old friends—three times in 2011 – 2013—to review and revise the memories of the old stories. As she compiled her data, her results emerged. Daytime conversations, at least among the Ju/’hoansi, had a very different tone and substance from nighttime conversations around the campfire. Her research allows her to compare the diurnal social activities of a hunting-gathering people and their nocturnal patterns.

By day, the Ju/’hoansi spent 31 percent of the time talking about economic issues, such as foraging plans, expectations for hunting, and the availability of resources. They spent slightly more time, 34 percent, complaining and criticizing others about suspected violations of social norms, though sometimes those criticisms were unfounded. “Verbal criticism, complaint, and conflict (CCC) were the spice of Ju/’hoan life that made group living viable,” the author writes; “if not worked out by talk, people voted with their feet and departed (p.14029).” Daytime conversations also included joking (16 percent of the time) and talk focused on people from other ethnic groups (4 percent). When they rested in the daytime shade, the people sometimes told stories.

But the harsher moods of the daytime, the talk about necessary, critical issues, came to an end as the sun went down, and as the Ju/’hoansi gathered around their campfires they mellowed out. They would talk, dance, or just make music together. Larger or smaller groups would gather on different nights as everyone put aside their concerns about economic issues or social complaints. An astounding 81 percent of the lengthy fireside conversations the author recorded were stories.

Wiessner indicates that the storytellers, who could be men or women, would primarily focus on known people and their escapades, though they would not single out heroes for praise. There was no moralizing, and certainly no self-promotion in the stories, though doubtless the listeners took lessons from the tales. Listeners might rehash details when the story was over, perhaps rolling with laughter, or sitting in stunned silence, or allowing their faces to glisten with tears, as the stories may have prompted.

Even in 1974, Wiessner writes, folklore and myths were in decline in Ju/’hoansi society. Furthermore, the nights were not exclusively reserved for storytelling. Sometimes the conflicts of the daytime would spill over at night, with insults being hurled from one hearth to the next. At times the economic concerns of the daytime might be rehashed.

Overall, however, the agenda of the Ju/’hoansi daytime was social regulation. More than 67 percent of the conversations about such social issues as food sharing, kinship concerns, land tenure, exchanges of goods, and egalitarian relationships included verbal sanctions. As the author summarizes, “day talk thus vented jealousies, enforced norms, and settled a wide range of disputes (p.14030).”

Nighttime conversations covered the same ground but quite differently. For example, while a conversation during the day might focus on a current marital problem, at night the same people might tell stories about marriages in the past. In the daylight, the people could discuss the specifics of a particular gift exchange, while at night they would tell stories of trips to distant places to cement exchange relationships. Campfire storytelling developed sympathy, trust, understanding, congeniality, and a sense of humor among the participants, all important components of a feeling of peacefulness.

The author examines anthropological literature about other hunter-gatherer societies and finds many similarities among them and the Ju/’hoansi. Gossip appears frequently in the social control conversations of the daytime in many h-g societies, but not in their gatherings at night. Economic concerns provide issues for diurnal rather than nocturnal discussions among numerous peoples. The literature for 60 hunter-gatherer societies, as shown in the eHRAF database, shows that “night was prime time for entrance into imaginary worlds of the supernatural (p.14032).”

Wiessner covers an interesting topic and writes evocatively about it. She doesn’t tell us if graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars—s’mores—have entered the food staple of the contemporary Ju/’hoansi, but her evidence about the value of social harmonizing through storytelling around a campfire is compelling.

Wiessner, Polly W. 2014. “Embers of Society: Firelight Talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111(39): 14027–14035

When a Tristan Islander passes away, everyone in the community pauses to show respect for the deceased, whether or not they were members of the immediate family. Dawn Repetto posted a cemeteries page on the Tristan website last Thursday to provide, with her story and pictures, some insights into the ways the Islanders handle deaths and burials.

The island flag is lowered to half-staff when someone dies, and if the death occurs during a weekday, workers will pause at their jobs. The Albatross Bar closes for the evening and any celebrations planned for the day are cancelled, unless the family of the deceased makes an exception. Young women will visit island homes to gather flowers which the women will then use to make wreaths.

Relatives and friends will attend a funeral service at the Camogli Hospital, after which the corpse is carried in a Land Rover to the St. Mary’s Church, with the mourners following behind. After the memorial service in the church, the deceased is taken to the newest of the three island cemetery for internment. When the formal services are over, the Islanders visit in the home of the deceased, seeking to comfort the family. Ms. Repetto writes, “As with any event on Tristan, the community pulls together whatever the occasion and this keeps us strong.”

The author continues her report by describing the history of the cemeteries at the Settlement, plus efforts made from 2009 through 2014 to restore them. Fortunately, she also provides many good photos along with her story. For Cemetery No. 1, with burials dating from 1822 – 1923, one of the major restoration problems was that, although the Islanders knew who was buried in it, there was a lot of uncertainty as to exactly which grave belonged to which ancestor. To address the problem, the people erected a plaque indicating the names of all the forebears buried in the graveyard. A small white cross was then placed at each grave.

Identifying gravesites in Cemetery No. 2, with burials from 1923 – 1975, did not pose such problems. The restorers found only two graves that they were unable to identify. Cemetery No. 3, from 1975 – current, just needed a few plaques. In 1995, while Alan Walters was serving as Administrator on the island, he prepared a map of the graves in the island cemeteries, and his map proved highly useful to the contemporary Islanders committed to restoring the graveyards.

When the work was completed, some elderly Islanders were invited to check out the cemeteries and make sure all the wooden grave markers were correct. After everything was approved, permanent plaques were ordered from a firm in Cape Town. Groups of Islanders pitched in to clean up the two older cemeteries by removing unwanted brush, debris, and long grass.

Many of the older graves had headstones made of the soft, volcanic stone found on the island but they are not very long-lasting, so the plots today are marked with marble imported from South Africa. Ms. Repetto indicates that the cemetery does look better, but she admits that she has a personal preference for the ones made from the softer, native stone.

An unusual problem occurred at the grave of William Glass, the founder of the Settlement on the island. He was the unofficial “Governor” of the colony until his death in 1853. Members of his family, who had moved to the U.S., had sent a headstone for his grave in the decade after his death. In late October 2014, the cemetery restoration group learned that the top of the headstone for Mr. Glass had broken in half. The restoration group has epoxied the two pieces back together, and they plan to reinforce it with an iron or a concrete backing.

Ms. Repetto concludes her report by writing that the “Island community takes great pride in the island cemeteries and visits them every weekend with flowers.” She argues that the Islanders had not forgotten their ancestors, but the disruptions caused by the volcanic eruption in 1961, the temporary exile to the UK, and the deaths of elders had caused younger people to lose their knowledge of who was actually buried where. She opines that, with the two older cemeteries now restored, the Islanders will care for them the same as they do the present cemetery.

When a group of about 15 Malay men visited the Batek village of Kampung Ki Ying, the women quickly fled into the forest. Though it was only days before the 2013 national election in Malaysia, the women feared that such groups of visitors sometimes were only intent on attacking and raping. This time, the visitors were representatives of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition. They were seeking votes. They handed out bags of food and announced that the following day, a high-ranking politician from their party would visit the village.

The next morning, a large number of motor vehicles adorned with the blue flags of the Barisan Nasional party arrived and the visitors set up chairs in the village hall so the highly-ranked politician could give his speech. The Barisan supporters, wearing shirts sporting the Barisan logo, set up the flags of the party around the village and especially in the village hall—to establish a suitable environment for the visiting luminary.

The dignitaries sat at the front of the hall—a Muslim imam from a nearby Malay village, the politician, the village headman, and a village elder. After introductory remarks by a local politician, the Batek headman rose to speak. A charismatic figure in his own right, instead of uttering the usual face-saving platitudes that people are supposed to make on occasions such as that, the headman expressed disappointment about the lack of development in the village.

The politician was visibly irritated at what had been said, despite the fact that the headman had spoken politely. He tried to deliver his prepared speech anyway by telling his listeners how their lives had been improved by the government, and he asked for the votes of the Batek villagers. The headman replied that 5,000 rubber trees, promised to the village five years before, had never come. No one in the village would vote for Barisan until the rubber trees had been delivered.

The stubbornness and unforgiving attitude of the headman enraged the politician. He hollered at his followers that they were all leaving—immediately. Everyone quickly fled from the hall, the visitors to their motor vehicles, the Batek back into their homes. They ignored the lunch boxes that had been brought by the visitors—the residents suspected that they might have been filled with poisoned food anyway.

The two visiting anthropologists recording this incident, Ivan Tacey and Diana Riboli, went with their Batek hosts. They were stopped briefly by a couple Malay police officers, but then were allowed to accompany the headman back to his home. He asked his visitors to immediately leave the village and return to Kaula Lumpur—he feared for their safety. While they were on the road back to the capital, he called to tell them that after they had left, he had fled his home and sought refuge in the forest. Shortly after he had fled, three policemen had visited the village looking for him.

Fearing reprisals from the Malays, most of the other villagers also left. They divided into three separate groups and sought temporary refuge at camps in the forest that were located next to cave entrances. The Batek kept calling the authors until days after the election, until after the Barisan party had been returned to power, when they felt safe enough to return back to their village. The authors then also felt it was safe to return to Kampung Ki Ying.

Tacey and Riboli, in a remarkably engaging article about Batek anti-violence, use the story to illustrate their points about the development of the Batek approaches to maintaining peacefulness in their communities. They argue that the Batek, like the other aboriginal Orang Asli societies in Malaysia, are subject to what they call “structural violence,” consisting of discrimination, marginalization, poverty, poor health conditions, abuses, and lack of basic human and legal rights.

These current conditions have combined, in the minds of the Batek, with the folk memories of extreme persecution and slavery at the hands of the Malays over the ages, abuses which continued into the 20th century when whole communities were destroyed. This fear of Malay terrorism promotes their very strong fear of outsiders—especially of the Muslim Malays. Their justifiable fears still foster one of their strategies for self-protection and anti-violence—hiding out in the forest, especially near the entrances to caves.

Caves had provided sanctuaries from large-scale violence 50 years ago, during the British war against the Communist Insurgency, and they might do so again. Further, the Batek view caves as being filled with mostly hostile non-human beings. But when faced with extreme emergency situations, such as this incident when they angered the politician and feared his reprisals, they apparently were able to reverse their conceptions of the beings dwelling in the caves from possible persecutors into potential protectors.

In any case, instead of arguing that the Batek avoid violence due to ethical or religious reasons, the authors point out that they are simply pragmatic. The Malays are far more numerous than they are—to openly resist them would be suicidal. Despite at times fantasizing about violence, the authors conclude, “their fundamental ethical principles, which represent important components of their cultural identity, are indeed ‘anti-violent’ in nature (p.210).”

This important article, the opening piece in a special issue of the Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research devoted to “Hunter-Gatherer Aggression and Peace,” includes a very detailed explanation of the background and development of what the authors refer to as “anti-violence.” They define it as an active and strategic approach to counteracting violence.

The authors make it clear that the two different Batek groups—Tacey and Riboli explain the differences between the Batek Dè’ and the Batek Tanum—are still subject to “countless acts of violence and terror (p. 204).” The dramatic episode that they personally witnessed was clearly just a mild version of the ones the villagers contend with.

The authors carefully review a variety of factors that arguably contribute to peacefulness in the Batek society, such as their social sanctions prohibiting aggression, their placing values on individual freedom and personal autonomy, and their ways of instilling their values into their children.

Tacey and Riboli mention the explanations for the peacefulness of different hunter-gatherer societies posited by scholars, but the thrust of this article is to analyze the Malaysian social and political conditions in which the Batek live. The authors provide a fascinating focus on the quite effective strategies used by the Batek for surviving in the face of Malay structural violence.

Tacey, Ivan and Diana Riboli. 2014. “Violence, Fear and Anti-violence: The Batek of Peninsular Malaysia.” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 6(4): 203-215

The G/wi, and the other San peoples of Botswana, continue to be deprived of their rights, despite persistent campaigns on their behalf by Survival International, a London-based NGO. Two weeks ago, an article in the Botswana Gazette, a major news source in that nation, described an important study done by SI that provides details of over 200 cases of human rights violations perpetrated by the government against the minority indigenous people over the past several decades.

The major issue for the San is that the government has decreed that they are no longer permitted to hunt. Trophy hunters from other countries who pay very high fees are allowed to enter the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to hunt, but the indigenous people who have hunted there sustainably for millennia are not. Botswana’s President Ian Khama imposed the complete ban on hunting on the grounds that it was better for the conservation of wildlife.

The Gwi who live in the New Xade “eviction camp,” as the reporter creatively terms their resettlement community outside the CKGR, were honored with a visit from President Khama on September 27. The San people greeted him holding placards stating “Hunters not poachers,” and “Bushmen are the best conservationists.”

In response to government anti-hunting pressure, Jumanda Gakelebone, a prominent San leader, told one news source, “We are not going to move from our ancestral land and will hunt the wild animals, as it is our way of living. The government will have to put us all in prison.”

The report from SI details over 200 allegations of abuse and torture by Botswana government agents perpetrated against the G/wi and the other San peoples, who have fought several court battles to regain the rights to live on their land and to have access to drinking water. These incidents allegedly took place between 1992 and 2014.

The allegations, if true, are grim. One man was supposedly buried alive after he killed an antelope. Another man refused to allow police to enter his hut without a proper warrant, so they shot his child in the stomach. Government agents arrested three children for allegedly possessing meat from antelopes—though they were later released without being charged.

Some of the allegations are fairly detailed. Members of a paramilitary unit of the police called the Special Support Group (SSG), plus a park guard, abducted two men, Mogolodi Moeti and Maikgantsho Kaingota in New Xade one night. The beat Moeti with the butt of a gun and raided his house searching for illegal bush meat. They found nothing but drove off with him, later returning him without making any charges.

Another report was even grimmer. On November 28, 2012, SSG agents accused Nkemetseng Motsoko of poaching game, so they pushed his head into an animal hole until he lost consciousness. After he came to, they suffocated him again in another attempt to make him confess where he had hidden the meat. He had the medical records to show that he had been taken to a hospital and had received injuries to his jaw and his teeth.

The SI report describes abuses over the course of many years. In 2005, the government deprived the G/wi residents in the CKGR of access to water. Xoroxloo Duxee died of dehydration after refusing to leave.

Rachel Stenham, an official with Survival International, commented in an interview that the tribal peoples of the Kalahari will do the best job of guarding and conserving the natural world in the CKGR. She said that Gem Diamonds, which has just opened a new mine in the reserve, had promised to also open new bore holes in the CKGR for the San, but so far it has not done so. As a result, it has become very difficult for the people to survive there. Ms. Stenham decried the continuing attempts by the government to force the people out of their traditional homelands.

Last week, SI continued to put pressure on Botswana to allow justice for the minority peoples by protesting the tourism industry in that nation. On November 5, protesters handed out SI leaflets to people visiting the World Travel Market in London, a leading international travel industry event. The Botswana Tourism Organisation was hosting a stall at the event all week. The leaflets urged people to boycott travel to Botswana as long as it prevents starving people from hunting on their land.

The SI news release that described the latest action quoted President Khama as expressing his disdain for the G/wi. He evidently said that they live “a very extinct…very backward form of life,” adding that they were responsible for “severe loss of wildlife” in the CKGR. SI claims that studies show the contrary—that hunting by the San tends, in some cases, to increase the numbers of at least some antelope species.

The Survival International release quotes a most effective statement by Stephen Corry, director of SI, which summarizes the situation: “Tribal peoples are portrayed as backward and primitive simply because their communal ways are different. It’s a way of justifying the theft of their land and resources in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’.”

A news story from Tanzania last week describes the celebrations that take place in a Fipa village when a woman gives birth to a baby. The article also provides information about the tragedy of maternal mortality in Tanzania’s Rukwa Region, an issue that news stories covered back in September.

While the text of the news story may have to be read in a Google translation of the Swahili original, it is still possible to glean some useful information about Fipa birth celebrations from it. The village, called Chereko, is located on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Nampembe, Nkasi District, Rukwa Region. The community evidently celebrates every birth enthusiastically.

The reporter covered the welcoming of a new baby into the village. When the mother delivered her infant in the community health center, the mother-in-law and the woman’s sister prepared a major ceremony to receive the child into the home. The new mother, named Mide Godwin, expressed her happiness and said that they would be cooking rice for the feast and making beer. “It is a very big celebration for us,” she said, in the words of the translation.

Another village woman, Fransina Soneka, who is a 48 year old mother of eight, said that in Chereko it is more important to celebrate a birth than a wedding. She indicated that singing is an important part of the birth celebration. In fact, she said that singing is a prominent feature of Fipa culture.

The birth festival can last three days, particularly when it is the celebration of a first time mother. It includes eating, drinking and dancing as well as the singing. But when the woman goes into labor, the village becomes tense. If there is a prolonged silence, people start to question one another. When they hear shouting, they know that the birth has been successful. Get ready to party.

People assemble, relatives prepare food and beer, and villagers beat drums. The food might include a stew, prepared with chicken or goat meat. The villagers buy soda, beer, and local liquor, and they told the reporter that the celebration might cost up to 500,000 Tanzanian shillings (nearly U.S. $300), funds which are contributed by the friends, brothers, and sisters of the family.

The mother who gives birth to the infant will present clothing, socks, and other articles to her newborn, Fransina told the reporter. Fransina said that she welcomed a huge celebration in 1985 when her first baby was born, but she said that the village has normally been anxious whenever a birth is imminent.

There have been several sorrowful cases of the losses of lives in the village during the birth process. Nearly all of the deaths were caused by complications occurring in a community that has lacked local emergency medical care. The reporter mentioned several different women recently who had lost their lives due to emergencies that no one could handle properly.

One solution the reporter suggested may be the approaches advocated by a group called the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in Tanzania. That organization is part of an international NGO that focuses on advocating for better emergency care, obstetric surgery, and having safe blood for transfusions. According to its website, the Tanzania branch of the White Ribbon Alliance began in the Rukwa Region.

Also, effective transportation to medical facilities is urgently needed. Statistics show that less than 30 percent of the women in that area of Tanzania receive qualified medical care when they go into labor. In Nampembe, however, the situation has improved with the opening of a health center located in a new building, plus safe blood has become available. Furthermore, a special car has been provided to transport women to the medical center. In the past year, since the car has become available, there have been no maternal deaths in Nampembe.

The news report concludes that the provision of proper services for the delivery of babies should make dramatic improvements in the successes of live, safe births. The fun of celebrating the birth of a healthy baby in Chereko can now begin early, in anticipation of the event, rather than being delayed by nervous waiting as people have been used to doing.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

A Malaysian Newspaper Revisits a Semai Village

A Malaysian Newspaper Revisits a Batek Village

Pashmina Wool in Ladakh

An Overnight Visit to the Dzongu

Campfire Stories of the Ju/’hoansi [journal article review]

Tristan Islanders Remember their Forebears

The Batek Anger a Malay Politician [journal article review]

Botswana Persecutes the G/wi

Celebrations for Fipa Babies

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