Peaceful Societies

A book by Anita Sharma published in 2013 described growing gender inequities in Lepcha society, but a current journal article gives an even more negative assessment of the situation. The differing conclusions were based on investigations of very different communities and they were conducted 10 years apart, but their contradictions need to be compared.

The Sharma book, based on her research done in the Dzongu Reserve of northern Sikkim in 2003, was an overall evaluation of the social situation of the Lepchas, patterned in part on the field research of Geoffrey Gorer (1967) that was conducted in 1937. Sharma found the situation for women overall to be a little worse than in Gorer’s time, but still not too severe.

The authors of a current research article, Ria Roy and Mahua Bardhan, are much more pessimistic about the situation of Lepcha women. They conducted their investigation in an isolated Lepcha community, the Lingsey village, in the Darjeeling district of India’s West Bengal state in 2013.

The two authors clearly appreciate the society they were studying. “A peace loving people, the Lepchas were free and independent aboriginal inhabitants of the Lingsey village. These people used to live an isolated life protected by the forests and the mountains,” they write (p.2). They note that women theoretically have equal rights with men in Lepcha society.

Their investigation consisted of surveying 32 randomly selected households, out of 50, in Lingsey to compare the socio-economic data related to gender issues in the community with the Gender Development Index (GDI) developed by the United Nations Development Programme. The greater the disparities in the social, educational, health, and income rates between men and women in a country or community, the lower the GDI.

One of the stark statistics the authors found was that life expectancy at birth for Lepcha males is about 62 years, while for females, life expectancy is about 50. Disease and a lack of adequate health facilities plague the people of the remote village, but the authors found that females die more frequently from asthma, typhoid fever, liver damage, and strokes than males do. Women also die in the village while giving birth at home.

Educational differences add to the calculation of gender disparity in the village. The authors found that males had a 75 percent literacy rate, while females had a rate of 58 percent. Girls and boys enroll in school in about equal proportions, they found, but girls are not given adequate further encouragement and opportunities to get an education, so they tend to drop out. At the primary level, there are 22 boys and 11 girls attending school.

The authors also looked at the economic situation of women in Lingsey. They found that men and women who are still occupied in traditional agricultural pursuits work on an equal basis. The women take care of poultry, fetch water, do child care, and perform miscellaneous household tasks. Economic disparity shows up more clearly in non-traditional, newer types of employment, which strongly favor men.

Their figures show that out of 34 of the lowest paid workers, people earning up to 3000 Indian rupees per month (U.S.$49.00), 25 were female and 9 were male. However, out of 23 individuals earning between 3000 and 6000 rupees per month, 16 were male and 7 were female. Finally, all of the 6 highest-paid workers, those earning 6000 or more rupees per month, were male.

Not surprisingly, the GDI calculation for Lingsey is very low: 0.42. The authors summarize the results by writing that Lepcha women, in this village, lag men in income, employment, education, life expectancy, health conditions, and so on. “The low value of GDI clearly indicates that the Lepcha women in Lingsey village are deprived in every respect though [they] apparently enjoy equal rights in society (p.7).”

Roy and Bardhan conclude by providing an overview of the problems that face the Lepchas in Lingsey. The village has no adequate medical facility. The nearest hospitals are in Pedong and Kalimpong, 35 and 50 km away respectively. The village has an inadequate source of water from a spring, which is used for washing, bathing, and drinking. There are no other sources of safe drinking water.

One factor contributing to the low GDI of the village, the authors argue, is the practice of early marriage. This leads to young motherhood, malnutrition, maternal deaths, and too many children, all of which increase the poverty of the women.

On this point, Roy and Bardham differ from Sharma (2013), who described the practice of early marriage as much diminished since Gorer’s time in the 1930s. Sharma (2013, p.15) wrote, “Dr. Gyamtso Bhutia, the only doctor in Dzongu, claims that the incidence of teenage marriage is considerably lower” than it was in Gorer’s time. Gorer had observed only four unmarried girls over the age of 12 in the village he had studied.

Sharma wrote that marriage by elopement was now quite common among the Lepchas. However, it must be remembered that the assessments by Sharma and the two current authors were made in very different villages in completely different states.

Roy and Bardham conclude with a number of recommendations for improving Lingsey’s GDI, such as the establishment of primary schools in the village; the development of a women’s finance group to assist their economic activities; campaigns by agencies to help promote awareness of strategies for improving maternity health; and assistance by government agencies in aiding women to set up small scale handicraft enterprises.

Roy, Ria and Mahua Bardhan. 2014. “Gender Inequality among Tribal Women in India: A Case Study of Lepcha Society.” Indian Streams Research Journal 4(7), August: 1-9

People in some American communities don’t want to say they dislike the Amish, so they complain instead about the manure their horses drop while pulling their buggies into town. The latest horse manure fuss comes from Brown City, Michigan, a small community of about 1,300 people located on the eastern side of the lower peninsula of the state, about 60 miles north of Detroit.

According to a news story last week, local people are talking about the horse manure issue, but the mayor, Christine Lee, and the City Manager, Clint Holmes, are the two complainers directly quoted by the newspaper. Mayor Lee indicated she hopes a solution can be worked out with the local Amish so that there will no longer be any manure left on city streets—and that the steel wheels of their buggies will stop leaving marks on the pavement.

Her comments were pointed: “You’re supposed to pick up after your dog, you probably should pick up after your horses, too; it’s common courtesy. Would you want a pile of manure in front of your house?”

The mayor expressed her concerns about the possibility that the steel wheels on the buggies will damage the pavement. The Amish do not put rubber wheels on their buggies to avoid the possibility that they might become too comfortable with traveling on the roads.

Mr. Holmes, the City Manager, indicated he is checking into state laws that regulate the use of tire chains in the winter to see if they would apply to steel wheels on Amish buggies. Using a set of tire chains except in winter, the mayor said, is “against the law because it does chew up the roads … and steel wheels do the same thing.”

Mr. Holmes said that recent road repairs and improvements cost about $200,000. Mayor Lee added, “we’re pinching the budget as it is. You hate to put that much into the road and then … see the roads being torn up by the steel wheels.”

The newspaper reporter quoted people in Brown City who disagree with those complaints. Paul Gaymon, pastor of the Faith Baptist Church, has seen no cause for concern about the manure dropped by the Amish horses. “It’s just part of life,” he said. His church is located on one of the newly paved streets in the community used by the Amish when they come to town, and he commented that he has seen no damage from the steel wheels.

Angie Williamson, the owner of a video game store in the downtown, a business that the Amish do not patronize, said she does not have any Amish customers—and she does think the whole issue is ridiculous. “We’ve had Amish in our town for so many years and it’s never been a problem. I think they just need something to complain about.”

The reporter also quoted Daniel Yoder, the bishop and spokesperson for the local Amish community. “I think we should try and respect what they are saying. But at the same time, horses have been around a lot longer than cars,” he said. He has discussed the complaints with the City Manager, Mr. Holmes, but they have not yet reached a compromise. One of the proposed solutions—placing bags over the rear ends of the horses—is dangerous because they can spook the animals, which might cause accidents.

Mr. Yoder also pointed out that the roughly 65 local Amish families do contribute a lot of business to the Brown City economy—probably more than the complainers do, he suspected. He argued that while the steel wheels of their buggies can leave small lines on pavements, they cause no structural damage.

Mr. Holmes described the manure complaints as more of an issue of aesthetics than one of health. His statements to the press were pragmatic. He does not want Brown City to ban the Amish from driving into the community “because they do business in town.” It is clear he wants to try and work things out with them. An ordinance requiring horse owners to clean up the manure they produce is a possibility, but he’d rather find a compromise. “What we’d like to do is find some sort of reasonable solution that both communities can live with and proceed from there,” he said.

The Ju/’hoansi don’t worry about arguments from climate change deniers: they absorb the news, live with fickle rainfalls, and try to preserve their way of life. In fact, their society has adapted to uncertain water sources for millennia. They do not need to be convinced that adjusting to changing climate conditions is essential if they want to continue living in their rural settlements in arid northeast Namibia.

So they are taking action. The Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN), an organization run by and for the Ju/’hoansi, is participating in a grant proposal to the European Union that will help them address global climate change. Two news stories last week explained the nature of the grant and the specific intentions of the Ju/’hoansi for the uses of the money—presuming the EU does fund the proposal, which appears likely.

The project was announced during the 18th Namibian Rangeland Forum, held at a private resort in the eastern part of the country called the West Nest Lodge. Participants from rural Namibia, Europe, and as far away as Australia heard Mecki Schneider, chair of the Livestock Producers Organization, a Namibian group, present the details of a proposed N$11.6 million (Euros 820,000) project which will initiate a National Rangeland Management Policy and Strategy (NRMPS) for the nation.

A news report in the New Era, a Namibian newspaper, indicated that the purpose of the EU grant was to improve rangeland management, with a special focus on halting deforestation and meeting the effects of global climate change. Mr. Schneider emphasized that conditions for raising livestock in Namibia can be difficult, considering the country’s highly variable rainfall, soil erosion problems, and declines in the productivity of the rangelands. “These challenges are further increased by climate change,” he added.

Laura Imbuwa, the program officer for the EU delegation, expressed her enthusiasm for the goals of the project and confirmed the likely signing of the agreement for the grant to Namibia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry.

The other article in the New Era described the enthusiasm of the delegation from the NNDFN. It reported on a speech to the conference by two of the delegates. Gabriel Hipandulwa, the Programme Officer of the NNDFN and Kahepako Kakujaha, the Nyae Nyae Livestock Consultant for Planning and Grazing, explained the implications of the project for the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, the nearby N≠a Jaqna Conservancy, and the Ju/’hoansi and !Kung farmers.

The two men said that the purpose of the project is to “adapt land use to reduce the vulnerability of the indigenous San communities in Nyae Nyae and N≠a Jaqna conservancies to the impacts of climate change.” The focus of their presentation was on the threat the people feel from the changing global climate. The speakers said that the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia intends to reassess and, as much as possible, to change land uses, to reduce overgrazing, to minimize late-season hot fires, and to support local communities as they adapt their livelihoods so they can continue to survive as a viable society.

The rest of the speech by the two men gives details about the specific objectives of the NNDFN: to integrate management planning, maximize food security, and minimize the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of the Ju/’hoansi and !Kung communities. They also indicated that the NNDFN wants to improve crop and livestock production and to minimize the generation of carbon dioxide from hot, late, rangeland fires.

In addition to highlighting the awareness of the Ju/’hoansi about the importance of trying to deal with global climate changes, the news stories prompt the reader to wonder why the NNDFN is so current in its thinking, so willing to adapt and modify the approaches taken by people who still retain their love for at least some of their ancient hunter-gatherer traditions.

The Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia has a website that begins to explain why the organization is so far ahead of many other groups. It has a mission to “support and empower the San people in Namibia to improve their quality of life economically and socially including land and human rights and the sustainable use of natural resources.” The website provides a lot more information about the objectives of the organization, the history of the Ju/’hoansi people, and some of their achievements to date.

An in-depth description of the NNDFN is presented in Chapter 7 of Biesele and Hitchcock (2013), which carefully describes the history of the organization. The book gives clues as to why forward thinking about an issue like climate change can be expected, for the authors examine the problems, as well as the successes, in the history of the group.

The NNDFN, founded by non-Ju/’hoansi people in the 1980s, went through several decades of growing pains: changing names, identities, leadership and staffing. Those changes were the result of better perceptions of ways to support the Ju/’hoansi, especially the judgment that their greater involvement with the wider affairs of Namibia would benefit the people. The organization also changed from one dominated by expatriates into one run and staffed by Ju/’hoansi themselves.

Problems arose because the organization had established its base of operations at one place, but difficulties of transportation among the Ju/’hoan settlements meant that jobs and benefits went primarily to people living near there. The leaders decided to move to another location which was much nearer to the main east-west road through the middle of the Ju/’hoansi territory.

When the staff and facilities had all moved by early 1991, problems came up again: difficulties of housing, perceptions of favoritism, jealousies, and then sicknesses. The authors carefully explain the attempts to smooth out the problems, especially a major split in the staff in 1992. For a while, the organization ceased to effectively function.

But the Ju/’hoansi way of handling conflicts—carefully talking out issues, then singing and dancing to reaffirm their unity—ultimately prevailed. They eventually healed the rifts of 1992 and have continued to develop a spirit in the organization consonant with the feisty, confident attitudes of the Ju/’hoansi people themselves.

Stella Manyanya, the Regional Commissioner for Tanzania’s Rukwa Region, made a special plea last week for reducing the number of deaths of pregnant women. She issued her appeal to regional leaders at a meeting in the city of Sumbawanga, the historic center of the Fipa people—who traditionally had interesting ways of advancing the health of women.

According to a news report on Tuesday last week, Ms. Manyanya said at the meeting, “it is very unfortunate that as we sit here today, a pregnant woman and a child are dying due to preventable diseases. We have to ensure that such deaths are controlled.”

Dr. Emanuel Mtika, the Acting Regional Medical Officer, said that 55 women had died due to complications during their pregnancies last year, and in the first quarter of this year the figures were even worse: 26 deaths were recorded for just three months. He attributed the deaths to a variety of causes, such as obstructed labor, malaria, sepsis, and excessive bleeding.

The doctor indicated that the regional government has formulated plans for addressing the problem, with a goal of lowering the rate of maternal deaths from the present 138 per 100,000 live births to 90 per 100,000 by next year. He discussed improvements to medical delivery services and the construction of more health centers and dispensaries as appropriate approaches for the regional government to take.

Dr. Mtika also said that 473 children under five years of age had died in the region last year due to such causes as pneumonia, anemia, and malaria. He said the government has set a goal of reducing the infant mortality rate from the present 3.3 per 1,000 children to two per 1,000 by 2015.

“The government is keen to ensure that more lives are saved through improved health delivery and construction of health facilities including dispensaries in rural areas where most Tanzanians live,” he concluded. A newspaper editorial about the development praised the speech by Ms. Manyanya as “a brilliant, highly commendable move by the regional leader who is also a political luminary.”

The traditional Fipa people, of course, had nothing that would compare with the advances of modern medicine, but their approaches to promoting the health of pregnant women are revealing nonetheless. Willis (1980) wrote that when a pregnant women died, the other women of the community would take out their anger on everyone else.

One of his informants, an elderly man named Rafaeli Ntwenya, told Willis how Fipa women reacted when they were stressed. In the words of the Fipa gentleman, “on the death of a pregnant woman in labor …, all the women of the village run wild: it is as though war has broken out. They tear off their clothes and go naked, painting their faces like soldiers with red cosmetic (inkulo). They run about flourishing their hoes and axes. They seize and kill goats and even cows and plunder the fields… (Willis 1980, p.6).”

Obviously, Fipa women in former times were quite capable of making known their intense frustrations about the lack of effective maternal health care, but it is not clear how they express their anxieties today. While there is little doubt that Dr. Mtika’s approach is more effective than painting faces and killing goats, the traditions that Willis reported were important aspects of the dualistic beliefs of their society.

One of the causes of the May 2014 military coup in Thailand was the persistent rhetoric about corrupt governments that had tried to favor the Rural Thai people. Few commentators noted the fabled peacefulness of the Rural Thai society that Phillips (1965) had so effectively described, nor did they appear to pay much attention to more recent scholarship describing the complex issues that rural Thailand has faced, and that it continues to deal with.

A current journal article by Rigg, Promphaking, and Le Mare addresses one of the fundamental issues facing the rural villages: migration to find work. It analyzes the fundamental economic concerns of the countryside in terms that are important to rural residents—the availability of jobs, prosperity, and security.

The authors base their analysis on an important economic question. Why did Thailand so successfully enter the ranks of middle income countries about 35 years ago, but it has not been able to rise since then into the first rank of economically successful nations? Rigg et al. refer to this as the “middle income trap,” and they explain why much of the problem appears to lie in the social and economic habits and attitudes at the individual and household levels among the nation’s rural population.

By way of background, the authors explain that “middle income trap” simply refers to countries which, while they have achieved a fair amount of growth, seem to be trapped between really poor countries on the one hand and high income nations on the other. The reason that middle-income countries remain stagnant is that there is a substantial proportion of mostly rural people who, while not living in poverty any longer, remain mostly unskilled or semi-skilled. The article explores this issue by studying three villages in rural Northeast Thailand, investigating why migrants move, temporarily, to other parts of the nation for work and education, but then return to the home villages.

Rigg and his colleagues do a good job of explaining the complexities that their research has revealed. Despite differences among the three villages, agriculture remains the essence of their existence, the basic livelihood of each, notwithstanding the fact that many immigrants have returned home after years of training and work in the cities.

When the authors did their surveys in late 2012, they found that 81 percent of the households in the three villages still owned land and grew rice, at least for household consumption. The same percentage of households had members who had temporarily migrated outside the villages in search of work. Rigg et al. sent questionnaires to 105 households, 28 percent of the three villages, seeking information on social structure, land uses, assets, debts, livelihoods, and migration patterns. They followed up this survey with interviews with a sub-sample of the households. They note that they have done research in these three villages for over 20 years.

Their results are interesting. They found that only about 15 percent of the migrants from the villages were believed by the remaining family members to have left permanently, and were not expected to return. However, Rigg and his colleagues acknowledge that it may be problematic to insist on a clear distinction between permanent and temporary migrants. But this situation of temporary migration explains, to the authors, at least one reason for the “middle income trap” at the local level.

In rural Northeast Thailand, people in the early 1980s started migrating away to get jobs, earn money, and buy things they wanted, such as new houses for themselves and their families—back in the villages. Those migrants, whom the authors term first generation, were not seeking to transform their lives in the long term. Rather, they left because farm work was not returning much income and they wanted more, yet their expectation was that they would return to the home village at some point to resume farming.

The authors describe these first generation migrants most effectively: “They did in the main enjoy the challenge of working away from home, the buzz of the city and the satisfaction of making new friends from distant places, and of having ‘got by’ in a new environment (p.192).” The returned migrants were proud of their accomplishments—they had learned such skills as carpentry, machine work, welding, sewing, and so on. But in reality, they had not actually achieved skills that would lead them to better employment back in the villages.

They returned with considerable savings and went back to farm work. About 60 percent admitted they had not acquired skills that would be useful at home. More to the point, they did not aspire to any transformations of their lives. They did not expect to escape the “middle income trap.” Migration was a way of staying in the village, not a way of permanently leaving it.

Oddly, the sons and daughters of those first generation migrants, the second generation, did not have much higher aspirations. While they have achieved higher levels of education and skills, in part due to advancing state requirements for schooling, the people in this second generation themselves remain in the same fix as their parents—or even more stuck in it.

While the second generation has achieved higher skill levels, they continue to find that they are even less employable in the home villages. The authors describe what may seem surprising: that three-quarters of those second generation people who have migrated realize that their skills are quite useless in the home village. The first generation returned with at least manual skills, while the knowledge economy education and training of the second generation so far have relatively little utility back home.

These country people, like their parents before them, are not rural romantics. They don’t idealize village life. But they do realize that non-farm work in rural Thailand has become more precarious rather than less so. On the other hand, they are also aware that there is security and resilience from maintaining a presence in their former home area. The village has social and cultural attractions that the city can’t match. That said, however, there is some evidence that at least a few of the members of this second generation are showing some interest in life-long learning.

But the authors argue that, as long as the village remains a place of refuge, of return, of retirement, it will continue to form a barrier in some ways to highly skilled, high income employment for people who are so committed to Rural Thailand.

Rigg, Jonathan, Buapun Promphaking and Ann Le Mare. 2014. “Personalizing the Middle-Income Trap: An Inter-Generational Migrant View from Rural Thailand.” World Development 59 (July): 184-198

On Tuesday last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that scientists had found incontrovertible proof about the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition. Archaeologists had found, and gotten images of, the underwater remains of one of Franklin’s ships. The intriguing aspect of the news story is that it proves beyond a reasonable doubt the accuracy of Inuit oral histories, which had preserved the memory of the rough locations of the ships for nearly 170 years.

In 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from England in search of the fabled Northwest Passage in two ships, the Terror and the Erebus, with 24 officers and 110 crew members. The two ships sailed to West Greenland, sent back six men, and with a slightly reduced crew continued west into unknown Canadian Arctic waters. They disappeared from the view of Europeans. After three years of no word, the English, and others, became intrigued about the fate of the men. Myriads of expeditions were mounted over the next 30 years in search of them.

The Inuit had observed the wreckage of the ships frozen into the ice, and they would tell anyone who asked. But that didn’t stop the subsequent searches. Not only are library shelves filled with volumes by and about the expeditions searching for Franklin and his men, but many scholarly and popular versions of the history have been produced, not to mention novels, poetry, songs, paintings, and television documentaries about the story.

After a century-and-two-thirds, the drama was resurrected last week by the latest scientific discovery, prompting the Prime Minister himself to make a dramatic announcement: “This is a great historic event,” he said. The underwater archaeologist for Parks Canada, Ryan Harris, who managed the investigation this year, said that the wreck they had found, using advanced sonar technology, was “indisputably” one of the two Franklin Expedition ships. The sonar images of the underwater remains show that the main deck of the ship is still mostly intact, supporting hopes that additional remains of the expedition will be found inside it.

In addition to finding, finally, dramatic proof of what had happened, numerous observers noted the fact that nearly 170 years ago some Inuit people had seen the wrecks, observed the English sailors, and told and retold their stories of the apparent fate of the expedition. The dramatic announcement on Tuesday made it clear that Inuit oral history is remarkably accurate.

Louie Kamookak, an Inuit historian from Gjoa Haven, the community that is closest to the site of the discovered shipwreck near King William Island, has studied the fate of the Lost Franklin Expedition for 30 years, with a particular focus on the Inuit oral memoires of what had happened. The current news, he said, is “proving the Inuit oral history is very strong.”

Inuit oral tradition has preserved the memory of the two ships appearing on the northwest side of King William Island, he relates. One got crushed by the ice, while the other ship drifted southward. It floated for two more years before it finally sank too. Inuit elders told Kamookak that Europeans may have been living on the ship during the first winter, but there were no signs of human life during the second.

“For us Inuit [the news] means that oral history is very strong in knowledge, not only for searching for Franklin’s ships but also for environment and other issues,” Kamookak said. He told the Toronto Star, “We can celebrate that in our time we have found one of the ships based on Inuit theories—I’m very grateful for that.”

Dr. Doug Stenton, an archaeologist and director of heritage for the Government of Nunavut, said more or less the same thing. He indicated that the archaeological team might not have made the discovery without the oral memory of the Inuit stretching back to the time of the disaster. “It’s very satisfying to see that testimony of Inuit who shared their knowledge of what happened to the wreck has been validated quite clearly,” he said.

David Woodman, the author of a book about the Franklin Expedition, had similar praise for Inuit memory. “The Inuit are validated more than anything else,” he said. “All that really happened was it took 200 years for our technology to get good enough to tell us that Inuit were telling us the truth.”

Kamookak and Woodman admitted that there were problems with the Inuit historical memories of the fate of the expedition. Their stories have eroded over time; there have been mistranslations on the part of Europeans who have interviewed Inuit elders; understandings of units of distance have varied; and different witnesses pointed to different islands as the ones near which one of the ships supposedly lay.

Woodman said he is especially eager to learn the exact location of the newly discovered ship—a spot which Parks Canada has not yet revealed. He hopes to “reverse engineer what the Inuit actually meant, as opposed to what we were told they said.” In essence, this latest story will add substantially to our understanding of Inuit cultural knowledge, a subject at the basis of a different news story three months ago about a dramatic new mapping project of Inuit trails across the Arctic landscape.

The Times of India reported last week that Ladakh had inspired Sarvesh Shrivastava, a music composer/producer from Mumbai, to produce a new audiovisual mashup called “The Ladakh Project.” He and two others toured the area widely for two weeks in May making music, filming, photographing and recording in deserts, mountains, and next to the famous Pangong Lake on the border with Tibet.

Shrivastava, who uses the stage name SickFlip, had visited Ladakh in 2013 and had been so taken by the people and the landscape that he was determined to go back with some friends from The Outbox Project, a group of visual artists, cinematographers, and photographers whom he has known for many years. The sounds of flowing rivers, monks chanting, and babies babbling are all incorporated into the production. The Ladakh Project consists of a 45 minute visual, a music video, and a 5-track extended play work of music.

Shrivastava was tremendously inspired by the countryside and the people. “The ambiance of Ladakh had a huge impact on my sounds. During the writing process, I would often take inspiration from the massive, serene landscapes around me,” he said. He added that composing his music on his laptop in the midst of such scenery and surroundings was very different from working in his 1,000 square foot studio in the city.

Equipped with extra batteries, a pair of headphones, and a portable keyboard controller, he had the freedom to sit anywhere and let the positive vibes of the environment inspire his compositions. “Everything from my instrumentation and arrangement[s] to mix-downs took off from the environment I was in,” he added. The land inspired him to compose natural sounds that seemed to be more organic than something simply produced from a computer.

He was particularly inspired by a chance visit to a monastery in the Nubra Valley, a remote area in northern Ladakh. His group had missed the morning prayer session but the monks were quite welcoming and curious about everything the team was doing. At their request, Shrivastava explained the music he was making and showed them how he composed on his laptop. He and his team conversed with the monks “about the most unexpected things—the role of the sun, music, creative energies, the Internet these days, and the reach of supplies to small, remote areas in Ladakh.”

The Ladakh Project has received additional press coverage in recent weeks. One source reported the composer as saying, “I was consumed by the thought of capturing [Ladakh’s] beauty and [amalgamating] it with beats and sublime sounds.” He emphasized to that reporter that his normally high-energy beats just wouldn’t work. He had to take the landscape as his reference point, without any regard for what clients, corporations, or others might think.

Fortunately, a three-minute preview of the work is available on YouTube. It includes very rapidly sequenced shots of cute kids, monks conversing, desert scenery, vehicles traveling through glacier-clad mountains, and old buildings. The YouTube preview emphasizes the place of Shrivastava in the production. He is often shown speaking with Buddhist monks, walking in lunar landscapes, and sitting in front of his laptop in a variety of settings—all, of course, in microsecond shots.

Sometimes, the curious viewer might wish the composition would have paused for just a few seconds to let us gaze a bit longer at the gorgeous river, the enticing lakeshore, the magnificent mountains, and the active people. But the whole is nonetheless enticing. The music does not align with the visual imagery—nothing old fashioned like that. Instead, the music takes its own course, seeming to present an impression of Ladakh as a whole, much as the thousands of snippets of scenery seek to create, thorough their sum, a visual sense of the Ladakhi people and their land.

The 21-minute, 5-track EP is also available, without, of course, any of the video artistry—just a composition that features Shrivastava’s musical creativity. While there is a bit of thumping bass in the music, mostly the listener hears a modern interpretation of Ladakhi music and, beyond that, the inspiration of traditional Ladakh.

The EP music is intriguing. It is broken into several distinct segments. For instance, eight minutes into the production, the music dramatically shifts to a presentation of very low-pitched synthetic sounds that imitate the chanting of monks in a monastery. Then, the sounds of the monks chanting are integrated into the soundtrack. Unlike the YouTube preview, which shows many scenes per second, the music proceeds very slowly and deliberately.

The only discordant note to the production is the choice of a title. “The Ladakh Project” has been, for decades, the name that Helena Norberg-Hodge has used for her outreach work in fostering the local experiences and abilities of Ladakhis—encouraging them to cherish and maintain their own ways of doing things. The website for what is now called Local Futures: International Society for Ecology and Culture explains the wonderful work that has developed out of Norberg-Hodge’s pioneering efforts in Ladakh. It’s a shame that several press reports about Shrivastava and his current work do not mention the much older use of the term, “The Ladakh Project.”

James Suzman published an essay last week that raises a troubling question: why would a supposedly peaceful society such as the Ju/’hoansi treat animals cruelly? Suzman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times describes in some detail his observations about the San people, and particularly their uncaring and frequently hostile treatment of their dogs.

The story by the British anthropologist is intriguing. In 1995, during his fieldwork in a Ju/’hoan village in Namibia, he adopted a pet—or rather, a dog adopted him. He gave him the prosaic name “Dog.” This particular animal seemed braver than the other village canines, which tended to slink around, keeping out of sight and shying away from physical interactions with humans who would often kick them or throw stones at them.

The village dogs seemed happiest when they joined parties of humans heading out into the bush hunting or foraging—at least then, their tails would wag. Otherwise, they had to deal with their persistent hunger by scavenging scraps or hunting insects, mice, or lizards. One man said that his dog had learned to kill and eat snakes.

Dog, and the other canines in the village, were Africanis, a breed that is apparently common in that area. It is well adapted to scavenging, living with humanity, and hunting independently. His pet was slender and stood only about 18 inches at the shoulders—a relatively small dog.

Dog bonded with Suzman because the anthropologist showed some affection toward him. When the Ju/’hoan were not watching, he would give Dog leftovers from his plate and, as they became closer, he provided him with his own food bowl. Suzman evinced real affection for his pet, scratching his chest and ears as he sat curled at his feet, and Dog tried to stay with him all the time.

But the idyll didn’t last. When Suzman returned to the village from a trip, he found Dog cowering inside a thorn bush, wagging his tail, glad to see him, but too scared to come out and greet him. The author quickly realized that Dog was suffering—several patches of hair, skin, and flesh were rotting off his back and his bones were showing through. Suzman learned that some children had found an acid bottle he had left outside by mistake, and they had poured it onto some inanimate objects, then on a couple of the village dogs, to experiment with its corrosive powers. He and a friend managed to euthanize Dog and bury him.

Suzman then had a discussion with the Ju/’hoansi about what to do next. He urged that the children who had tortured the dog should be punished, but they rejected the idea. “Dog was a dog,” they told him, and the children were just demonstrating their curiosity. They had found the author’s propensity for caring for the animal strange, and the burial simply weird.

But, they reflected, they had seen the same sort of preferential treatment for dogs by other whites in southern Africa. When white ranchers drove their trucks, their dogs would sit on the passenger seats up front and the Ju/’hoansi laborers would ride in the back bed. The Ju/’hoansi were rarely allowed into the homes of the white farmers, where dogs lived indoors in luxury.

From the Ju/’hoan perspective, dogs should not be considered as humans—they are just dogs. Each species of animal, including humans, has its own customs, manners, and ways of interacting with the natural universe. Furthermore, empathy with an animal was a question of looking at reality from the perspective of that creature, not of projecting human perspectives onto it.

Their success as hunters depended on them understanding and correctly interpreting the ways of the animals they hunted—understanding their perspectives. Correctly predicting the movements and behaviors—the perspectives—of the animals made all the difference in the search for dinner. But the Ju/hoan understanding of animal ways did not extend to caring for them or feeling sorry for them. Suzman adds that other hunter-gatherers treat dogs similarly, which challenges a look into the literature on other peaceful societies.

Colin Turnbull, in his famous book The Forest People (1961), pointed out that the Mbuti were cruel toward animals. They would mock an animal that they had just killed, and would singe the feathers off a bird while it was still alive. Even though they relied on their hunting dogs, they still kicked them around.

Singer (1978) suggests that, in their tightly-knit, cooperative, sharing society, the Mbuti need an outlet for their aggressive tendencies, a “culturally constituted defense mechanism,” and the vicious beatings of their canines forms part of that outlet. Singer adds that since the Mbuti dislike any open shows of aggression or lack of harmony—which might split a band—their aggressive tendencies are displaced onto their dogs.

Briggs (1982) analyzes the frequently harsh Inuit treatment of animals differently than Singer did for Mbuti society. She reasons that contradictory, opposite values are important and constructive, at least for Inuit society—they are factors that help promote their nonviolence. As a hunting people, killing is essential, but nonviolence is an equally essential value in maintaining a society.

Contradictory values are generated in the Inuit by conflicting psychological needs which they learn to create and manage through their socializing techniques. The Inuit clearly enjoy killing—their eyes shine with excitement when they tell hunting stories—yet they react with horror, not only to the idea of killing a human but to any form of interpersonal aggression such as shouting.

The Inuit, Briggs argues, clearly associate danger with aggression, from the animal deaths that they witness around them to their own repressed hostilities toward others, and to their realization that others might reciprocate the same feelings. They could cuddle and adopt a baby animal, and moments later kill it brutally—contradictory values that, at least to them, help foster their attitudes toward human nonviolence.

Not all of the peaceful societies treat animals so harshly. The Semai (Robarchek 1977) and the Chewong (Howell 1984) believe in treating animals with respect, since the fury of a tropical storm could be the result of someone even laughing at one. The Amish take a particular interest in animals, which they see as important members of God’s creation (Hostetler 1993).

In sum, it would be convenient to assume that societies that believe in peacefulness should also treat animals nonviolently. But the literature suggests differently: values fostering peacefulness toward other humans may only be peripherally connected, if at all, with nonviolence toward animals.

It is always heartening when the news media update really important issues, such as the ways people cherish their love poetry, rather than produce more dreary stories about wars and murders, diseases and disasters. Two different reports appeared in the Philippine press last week about the ancient baybayin script, used by the Buid and a few other indigenous societies of the country to write their poetry, called ambahan, plus at times other kinds of texts.

In 1990, Gibson wrote that young Buid men traditionally ignored acts of courage and, instead, learned love poems to court women—an important aspect of their culture of peace. They used the ancient script that they preserve to help them memorize the poems, which are filled with gentle rather than aggressive images. But those conditions are changing.

The author of a 2009 blog post noted how ambahan poetry forms persist, but they are now being used to protest the practices of outsiders that are devastating Buid communities, such as mining, logging, and aggressive trespasses on native lands. A news report two years later described how the ambahan are still important expressions of feelings among the Mangyan peoples, the traditional societies of Mindoro Island, which include the Buid.

The baybayin script is used by the Tagbanwa on Palawan Island, the Buid, and their neighbors at the southern tip of Mindoro Island, the Hanunoo. All three societies preserve different variations of the written script, which derives from ancient writings used in South India called Brahmi. The baybayin consists of 17 cursive characters.

However, according to one of the news stories last week, the script is being preserved primarily by a few people in remote villages, and it is in danger of going extinct. Fely Montajes, a 40-year old Buid lady in the village of Batuili, knows and uses the Buid version of the baybayin script. She is obviously proud of her heritage: “I inherited this from my parents. This is one of the few things that is still our own,” she tells the reporter while she carves the characters on a piece of bamboo, sounding them out as she proceeds to inscribe her love poem. She adds that she learned some of the script from her father and the rest from her friends.

Buid who live in communities close to the cities are the ones in greatest danger of losing their connection with their ancient culture. Even some of the elders in the more remote communities no longer know the baybayin. An 82-year old resident of Batuili indicates that the number of people bothering to learn the script is dropping—less than a third of the elders in that village still know it. Say-an Reyes, the Batuili elder, says, “It’s important for people to learn the script [but] no one teaches [it to] the kids anymore.”

Bercelinda Babylya, a district official, describes how the script is still being maintained to some extent in the mountain communities. For many of the Buid, she says, the most important thing to focus on is obtaining food and the other basics of survival.

Emily Catapang, executive director of the Mangyan Heritage Centre, located in Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro province, has a somewhat different, and perhaps more hopeful, take on the survival of the baybayin. An important cause for her center is preserving the script, a key element in helping the Buid and the Hanunoo maintain and value their cultures. The Centre has people teaching the Hanunoo version of the script in 10 different schools.

She points out that some of the elders who know the script only use it for signing their names, but in parts of Mindoro there are signs on hospitals and markets written with it. The Centre is reaching out in other ways to promote the cause among the Buid and Hanunoo, such as through writing contests and reading traditional ambahan poetry. Also, people visit colleges, schools, and institutions around the country with outreach messages about it. And, in Batuili, Ms. Mantajes tries in her own way to reach out to others, encouraging the Buid to cherish their script.

A different Philippine news source reported last week on a couple baybayin documents treasured by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila, the oldest university in the country. The National Archives of the Philippines has just declared that two of their 17th century baybayin documents are National Cultural Treasures.

Evidently, those old baybayin documents were not love poems. The two that were celebrated last week were actually deeds of sale produced during the early period of Spanish colonization. Professor Regalado Trota Jose, director of the UST Archives, explained that the documents provide glimpses into the development of the baybayin script.

Also, they highlight the fact that women in ancient Philippine society had the same ability as men to buy and sell land. The two surviving deeds of sale, written in baybayin, date from 1613 and 1635. Prof. Jose explained that the baybayin was used in the Philippines before Islam reached the islands and before the Spanish entered the land. It has 14 consonants and three vowels, he said, but it is not really an alphabet. Archaeologists have discovered a variety of ancient artifacts with baybayin inscriptions on them.

Some Filipinos are trying to resurrect the ancient baybayin script through their artistic expressions. For instance, Christian Cabuay, who was born in the Philippines but raised in the San Francisco Bay area, is instructing and propagating his artistic visions of baybayin as Filipino calligraphy. He demonstrates, lectures, paints, hold exhibitions, and, as one website indicates, he “tirelessly [advocates] a reawakening of the [Philippine] indigenous spirit through decolonization and Baybayin.”

Last Wednesday, a U.S. appeals court reversed the hate crimes convictions of Sam Mullet, Sr., and his followers, a decision that Donald Kraybill compared to “splitting legal hairs over Amish beards.”

Donald Kraybill A three-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, decided that the federal judge in Cleveland had erred in his instructions to the jury at the prominent trial in 2012 by providing an overly expansive definition of hate crimes. The defendants did not deny that they had attacked Amish men and women in 2011, forcibly cutting the men’s beards and the women’s hair. Long hair and beards are extremely important to Amish women and men. The government attorneys had then prosecuted, and convicted, Mr. Mullet and his followers at the trial in 2012 based on the provisions of the hate crimes law.

The appeals court focused narrowly on the definition given in the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. News stories last week indicated that this decision represents the first appellate court case relating to a religious hate crime under the terms of that federal law.

The crux of the recent court decision is the meaning of the phrase “because of” in the law. The defendants argued that, in order for the attacks to have been hate crimes, the law requires that they must have been motivated because of the religion of their victims. The defendants maintained that there were many other family, personal, and social issues involved. In essence, the Amish faith of the victims was only a part of the issue, they argued.

At the 2012 trial, the district court judge instructed the jury to convict if they decided that religion was a “significant motivating factor” in the attacks. Two of the three judges on the appeals court panel were troubled because the phrase “because of,” required by the federal statute, was not used by the district court judge. The phrase “because of” in the statute seemed different to the appellate court judges than the “significant motivating factor” charge to the jury by the 2012 trial judge.

To someone not trained in legal matters, as Kraybill suggests, it may seem like splitting legal hairs. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote for the majority, “how should a jury measure whether a specific motive was significant in inspiring a defendant to act? Is a motive significant if it is one of three reasons he acted? One of ten? ‘Uncertainty of [this] kind cannot be squared with the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard.'”

However, one of the three appellate court judges, Edmund A. Sargus, Jr., disagreed with the other two. He argued that the “because of” phrase in the 2009 statute is, by its very nature, complex, and that religion was not necessarily the only issue causing the attack. The courts should apply what the law profession, in cases such as this, refers to as the “but for” test: the assailants would not have attacked the victims “but for” their religion as Amish people.

In essence, was the religion of the victims the primary reason for the attacks, or were other factors also very important. Judge Sargus argued that the interpretation of the appellate court majority requires that the victims would have been attacked even if they had not been Amish. He writes that “no such evidence” exists to maintain such a position. They would not have been attacked if they had not been Amish, he believes.

On Friday last week, Donald Kraybill, noted expert on Amish society, published an essay reviewing the ramifications of the decision. His analysis focuses on the motivations of the attackers. Were they motivated by family troubles, religious differences, or interpersonal conflicts? He makes it clear that the district court judge in 2012 used a broader definition of the motives necessary to produce a hate crime, and the appellate court panel was more restrictive.

The conclusion to his essay suggests that he disagrees with the ruling. He argues that if the government does not challenge the decision, prosecuting hate crimes in the future will become more difficult, since making a case, as the Cincinnati panel decision requires, based on a single, overriding motive is quite difficult.

Mr. Mullet and seven of his followers will remain in prison because of their convictions for lesser crimes, while eight of his convicted followers have already been released from their one-year sentences or are about to be released from two-year convictions. The government may decide to appeal last week’s court ruling, drop the case, or perhaps call for a new trial. It was clear from a news story last month that even the one year imprisonment made a significant impression on at least some of the convicted Amish people.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Gender Inequality among the Lepchas [journal article review]

Horse Manure

The Ju/’hoansi Address Global Climate Change

Deaths of Pregnant Fipa Women

The Trap of Rural Thailand [journal article review]

The Fate of the Lost Franklin Expedition

The Ladakh Project: An Audiovisual Mashup

The Peaceful Ju/’hoansi Mistreat their Dogs

The Baybayin of the Buid

Amish Hate Crimes Convictions Reversed

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