Peaceful Societies

Mark Sicoli is using a path-breaking linguistics analysis technique to better understand the ways that gestures and behaviors used by speakers of a Zapotec language affect their speech. He and a team of student assistants at Georgetown University are examining 40 hours of videos of people speaking Lachixio, one of the Zapotec languages, as they socialize, interact with visitors, or just eat dinner. In essence, the team members are analyzing the social contexts of speech in Zapotec villages.

“These are not setups,” Professor Sicoli says in an article published about his work last week. “This is just what people would be doing if they were just going about their normal stuff. Through all this work, we get the flavor of the language—not just the words and rules but also the flavor of how it gets used in social life—which are, in a sense, another level of rules for the use of language.” Sicoli is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The Linguistic Society of America considers Lachixio to be an endangered language. It is spoken by about 3,000 speakers, concentrated in four towns in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Prof. Sicoli’s group, named the Multimodal Interaction in Meso-America, is analyzing the videos, dating from the summers of 2008 and 2009, to determine the ways the language, gestures, and other behavior patterns interact in everyday usage. This is referred to as multimodal analysis, and it is based on the theory that language is broader than just speech.

Prof. Sicoli was introduced to Lachixio while working on a masters degree project in that part of Mexico. He then learned the language. “I found the people fascinating and the languages very fascinating to me,” he said. He explained to the reporter from The Hoya, the Georgetown University student newspaper, that the rising importance of spoken Spanish is symbolic to the Mexican people of their nationalism, but this threatens the continuing importance of local languages.

Sicoli’s work is part of the Documenting Endangered Languages Program, an archive of 2,500 phrases spoken in the 103 towns where people speak one of the Zapotec-Chatino languages. Lachixio is one of about 26 languages in that language family. But documenting the languages “doesn’t capture language in its natural ecology,” Sicoli contends.

Researchers have focused on documenting words and phrases, he says, but “looking at language in use and how people are using that to coordinate their activities in everyday life has been mostly absent, but it’s a growing area. It’s a cutting-edge area of linguistics,” he argues. His work is supported, and encouraged, by both the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.

“This is really the future of documentation—how language is used to do all of the things that we do as people—because it’s such a part of everything we do,” the professor says. But he emphasizes that he does not think he is saving the language. That is really up to the people in the Zapotec communities. He trains native Zapotec speakers to do linguistics work and develop their own teaching materials. He hopes his work will help facilitate their own efforts to use and maintain their languages—which will presumably strengthen their cultures.

The government of Sikkim announced last week that out of the 401 school students who had taken exams last December to apply for scholarships, the top three winners were all Lepchas.

Mongit Lepcha, from the Mangan Senior Secondary School, won the top score in the Chief Minister’s Special Meritorious Scholarship Scheme (CMSMSS). Pema Laden Lepcha from the Gor Secondary School won second place, and Tendong Lepcha from the Navey Primary School, North came in third. Out of the 129 students who qualified for the state scholarships, 103 will continue their studies at public schools in Sikkim, while 26 plan to attend schools outside the state.

Aside from the remarkable fact of Lepcha children gaining all three top scholarship honors—Lepchas number less than 10 percent of the population of Sikkim—the obvious question is why. Why are they doing so well in school? What is the place of education in their society?

From Gorer (1967) we learn that the Lepchas take the education and socialization of their children seriously. He indicates that children are trained to respect the sleeping places of their grandparents, but other than that they learn, by copying the behavior of others, to be highly respectful, particularly of older people.

The Lepchas teach their young people proper behaviors through the examples they set, but they also inflict discipline on children who disobey their rules, punishments which can be severe if they commit serious crimes such as stealing, insulting others, spoiling property that doesn’t belog to them, lying, quarreling, or drawing a knife in anger. Such major infractions of their rules can result in adults thrashing them or meting out other frightening disciplinary actions.

The Lepchas believe that children are either born with a good heart or a bad heart, and those afflicted with the latter must be corrected—the badness eliminated before it is too late. “Unless this badness is eradicated by education, especially from the parents, the child will become a socially undesirable adult,” Gorer writes (p. 305).

Gorer describes the ways the Lepcha instruct their boys and girls to do the work they will take up as they grow older, though that section on Lepcha education may have become somewhat outdated in the decades since the book was written. Their children now go to schools. Enthusiastically.

A magazine feature article published a few months after the September 2011 earthquake, which devastated most of the Lepcha villages in northern Sikkim, focused on the destruction of schools. And more to the point, the article, written by Ratna Bharali Talukdar, emphasized how important schooling is to the Lepcha and the other people living in that area of the state. The government urged that damaged schools should reopen or relocate to other facilities as quickly as possible.

Education officials took the issue of schooling seriously. Some schools quickly added temporary sheds to replace portions of their buildings that had been damaged. For schools that were completely destroyed, the authorities made other arrangements.

For instance, as of December 2011, a private school in Chungthang, a major town in northern Sikkim, was teaching its courses in the camp of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. A girl said she walked four km. along a rubble-strewn road to attend classes. The author asked her about her long trek to school each day but she expressed happiness just to be there. “Our homes got damaged but, just see, my books and uniform are fine. I love coming to school,” she said.

On November 8, 2011, two months after the quake, a different government secondary school recorded the presence of 18 new pupils, 13 of whom were girls. The headmaster of the school, Sita Ram Singh, told the author, “This provisional arrangement has ensured the prompt restoration of schooling after the tremors, which is very positive. Our secondary school is now running on two shifts to accommodate the new students.”

Lepcha Aachulay magazine, which is known for its effective stories about the Lepcha culture, published an article last October about the history of education among the Lepcha people. The author, Kachyo Lepcha, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Lepcha at the Sikkim Government College, Gyalshing, opens his article by writing, “Education is, perhaps, the only means of preparation for a better life, society or Nation.”

These expressions of enthusiasm suggest why those top three students in the government scholarship competition were young Lepchas.

Last Thursday, the government of the UK hosted an international conference on the illegal trade of wildlife, but protesters greeted delegates with placards stating “Botswana: Bushmen hunters are not poachers.” In May last year, according to the conference website, His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, along with several African leaders developed the idea for the “London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, 2014” as an approach to eradicating the traffic in animal species that are threatened with extinction.

The aim was to seek high-level political commitments that would address three specific issues: strengthening law enforcement, reducing demand for wildlife products, and supporting sustainable livelihoods for communities involved with the illegal animal trade. Conference delegates primarily focused on elephants, rhinos, and tigers, charismatic mega fauna whose body parts are particularly sought after in the black market. The Duke of Cambridge, as well as the Prince of Wales, attended and spoke.

The Ecologist, a British environmental magazine/website, reported that loud protesters chanting slogans and carrying placards greeted the delegation from Botswana, including President Ian Khama. The magazine website reported that the Bushmen, known to scholars as the G/wi and other San societies, have been hassled and persecuted by the Khama government, which claims to be protecting wildlife in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). At the same time, the government is leasing out land in the preserve for fracking, and is preparing to begin diamond mining.

The story reviews a 2006 High Court ruling in Botswana in favor of the G/wi, and the ways the government continues, despite the ruling, to discriminate against their minority indigenous citizens. It requires them to apply for permits to enter their ancestral lands in the CKGR, a policy it refers to as “pass laws,” referring to the recent minority regime in South Africa and its repressive approaches to its majority African citizens.

The boycott on travel to Botswana, launched by Survival International, the UK based international minority rights NGO, is apparently become more successful. Thousands of people have agreed to boycott travel to that country until it ceases its repression of the San people. The boycott has been supported by celebrities such as Gillian Anderson, Quentin Blake, Joanna Lumley, Sophie Okanedo, and Mark Rylance.

The Ecologist quoted Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International, as saying, “President Khama should not hide the persecution of the Bushmen behind the mask of conservation. To ban the Bushmen from hunting while at the same time opening up the reserve to fracking and mining is sheer hypocrisy.”

Police last week identified a man whom they accused of shooting a horse that was pulling an Amish family in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, back in November. The story highlights the continuing difficulties that some Amish have in dealing with their neighbors.

On Sunday evening about 9:00 p.m., November 24, 2013, an Amish family—father, mother, and their three children—were driving their buggy north on North Ronks Rd, in East Lampeter Township when a car drove past them also heading north. They heard what they thought was a firecracker. They were about one-quarter mile north of the intersection with U.S. Rt. 30, one of the main thoroughfares for Amish tourism in the county, heading toward their farmhouse near the village of Ronks.

The horse bolted but the man was able to get it under control. Only when they reached home did they realize that the horse was bleeding from its mouth. They spotted a wound in its chest and contacted a veterinarian, but before help arrived, the horse had died.

Lieutenant Robin Weaver from the East Lampeter Township Police Department, describing the incident to the news media, said that it is not uncommon for motorists to harass the Amish by throwing eggs, other food items, and firecrackers as they drive past their buggies. “They’re an easy target. They can’t fight back,” Weaver said. But in his 30 years of police work, he couldn’t recall another incident comparable to the horse shooting.

On Wednesday last week, police finally identified the accused assailant—Timothy Antonio Diggs, Jr, a 22 year old man who is also from Ronks. Police charged him with five counts of reckless endangerment and animal cruelty. At the time he was charged with the drive-by shooting of the Amish horse, he was already incarcerated in the Lancaster County prison on two separate burglary charges, one of which involved stolen guns.

The police did not reveal to the media if any of the stolen firearms found in the suspect’s apartment had been used to kill the horse in November, nor did they indicate if they had determined a motive for the shooting.

Although Lancaster county is home to thousands of Amish families, it can be hard to imagine why the “English” would harass them, as Lieutenant Weaver indicated. The police officer suggested that one reason may be their beliefs in pacifism. Perhaps when the case goes to a court trial, the nature of Mr. Diggs’ attitudes toward the Amish will become clear.

Since he is from the same village, he may know some of the Amish families in his community. According to the Wikipedia, Ronks has several Amish-themed restaurants, shops, and attractions. With a 2010 census population of only 362, many of the residents doubtless know one another.

Kraybill (1989) throws some possible light on the situation in Lancaster County. He writes that relations between the Amish and their non-Amish, “English,” neighbors have gradually become more distant as the decades have passed. One hundred years ago, rural Amish and English would have all sent their children to the same schools.

Before rural schools were consolidated, the kids would have grown up as acquaintances and friends. Amish men served on the boards of the one-room rural schools that children from both groups attended. They no longer do because the Amish refuse to allow their children to be bussed to schools outside their immediate communities.

Furthermore, the economies of the Amish farmers used to be integrated with those of the English, but that integration has lessened in some ways during the course of the 20th century as more and more Amish have also opened businesses. They use many products and services from the wider society, but their lives in some ways have become more remote from those of their neighbors.

Amish farmers can now purchase their supplies from Amish-owned farm supply companies. They can buy implements, dry goods, and groceries from Amish-owned stores—and they will do so. In sum, their day-to-day market transactions have moved from the broader county economy into the Amish enclave.

Kraybill points out that the Amish do, of course, participate to some extent in social activities that include the majority society, such as the volunteer fire companies that serve all rural areas of the county. They may attend some public events, such as baseball games, and they may travel to public parks or the Philadelphia Zoo for outings.

It is not yet clear if any of that explains why a lone gunman should take out his feelings on an Amish horse.

National Geographic covered a lot of familiar ground in its recent news report on the Nubians of Egypt, but it also included some interesting information about Nubian culture and current affairs.

The journalist writing for the Geographic, Peter Schwartzstein, begins his story by recounting his meeting with Fatma Emam Sakory. She arrived late. When she finally got there, she recounted the racial taunts and abuses she had just suffered as she hurried through downtown Cairo to the appointment.

A prominent Nubian activist and researcher who was featured in the news last month, Ms. Sakory was justifiably angry. “You’re black—who’d even want to look at you?” one man taunted after she reacted negatively to his advances.

She tells the journalist about the importance of music to the Nubians. School children join the elderly in singing songs of sorrow for the land along the Nile from which they have been exiled. “We sing of the trees, we sing of the river,” Ms. Sakory tells him. Despite the fact that she has no personal memory of Old Nubia, she remains a fervent advocate of the Nubian right to return—to lands near the Nile from which their parents and grandparents were exiled in the 1960s.

One hopeful note in the article is the fact that the new constitution of Egypt, passed overwhelmingly by a referendum a few weeks ago, contains an article that pledges “to bring back the residents of Nubia to their original areas and develop them within ten years.” It’s just one point in a large and complex document, but it gives the Nubians hope for eventual changes for the better. Of course, it will be up to elected—or appointed—governments over the coming years to implement that constitutional provision.

The Geographic piece includes some interesting facts about the Nubians. It indicates that Nubian activists estimate their population at around 300,000 people in Egypt. It reports that the Egyptian military used Nubians who could speak their language fluently as code talkers during the 1973 war against Israel—kind of like the famed Native-American Code Talkers, such as the Navajos, who communicated in their languages for the U.S. military during World War II.

Mr. Schwartzstein does more than provide facts. He emphasizes Nubian distinctiveness. He writes that “their language skills and famous amiability have enabled them to play an outsized role in Egypt’s tourist sector.”

He describes the enthusiasm for Nubian culture that others share with Ms. Sakory. Yahia Mohammed, who is a Nubian English to Arabic translator, says, “aside from the emotions and the feelings of yearning that my generation have developed for Nubia, I believe there is so much potential.”

Another, Mustafa El Shorbgy, a civil servant, rhapsodizes about the role that Nubia can play in relations with the peoples to the south. “Nubia will be like a door for all of Africa,” he argues.

As one might expect from National Geographic, the story on the NGS website includes a number of effective images of the Nubian people.

Inuit girls and women are the victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking, both in Nunavut and in major cities, according to a revealing 146 page report prepared by a Canadian consulting firm.

Helen Roos, President of Roos-Remillard Consulting Services, recently released her report, “Service and Capacity Review for Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking in Nunavut,” which she prepared for the Canadian Department of Justice. It has received wide coverage in the Canadian press over the past couple of weeks.

Ms. Roos indicates that the Inuit are especially vulnerable to these crimes because of the poverty, levels of abuse, and housing shortages in Inuit communities. Those conditions encourage some females to allow themselves to be lured into situations that can become quite difficult. In some cases, it appears from the stories as if the families of the girls are complicit in permitting their daughters to become involved in dangerous activities.

Not surprisingly, Internet social media represent one of the places where exploiters lure vulnerable women and children into trouble. Some of the publicity about the report has irritated defenders of the Inuit society. However, Ms. Roos hopes that the controversy will prompt more community awareness of the growing problems. The report itself, and an annex consisting of detailed case studies, are available on the website of the consulting firm.

Nunatsiaq Online provides an effective overview of the report. A child sells herself for money, with the permission of her mother. An adult woman forces an 11-year old to perform sexual favors for drugs, liquor, and cash. The report presents dozens of disturbing stories such as those.

The study was based on several sources: the RCMP, anecdotal stories, and information obtained from about 40 Inuit living in the Ottawa area. There, according to Ms. Roos, the Inuit “reported experiences of grooming, baiting, conning and exploitation to perform forced sex work, either at the hands of their common law partner, boyfriend, parent or pimp.”

Sex criminals often threaten their victims to not tell anyone about their experiences, according to Ms. Roos, so they usually do not want the police to find out. They are hesitant to even meet with social workers, since those people are then obligated to inform the police. For those reasons, “Inuit represent one of the most vulnerable populations in Canada” for sexual exploitation and human trafficking, the report argues.

Part of the problem is the history of family abuse, violence, overcrowding, and homelessness among the Inuit themselves. Especially in small communities, sexual predators, according to the report, can be “a parent, spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, friend or employer who exploits a youth or adult, either for forced labour, forced sex or both.”

During the course of her research, the author discovered someone trying to sell an Inuk infant on Facebook. The RCMP reacted immediately, but would not provide further information back to the consulting firm. Ms. Roos discovered that a man had staked out a market in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, and had offered money to the mother of one baby for her child.

The report makes numerous recommendations, such as increased training, development, and funding to better protect children and young people, more effective public awareness, and programs and services based right in the Inuit communities. “People need to start connecting the dots, they need to stop being so complacent, particularly where children are concerned,” Ms. Roos writes.

According to one news story, statistical reporting of human trafficking in Canada is inadequate. But some social workers see the report as most useful. Peter Dudding, Director, Children and Family Services for the government of Nunavut, cautiously praises the new study. “Helen’s [report] is the first work of its kind that I’m aware of … to really be asking these kinds of questions,” he says, though he indicates he is “not directly aware” of the trafficking she describes.

The director of an Inuit addiction and treatment facility in Ottawa, Ben Bridgstock, said that Inuit females are especially vulnerable to sex trafficking, especially when they move south to major Canadian cities. “If the report leads to a more formalized investigation, hard facts and figures, that would be brilliant,” he says.

The New Straits Times, an English language newspaper from Malaysia, sent a journalist to the Semai village of Pos Betau in the Cameron Highlands last week to report on her impressions. As so often happens when people leave the comforts of urban life and venture into a remote area, the journalist was struck by the absence of good electronic communications.

The Cameron Highlands is a mountainous plateau region of Pahang State that was established as a hill station by the British nearly 100 years ago. In areas such as Pos Betau, communicating with the outside world by telephone or the Internet is not always easy. The service for both in that village is minimal, residents told the reporter, but the people often preferred to communicate face to face anyway.

Punitha Kumar, the journalist, spoke with a man who said that Internet access is possible in the village at the state-run primary school, while only certain pockets in the community have phone service. The head of the village, Ahmad Selalu, told the reporter that he hopes the state government will improve the telephone system.

Mr. Selalu said that when villagers tried to place calls on their mobile phones, they had to wait five seconds after they made a comment before the party they were speaking with could hear it and respond. He hoped that the government would rectify the problem. He added, however, that the people were content with their own company, with playing outdoor games, and with live music.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal Press has announced the publication of the Ju/’hoan Children’s Picture Dictionary, for 250 South African rands (U.S. $22.53), by Tsemkgao Fanie Cwi and Kerry Jones. The book will probably make important contributions to Ju/’hoansi educational programs.

According to the announcement of the book on the website of the press, the wire bound, 134 page volume represents an attempt to give Ju/’hoansi children printed material inspired by local literature in their own language.

The publisher’s website states that the work is trilingual, in English, Afrikaans, and the Tsumkwe dialect of Ju/’hoansi. The Ju/’hoan people themselves designed and laid out the work, choosing the themes and lexical entries they wanted to represent their community and their traditions. They created the illustrations and artwork, which convey their views of their daily lives.

In the words of the website, the entries provide “rare and fascinating insight into the staple artefacts and traditions of San life.” The work includes a CD with Ju/’hoan speakers pronouncing their words. The CD also includes photo and video galleries plus information about the Ju/’hoan people. And, the package includes a printable language game.

“This unique and special project/book is a must for anyone with an interest in San life, the San people and their communities,” the university press concludes.

Background about this effort can be gained from The Ju/’hoan San of Nyae Nyae and Namibian Independence, the exhaustive recent work by Megan Biesele and Robert K. Hitchcock. The book emphasizes the important decision by the Ju/’hoansi living in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy 25 years ago that their children should be taught in their own language in their schools, using materials printed in Ju/’hoansi.

The authors tell us that the Village Schools Project, developed in 1989 by educational consultants and the Ju/’hoan people, was the vehicle for realizing their aims for educating their children. An essential aspect of the VSP was to locate the schools, as much as possible, right in the rural Ju/’hoansi settlements themselves instead of in Tsumkwe, the central town of the region. Ju/’hoansi thinking was that it was essential for their educational programs to be based on, and developed out of, their traditional, permissive, hands-on approaches to teaching kids skills necessary for life in the bush.

Their educational system had worked, for them, for millennia. It emphasized the processes of oral, creative group learning. The VSP project captured the Ju/’hoansi emphasis on having high standards for their schools. They wanted their children to have printed materials in Ju/’hoansi such as folktales, histories, primary school readers, the texts of songs, and dictionaries. Their children would learn how to get along in the modern world, but the skills they absorbed would be based on their own culture and values.

Although the two authors express optimism about the schools in their book, a news story in July 2011 pointed out that there are still serious problems with schooling in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy—truancy, lack of materials, and difficulties in teaching the children in Ju/’hoansi.

The publication of this new dictionary suggests that the people are still striving to improve their education programs and that at least the difficulties of teaching the children literacy, in their own language, may soon be solved.

The role of rice in the diet, culture, economy, and politics of Thailand received renewed attention in recent weeks as the country prepared for its national elections. The current political dispute in Thailand, though mostly peaceful, has garnered international news for several months focusing on the rural/urban divide in the nation.

The Khaleej Times, a daily newspaper from the UAE, published an article on January 17th about the history of rice in Southeast Asia. Rahul Goswami, a Unesco expert on cultural heritage, described the antiquity of rice cultivation in much of Southeast Asia. He pointed out that rice terraces in Bali and in the Philippines are considered by Unesco to be international cultural treasures, and there are records of rice cultivation going back 4,000 years and more.

But of most interest are his comments about rice culture among the Rural Thai. The author indicates that the rural people in Khon Kaen province, north of Bangkok in central Thailand, consider their region to be the birthplace of rice cultivation. Local people will tell visitors that rice was first cultivated there 5,500 years ago.

Goswami writes that the language, rituals, traditions and festivals of that province all celebrate rice. In Khon Kaen, conversations, legends, and lore focus on rice cultivation. It is what the writer refers to as “the essence of resilience.” He adds that farmers still place bamboo traps, whose designs have not changed for thousands of years, in the sluices of irrigation channels. They still yield fish when irrigation gates are opened and water pours into the rice fields.

An article published last Thursday in the U.S. cable television news channel CNBC.com updated the story by examining the role of rice in Thailand’s current political uproar. The issue is a rice subsidy program, which the author claims has been part of the reason for the government’s massive appeal in Rural Thailand. At the same time, perhaps predictably, it has been attacked by anti-government people as corrupt and economically unjustified.

The author of the article, Leslie Shaffer, describes the rice subsidies as “an expensive boondoggle.” She writes that it is an important factor in the current political strife. But she predicts that ending the subsidy will be a difficult option. However, not once in her economic analysis does she compare the controversial rice subsidies in Thailand with agricultural support and subsidy programs in other countries such as the United States.

The thrust of the criticism is that rice exports have declined during the duration of the current subsidies. She quotes Vichai Sriprasert, the CEO of a big rice exporter, Riceland International, as saying that the quantity of rice exports has declined by 35 percent and revenues by 25 percent during just the first year of the program. “We used to be the rice champion of the world,” he told the writer, but Thailand is no longer the world’s leading rice exporter.

The argument continues that the subsidy program was intended to pay farmers for their rice at higher than market values, to stimulate rural incomes and consumption, but a lack of funds has delayed payments to them. Farmers who are normally strong supporters of the current government are going into debt. The anti-government factions in Bangkok are demanding an end to what they consider to be corrupt populism and vote buying.

Vichai, who admits that he would like to see the current government out of power, believes that the subsidies distort the market, especially since the program is badly managed. He says that a third of the $24 billion in funding has been lost through corruption and stealing, and only one third of that amount has actually found its way to farmers. “It’s a huge problem,” he said.

Ms. Shaffer, however, does write that the populist program may have helped minimize rural poverty, which peaked at 42.6 percent of the population in 2000. Poverty declined by 2011 to about 13.2 percent, according to figures from the World Bank. Many of those poor people live in rural sections of the country.

Financial analysts consulted by CNBC did not agree on the impacts of ending the subsidies, whether or not the current government survives the challenges of the moment. According to one analyst, Nirgunan Tiruchelvam, Rural Thai farmers have not really increased their rice consumption, despite the claims of subsidy supporters. He added that eliminating government stockpiles of rice will not lead to increases in its price.

Although a government opponent, Vichai admitted that “obviously, the farmer should be helped. Subsidies should go directly to supplement their income. We call it income support rather than price support. That would not distort the market.”

A Wikipedia article, “Rice Production in Thailand,” like the article in Khaleej Times, describes the strong ties between rural culture and rice farming. For instance, it mentions a Cat Procession in central Thailand, where villagers carry around a cat and throw water at it, in the folk belief that having the animal cry will bring fertility to the rice crop.

The Wikipedia also describes how farming in Thailand over the past 50 years has been transformed, mostly due to government policies and World Bank funding of infrastructure projects such as dams, canals, ditches and locks. With the availability of improved strains of rice, the introduction of fertilizers, and new farming equipment, the owners of larger farms became more and more successful. They were able to buy out the smaller farms, driving many farmers out of business.

In essence, peasant farmers who used to own their own farms and were income and food self sufficient were forced to sell their land. They became tenant workers on the farms owned by others. These changes have been managed by urban people and elites who wanted Thai rice to compete in world markets. The overall economy of Thailand grew, while many rural Thai peasants became impoverished victims.

The Digital Journal, an Internet news service based in Canada, published an opinion piece last week about a British Library project to archive in digital format the artifacts of written Lepcha culture. Fortunately, the story provides a link to the British Library website where one can find more information about the project and the actual texts of the documents themselves—for those who can read Lepcha.

The project is based on the conviction that it is important to save, through digital means, publications in rare and endangered scripts, where the languages and cultures are threatened with being forgotten and lost. Dr. Heleen Plaisier has devoted a lot of scholarly effort to Lepcha language, culture, and bibliography, and she has been the driving force in digitizing the Lepcha works for the library. She has a PhD from Leiden University and now has a position as a visiting scholar at the University of St. Andrews.

The British Library website gives an effective perspective on the scope of the Lepcha project. It indicates that many Lepcha are losing interest in their own language and are beginning to forget their traditions and culture since they are now a small minority in their native Sikkim.

The written Lepcha language was developed in the 18th century. It is still used in textbooks published by government agencies and in privately published magazines and journals that consciously are trying to keep the language and culture alive.

The manuscripts that the British Library has digitized represent artifacts that will, hopefully, also help to preserve the cultural traditions of the Lepcha people. Many of those texts identified for preservation so far were written in the second half of the nineteenth century. A lot reflect Buddhist interests, but some incorporate older Lepcha traditions. The project, in the words of the website, “is expected to shed light on the nature of indigenous Lepcha religious beliefs and the spread of Buddhism in the area.”

Dr. Plaisier indicates that she has gained access to a number of collections in both Sikkim and, to the south, the Darjeeling District of India’s West Bengal state. Families have allowed her to see and study unique Lepcha manuscripts in their private archives. In one case, she saw a collection of 30 manuscripts in a single house; in others, one or two manuscripts. She believes that about 10 Lepcha families around Kalimpong hold one or two manuscripts each.

But the collections are not just held in the hands of families. The privately owned Lepcha Museum in Kalimpong is believed to own approximately 60 Lepcha manuscripts. Dr. Plaisier’s grant from the British Library was intended to promote the recording and digitizing of these priceless manuscripts. The Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok in Sikkim is the local institutional partner for the project.

The grant-holder writes that many of the original manuscripts are very fragile. They are written on paper and have suffered from insects, moisture, and smoke damage. Although the owners may try to care for their artifacts, many do not have the means to archive them properly in climate controlled conditions for long-term preservation. Many Lepchas have lost interest in their cultural heritage, which makes the preservation of the heirlooms of even greater importance for those who really are trying to keep alive their written language.

The project has resulted in 40 Lepcha manuscripts becoming fully digitized, copies of which are deposited in the British Library and the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology. The manuscripts can also be studied through links on the website to each of the different collections, and then to the actual manuscripts within the collections. The survey identified seven collections with 155 manuscripts, plus two further collections holding about 120 additional works.

Beyond that, at least two additional collections may hold approximately 420 more manuscripts. Dr. Plaisier learned, in the course of her study, that it may be difficult to gain access to those collections, even in the interests of preserving them for future use by Lepcha students and scholars. “During this project it became obvious that many Lepcha manuscripts are zealously protected both by their owners and by socio-cultural organisations from interference by outsiders,” she writes.

Unfortunately, unrest both in Sikkim and in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal brought her project to an early close and forced the cancellation of a second research trip.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Zapotec Linguistics Analysis

Schooling for the Lepchas

Endangered Species and the San

Drive-by Horse Shooting

Nubians Recognized in Egyptian Constitution

Inuit Sex Trafficking

The Semai of Pos Betau

New Dictionary for Ju/’hoansi Children

Rural Thai Culture of Rice Farming

Preserving Lepcha Culture

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