Peaceful Societies

“Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace,” wrote the great Zapotec president of Mexico, Benito Juárez. Wendy White Polk opined in an El Paso blog post last week that a lot of Americans, as well as many Mexicans, have been influenced by the wisdom of that famous president and national leader.

Ms. Polk, celebrating the memory of Juárez, compares him to Abraham Lincoln. The two presidents were contemporaries in the 1860s, and Juárez has a stature in Mexico comparable to Lincoln’s in the U.S. Both leaders were born into humble circumstances, Lincoln in a log cabin in Kentucky, Juárez in a rural Zapotec Indian village in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico.

Appropriately enough, Juárez and Lincoln maintained relationships of respect with one another during their respective presidencies, and they supported each other on several occasions. Lincoln sent Juárez a message in 1861 saying that he hoped “for the liberty of .. your government and its people.” In return, Juárez refused to recognize the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and Lincoln supported Juárez in his war against France, which had invaded Mexico and captured Mexico City in 1863.

Both leaders have been memorialized with many statues, though not all are situated in their own countries. The Mexican cities of Ciudad Juárez, directly across the Rio Grand from El Paso, and Tijuana have statues of Lincoln. Similarly, there are statues of Juárez in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. El Paso has not had a monument to the Mexican president, though one is in the works, which is the purpose of Ms. White’s blog post.

Sculptors John Houser and his son Ethan Houser have been working on one, and they visited El Paso to unveil a clay model of the statue they hope to complete for Juárez. Instead of a grandiose monument, with the hero perched high on a commanding pedestal, they plan a statue that will be only slightly larger than life. Juárez will be portrayed sitting on a bench next to a boy, who turns out to be the president himself as a youngster.

The design is intended to allow visitors to sit beside Juárez and have their pictures taken next to him. As long as funding is made available, the sculptors feel it will take about a year and a half to produce the final bronze sculpture. They hope that the statue will be installed at the Chamizal National Memorial, an urban park in El Paso that commemorates the peaceful resolution in 1963 of an international border dispute between Mexico and the U.S. that had stretched back for a century. It sounds like a fitting spot for a monument to Juárez.

Ms. White’s blog post includes contact information for those who would like to contribute to the costs of the Juárez monument in El Paso.

July is a month for patriotism—at least, it is a time for celebration and introspection—among Canadians, Americans, the French, and the Inuit. Last week, July 9th, the Inuit marked Nunavut Day, the anniversary of their territory’s peaceful transition to autonomy 19 years ago. It follows the Canadian celebration of its independence from England, called Canada Day, on July 1st, and the American Independence Day on July 4th. Bastille Day, the French national holiday, occurs on the 14th.

Diamond Jubilee medal On July 9, 1993, Pauline Browes, at the time Canadian government minister for Indian and Northern Affairs, flew to Coppermine, now known as Kugluktuk, to attend a ceremony and proclaim that the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was officially in effect. The agreement had been signed by then Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney six weeks earlier in Iqaluit.

Paul Quassa, President of Nunavut Tunngavik, said at that time, “Let us have a great celebration for this is a day to remember. A day we will always cherish. A day we will call Nunavut Day for the rest of our future.”

Hundreds of people gathered this year behind the territorial legislative building in Iqaluit, the territorial capital, to celebrate. They feasted on country food and honored the people who had been awarded Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medals for exemplary service to their communities.

Veronica Dewar told the press that it was more than just a huge party. “I think it’s a good way of reflecting on our culture and history—the beginning of the land claims agreement and the establishment of Nunavut,” she said. She expressed pleasure in seeing everyone celebrating during the party, but she was still quite concerned about the very real issue of the cost of food in Nunavut. She works as a translator at the Qikigtani Inuit Association.

Territorial leaders and politicians had similar thoughts—pride in what has been accomplished, but caution about the many challenges that face the Inuit and their territory. Cathy Towtongie, president of Nunavut Tunngavik, echoed that theme. Life is still hard, even with all the expressions of positive feelings about the birthday of the territory. Food security is a very real issue, she said.

Tagak Curley, the Member of the Legislative Assembly from Rankin Inlet North, was also positive, but cautious. The founder of the group Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Curley said that there are always challenges along with accomplishments. He was honored along with 20 other people by being presented with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal. Many people consider him to be the father of Nunavut for his role in helping negotiate the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.

“Ideas never shape by themselves,” Curley said. “They are created by somebody—and I happen to be one that was determined that [we] had a movement, that if all else failed, including the claims process, that we would always have something.” He advocates mining as a way of moving the territory forward, and he urges young Inuit to get an education.

Leona Aglukkaq, MP from Nunavut, awarded Curley his medal. She said that the creation of the Nunavut Territory was a start, “but growth must come next.” She continued, “now it’s time to look beyond that and work with industry. Work with the fishing industry, or the mining industry, and open those opportunities for Nunavummiut.”

Elisapie Sheutiapik, who is the current president of Pauktuutit Inuit, a women’s association, urged people to work for improvements but to be patient. “Iqaluit was only established two generations ago,” she said.. “My grandparents were first settlers. They went through starvations, and different challenges in their life, but they never gave up. And that’s why we’re here.” Also a winner of a Diamond Jubilee medal and the former mayor of Iqaluit, Sheutiapik said, “I know now things don’t happen overnight.”

Terry Audla, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, summarized the thoughts of many with his statement: “Today is a day for the Inuit of Nunavut to appreciate all that we have accomplished in the past several decades. But it is also a day for all Inuit and all Canadians to celebrate our Arctic traditions and our way of life.” July 9th, according to Audla, is a day of “pride, celebration and joy.”

Older Nubians are upset about the way young people are demonstrating to dramatize their rights—such approaches are contrary to the Nubian tradition of peacefulness, according to an interesting news feature published last week. Hannah Allam, writing for the McClatchy Newsfeatures, covered a number of angles about Nubian claims and grievances that supplement earlier reports.

She writes that Mohammed Morsi, the new Egyptian President, carried the Aswan district with 52.4 percent of the vote. The Aswan Governate has many Nubian, as well as Arab Egyptian, voters. It is not clear yet whether Morsi will take any interest in the problems of the Nubian Egyptians, since overall they represent a small minority in the population of the nation.

The grievances of the Nubians are deep-seated. They resent the fact that former President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the construction of the Aswan High Dam, flooding out the old Nubian villages. Then he named the vast reservoir after himself, Lake Nasser. The Nubians view that as an insult to the indigenous people who were displaced from their homes. “When someone dies, you put HIS name on the grave, not the undertaker’s,” said Yahia Zaied, 26, a Cairo-based activist who hails from Egypt’s southernmost village, Adindan, along the Sudanese border.

The Nubians also resented the fact that the famed Nubian Museum, in Aswan, was closed to them for any display of their current cultural events. But with the social changes occurring in Egypt after last year’s revolution, the government has become more flexible on that score. Nubians now have planned a lecture series, plus other events in the museum, that assert their own place in a facility dedicated to their history.

Egyptian officials even tried to omit the word “Nubian” from the official name of the museum when it was proposed, but the UN threatened to block funding unless it was restored. The Arab rulers got even, however, by installing a tablet at the entrance to the building describing the conquest of Nubia by Pharaoh Rameses II over 3,000 years ago. His legacy was celebrated by the famed temple complex at Abu Simbel, which was moved up out of the way of the flood waters in the 1960s.

The activism of the younger generation of Nubians, which focuses particularly on the right of return to farmlands along the Nile, has become more effective in recent months. They successfully pressed authorities, suspicious of secessionist plots, to ease off on restrictions against their community. A group of Nubians were able to register for a business partnership with Nubians south of the border, in Sudan.

Nubians are now being allowed to get deeds to the houses built for them by the government, which they’ve been living in since they were forced out of Old Nubia in the 1960s. They are developing instructional programs to openly teach the Nubian language.

The young Nubian activists are becoming impatient with frequent, but unfulfilled, promises to help them move into new villages along the Nile. They are taking action themselves. They are pooling their own funds into collectives that are buying plots of farmland along the Nile, and they are encouraging Nubians to go back to the land, the traditional locus of their culture. In essence, they are challenging their elders, who have been holding out hope for government assistance, by doing things themselves.

Mabrouk Mahgoub Amara, a 38 year old activist leader, put on a traditional white gown to show off a plot of reclaimed farmland in Abu Simbel, south of Aswan in the heart of Old Nubia. “We’re doing it on our own,” he said. “We’re not waiting for the government to move us again. I feel that the spirits of my ancestors roam around me here. I imagine our lands underwater, and it makes me dream. This hope I have now, I really want to see it implemented in changes.”

But the tactic of promoting active demonstrations is still quite controversial among older, more traditional Nubians. Last September, Nubian demonstrators set fire to the major government building of the governor of Aswan, in the city, and they blocked traffic during their protests. But the younger Nubians feel that such demonstrations have been useful. They argue that it is fine to worry about ancient monuments, but the lives of the living also need to be considered.

A group of fourteen six and seven year old Birhor boys have been brought to the Bokaro Steel Limited (BSL) complex in Bokaro, India, for an education, and they are now running wild—like children almost everywhere.

According to a Times of India report on the new arrivals, the youngsters from the villages of Tulbul, Khakhanda, Chotki Sidhiwara and Dumri Vihar, in the Gomia Block of Bokaro District, Jharkhand State, are constantly getting into trouble. They mess around with the electrical switches, hide in cupboards and under beds, and run around naked after they take their baths. They are adapting to their new lives in the dormitory, an incredible contrast to the mud huts in their home villages. The first two communities mentioned in the article, Tulbul and Khakhanda, were the home villages of an earlier group of Birhor boys educated at BSL.

The journalist, Divy Khare, indicates that the children seem to be happy with their new lives. They have been provided with a clean home and stuff that some of them may not have seen before—bathrooms, sports equipment, tables and chairs, a fan, a television, good food, and so on.

Bahadur Singh, the caretaker of the Birhor hostel, has been kept busy chaperoning the children. “For the past 10 days, I am running after them all the time. They find this building strange, so unlike their huts in [their] village[s] and have discovered new ways of mischief.” One day they were given drinking water in plastic bottles, which they found a good use for—hurling at each other. Mr. Singh finds it difficult to talk with the kids, however, since most of them only speak Birhor and he only speaks Hindi.

Mukesh Birhor, one of the boys, told the reporter that they love the foods, such as dosas and parathas, cakes and breads that are popular in India. He added that they like playing football. Another youngster, Subhash Birhor, said that his room was larger than his entire house back in his village.

Arun Kumar Singh, a guard, said that every time he has taken attendance, he has found some of the kids missing. He has learned to search for them under the beds or in the cupboards. However, he explained that he has found a way to tranquilize them: get them addicted to television. “They are fond of cartoons and songs. They sit quietly and watch it for hours,” he said.

All of their room, board, and tuition expenses are provided by BSL. They will be starting school shortly. According to BSL spokesperson Sanjay Tiwari, “the motive behind adoption [by BSL] is to help [the Birhor] tribe join the mainstream.” Getting the kids addicted to TV appears to be part of it.

A pregnant Tanzanian woman and her unborn child, quite possibly Fipa people, died along the shore of Lake Tanganyika recently, and the grieving family is blaming the hostile attitudes of a tourist hotel owned by Americans. The story raises the quandaries of protecting the security of the rich when they relax in luxury amidst much less affluent rural people.

The family, whose name was withheld by Peti Siyame, the reporter, was traveling by boat along the shore of the vast lake near Kirando, in the Nkasi District of Tanzania’s Rukwa gion, near the edge of the traditional Fipa territory. They were trying to get the woman to a hospital. The waves in the lake suddenly started to overwhelm the boat so they decided to seek safety on shore and tried to land near the Lupita Island Lodge. The lodge guards ordered the boat to leave, even after the family pleaded that a pregnant woman on board was seriously ill.

Because the woman soon died, the cause of her death was not clear. But local attitudes toward the lodge along the lake have worsened due to the incident. Residents in nearby villages allege that lodge employees, under directions from the American manager, have exhibited a pattern of hostility toward them. “We do not see the benefits of having an investor in the middle of our communities who does not have respect for human rights,” one of the family members of the dead woman said.

Ms. Stella Manyanya, Rukwa Regional Commissioner, expressed her concern about the incident, but she said that she had already discussed with community leaders, and the managers of the hotel, the issue of emergency landing rights for fishermen and others traveling along the lakeshore.

She said that the hotel faces the risk of “bandits crossing [the lake] in the region from neighboring countries, to raid business places.” Indeed, news stories from Tanzania often carry reports about unsavory characters crossing the lake from the D.R.Congo and committing a variety of crimes. Ms. Manyanya said that lodge personnel can’t really be blamed, since tight security measures are necessary for the protection of guests if the hotel is to be a viable business.

The Regional Commissioner asked residents in the area, when they have access to useful information, to share it with the administrators of the district and the region. However, the extent of the popular cooperation may be problematic. The lodge management has instructed their security personnel to aggressively chase away people on foot or in boats who might trespass on the property.

A local politician, Mr. Basilio Mbwilo, admitted to Mr. Siyame that the fishermen in the area had been complaining about humiliating treatment by lodge employees. Sometimes the lodge confiscates their boats and fishing gear if they dare to anchor nearby. He affirmed the allegations of other residents in the area, that lodge employees use dogs against residents who come near, and purposely try to humiliate them.

Mr. Siyame was able to establish that the lodge is managed by a man named Tom, who lives in the United States. One of the American owners named in the story is former movie star and governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“We are not allowed to land on the shores even if the water tides in the lake are rough and life threatening,” one local fisherman complained to the reporter. “In case of such dangerous situations any act of approaching the hotel shores is met with cruel measures of sending dogs to bite us.”

The Lupita Island Lodge, Mr. Siyame writes (his story has it misspelled as “Rupita Island Lodge”) is a seasonal facility catering to wealthy tourists. He writes that a villa costs between 1.8 million and 2.8 million Tanzanian shillings (US$1,148 and $1,786) per night. He was denied permission to even enter the grounds of the lodge to talk with local managers about the death of the pregnant woman.

However, one can infer the position of the lodge by doing a Google search. Numerous African safari and tourism websites describe the lavish facilities in glowing terms. One writes, in part, “Lupita Island Lodge can be found on the secluded island of Lupita, in the southern part of Lake Tanganyika. The 14 spacious villas are hidden in a forest overlooking the lake. Each thatched villa has high ceilings and is open-sided, offering fantastic views of the lake. The individual plunge pools are fed by a constant flow of water through your suite resembling a mountain stream.”

Each website tries to outdo the others in hyperbola. One offers a gallery of 18 photos of the marvelous lake and island scenery and the luxurious 1,800 to 2,400 square foot villas that the guests occupy. Each villa has no walls or doors to impede the stunning views. However, since the island is connected by an isthmus to another which has a fishing village on it, the lodge does suggest that guests might enjoy a one hour walk to visit the nearby community. It also offers a half hour boat ride to visit a weekly market in another village. Otherwise, it offers the usual expensive resort amenities.

American travel writer Meg Nolan van Reesema wrote on her blog in October 2009 about her stay at the lodge. She too included numerous photos, and she wrote that the staff puts flower petals in the tub and a champagne bucket next to it. They line the floor of the deck with candles to add a romantic touch to the experience.

The prices quoted in last week’s news story by Mr. Siyame are confirmed by the websites: U.S.$ 1,100 and up, per person, for each family or group in a villa. The contrast between poor fishing families and wealthy foreign guests is stark—and deadly for one woman and her unborn child.

A Kansas county has become the latest American community to take a hard line against the Amish use of unregulated outhouses, according to a news story last week. The adversaries explored the issue at a meeting of the Bourbon County Commissioners, who indicated that they were studying the matter.

Apparently, fairly conservative Amish families began moving into the eastern Kansas farmlands about 10 miles outside of Fort Scott, the county seat, seven years ago. No one told them at the time that they were building their outhouses using an illegal design. Their practice is to shovel the waste out of the pits beneath the outhouses periodically and plow it into their fields. The focus of the discussion was on complaints against that practice. There are now 25 Amish families in the county.

Chris Borntrager, an Amish man speaking at the meeting, asked the commissioners, “is there any evidence we are polluting anything?” The chair of the commission, Harold Coleman, replied that he wasn’t able to answer the question. But he did say that laws prohibiting their ways of doing things must be upheld.

The reporter contacted Steven M. Nolt, the author of numerous books on the Amish, for more information . Nolt is one of the co-authors of the recent book The Amish Way, which indicates that a large majority of Amish homes have bathrooms indoors. More traditional Amish, however, still use outhouses.

He told the Reuters reporter basically the same thing. “A lot of newer and smaller settlements such as the one in Kansas are more conservative and are trying to move away from the more worldly settlements.” He explained that other communities in the U.S. have dealt with issues similar to the one Bourbon county is facing—very conservative Amish who refuse to follow local sanitation ordinances. A good example would be the standoff between some Amish families in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, in 2009, which was widely reported in the press.

Tom McNeil, Bourbon County director of sanitation, admitted that seven years ago “nobody wanted to get involved in the government-religion thing.” He told the reporter that they dropped the ball at that time. There are various ways of constructing outhouses and disposing of the human waste that conform with county regulations, which the article carefully explains.

Evidently the commission is exploring several options to see what is possible, and, presumably, what the Amish will accept. County officials are working with the state to see what can be done. Though it is not said in so many words, the article implies that everyone is hoping to reach a compromise solution.

Neighbors to the Amish families, Dennis Meech and his brother Jim Meech, spoke about their growing alarm due to the lack of correct sanitation on the neighboring farms. While there is probably not much of an issue at this time, they told the commissioners that if the Amish community continues to grow, a very significant problem may develop in 50 years.

The reporter interviewed Marita Meech, Jim’s wife, separately. She explained how the neighbors have tried to get to know the Amish by buying produce from them. “We get along with them,” she asserted. But, she added, “as time goes by more structures are going to be built. How long is the county going to continue letting that happen.”

A recent 40-minute documentary film chronicles the lives of some Malapandaram who still live nomadically much of the year in the Kerala forests. The New Indian Express, a major English language daily that serves South India, published a story last week describing the film. R. Gopinathan, the filmmaker, spent six months working on his documentary, “Ayar Parayunnu,” which focuses on the lifestyles of the people.

The Malapandaram, the film reveals, like to eat what they call “Kavalakizhangu,” the fruit of the wild “Vellila” plant. Another source describes Kavalakizhangu (Dioscorea oppositifolia) as a tuber rich in starch and pulp. The tribal people also use it as a tonic and as a treatment for snake bites and swelling. The Malapandaram frequently prepare food dishes with a powder made from a wild palm which they call Kattu pana. When they can, they will eat the meat from animals such as mongoose (they call it “keeri”), civet cat (“veruku”), and the Malayan, or black, giant squirrel (Ratufa bicolor).

The film points out that the Malapandaram don’t bother with the formalities of marriage ceremonies—they just live together with their partners. Gopinathan, an Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Malayalam at Kerala University, indicates that dogs are indispensable in the lives of the people. They “act as if they are trained to guard their masters,” the filmmaker says.

The production portrays the rituals and beliefs of the people. They worship at a place called a “sannidhi,” which is not really a temple, for there are no idols as such. Rather, they pray to a tree around which they have tied a red colored cloth, with a camphor burning on a betel leaf in front.

Gopinathan said that he completed the work in stages, since he had to locate the wandering bands each time he wanted to resume filming. He told the newspaper that the Malapandaram used to speak their own language, a mixture of Malayalam, the language of Kerala, and Tamil, the tongue of Tamil Nadu. Now they just speak Malayalam, since the younger generation hasn’t learned their traditional language.

The film, sponsored by the Cultural Department of the government of India, also focuses on the settlements provided by the government that they inhabit sporadically. They are poorly maintained. Their settlements in Kerala are Aryankavu, Achankovil, and Mambazhathara. The news story does not indicate if, or when, the film will be posted on the Internet.

One result of the peaceful values held by Ladakhis has been the frequency of interfaith marriages, which are widely accepted among both Buddhists and Muslims, according to a news report last week. The story indicates that, despite the interfaith troubles of the late 1980s and early 1990s, tensions have subsided and the local beliefs in harmony prevail.

Fifty years ago, Mohammad Hasan, a Muslim who is now 70, met a girl named Dolma, the 15 year old daughter of a Buddhist trader from the Nubra Valley, a remote place to the north of Leh. Her father had a shop in a Leh market. Hasan’s pride at first would not let him approach the father and ask for the girl’s hand in marriage.

But subsequently, he rode horseback over the mountains to Nubra and the families quickly agreed on an Islamic-style wedding. She was renamed Jahara Banu, but she did not convert to his beliefs. She has continued to visit the Old Leh Palace Monastery as a practicing Buddhist. He retains his Muslim faith.

Hasan, a retired soldier with the Indo-Tibetan Border Security Force, tells the journalist writing the story, Sahana Ghosh, that their experience is quite common. “Most families in Ladakh have stories of mixed marriages,” he asserts.

The author writes that the sense of religious identity in Ladakh is quite strong, but it is not a divisive issue. She points out that most of the residents of the Kargil District are Shia Muslims, with Sunnis mixed in, while most of the people of the Leh District are Buddhists, with some Muslims included. Everyone shares common cultural mores—dress codes and food preferences, for instance. The common features of both communities help people overlook their differences.

Sonam Gatso, a next door neighbor to Hasan, explains the ways religious harmony work out in practice in their Leh neighborhood. He points out that the road to the monastery goes right past the mosque. The monks are careful not to sound their chimes when the calls to prayer are issued from the mosque five times per day.

Ghosh, the author, refers to the interfaith troubles of 1989, which occurred during a period of insurgency in Kashmir. The Buddhists in Leh were afraid that their rights would be eroded by the Muslim dominated state of Jammu and Kashmir, of which Ladakh forms a minority part. The Buddhists formed an advocacy group, the Ladakh Buddhist Association, which urged people to not engage in commercial relations and especially to avoid inter-faith marriages with The Other.

The tensions soon fizzled out, however: Ladakhi Shia Muslims have more in common with Ladakhi Buddhists than they do with the Sunni Muslims in Kashmir who dominate the state. The government of India helped diffuse tensions by instituting, in 1995, a new local government structure, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. The Kargil district got a similar autonomous council in 2003.

But a bigger issue, according to Ghosh, is that the young people have more to think about than Buddhist/Muslim rivalries. They are focusing on jobs and livelihoods. Manjul Ahmed, a 25 year old, received a Masters degree in sociology at a university in Srinagar, but he is now helping attend his father’s grocery store. He has a Buddhist girlfriend, and he goes back to Srinagar frequently to take competitive exams for government positions. “There are no job opportunities in Ladakh, except in tourism,” he says.

Ghosh’s investigation of interfaith marriages, and the way traditional harmonies in the region are reviving, presents a hopeful picture of the restoration of good community relations. Perhaps her perspective is correct, though a scholarly journal article by Sara H. Smith published three years ago painted a somewhat different picture of the situation. That author, a geographer at the University of North Carolina, argued that ever since the troubles of 1989, interfaith relations in Ladakh have been deteriorating. She did field work in Leh intermittently from 2004 through 2008.

Smith also interviewed mixed Buddhist and Muslim couples. She spoke with a Buddhist man and his Shia wife, both of whom agreed that they wanted to ignore community pressures and get married. Smith indicated that many families included couples married across the Buddhist/Muslim divide, and many people continued to visit households of the other faith, despite pressures from both sides to boycott the other. The boycott instituted by the LBA was simply unenforceable because of the extent of interfaith unions.

The geographer interviewed Ladakhis who felt that marriages between people of different faiths do help create harmony. Nonetheless, Smith argued that the discord of 1989 has had the effect of undercutting much of the inter-community visiting that used to prevail. Muslims and Buddhists no longer entertain each other in their homes as much as they used to, particularly during the major religious festivals and celebrations.

It is not clear whether intercommunity tensions are getting slowly worse, as Smith’s research implied, or whether relations are slowly improving because of the traditional Ladakhi beliefs in harmony, as Ghosh’s investigation concludes. The reader may be cautiously optimistic.

Incidentally, Ghosh’s article appears in Khabar South Asia, a news and features website that is sponsored by the US Pacific Command.

Conflicts between nature preserves and humans can be difficult to resolve, especially when migratory birds are threatened by Nubian farmers who have been deprived of their lands. An article last week in Egypt Independent, an English language publication, indicated that the Saluga and Ghazal Protected Area near Aswan, in southern Egypt, is being invaded by Nubian farmers who are planting crops in the bottomland soils of the preserve.

Also called the First Cataract Islands Protected Area, Saluga and Ghazal Islands are in the Nile River only a few miles downstream, north, of the Aswan High Dam, and a few miles south of the city of Aswan itself. The two islands are part of a string of 144 nature sanctuaries along the river, which serve as an important migratory route for birds flying between Central Africa and their breeding grounds in Eurasia. The natural vegetation on the two islands near Aswan represents a rare surviving example of the original Nile basin ecosystem.

Much of the Nile River native plant life was destroyed by the construction of the High Dam in the 1960s—and by farming activities along the entire river for millennia. Groves of Egyptian thorn trees (Acacia nilotica) thrive on these two islands. Small, dense, thorny trees originally native to the riverine environments of Egypt, though now found widely in Africa and South Asia, the trees provide good habitat for birds such as herons, kites, and especially nesting passerines. Natural fluctuations of the river levels create mud flats that are ideal for wading birds.

This reserve was considered important enough that a bird banding operation was established on the islands in 2003 under the auspices of the SE European Bird Migration Network (SEEN). The goal of the banding has been to determine which species of birds, and whether adults or juveniles, use the Nile corridor, the Red Sea corridor, or a combination of both for their migrations. As with any such research, the preliminary results are raising as many questions as they are answering. A Google Scholar search this week of Saluga and Ghazal turns up 20 references to scientific papers based, at least in part, on this important sanctuary.

Unfortunately, the preserve is threatened by incursions from humans—landless Nubians. Early in 2011, some Nubians, having grown bold due to the Egyptian revolution, invaded the reserve, cleared a portion of the natural vegetation, and began planting crops. The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Authority (EEAA) asked the police to remove the invaders from the reserve. They refused.

Mostafa Hussein Kamel, the national environmental minister, got involved in the situation last week during a visit to Aswan. At the end of a whirlwind tour of the city, his motorcade stopped at the visitors’ center for the reserve on Saluga Island. Someone told the distinguished visitor about the Nubian trespassers. He turned to the Aswan governor, who promised that they would be expelled promptly. Three days later the police had still not done anything. According to the article, police had evicted invaders from the reserve before the revolution, but now they won’t. The unrest among the Nubians, and their demands for lands along the river, have apparently had an impact.

Mahmoud Hasseb, the director of the South Area Protectorate at the EEAA, indicates that the police are afraid to chase out the squatters. He believes that in the aftermath of the revolution, police officials feel they do not have the authority to do such things. The danger is that the successes of a small group of invaders might encourage others to move into the bottomland protected areas on the river islands.

Other lands in the Egyptian protected areas system have also been invaded recently and nothing has been done to protect them. Hasseb is waiting, hoping the police will soon be able to take action. “After two or three months the police will be stronger,” he said. “They will be able to do the things that they did before the revolution.”

But the situation is filled with hypocrisy. Over 20 years ago, when the system of protected islands was being established, one of them, Isis Island, was set aside for the construction of a large resort complex. Hypocrisy and corruption are, of course, an important part of the Nubian perspective on their country. Last week, Al Jeezera produced a news segment in which a reporter explains how neglected and badly treated the Nubians felt under former president Mubarak. But they are optimistic with the election of a new leader, he tells viewers.

The brief news report, posted to the Al Jeezera website, includes some choice comments by a few older Nubian men. Salahuddin Husain shows some photos to the reporter and shares his memories. “When we were forced to leave our homes [in the 1960s], we moved to the towns built by the government. But when we got there, we found that most of the houses weren’t built. Thousands of us became homeless.”

The reporter turns to another older man, Ismail Ghallab, who says he also was forced to move. “We sacrificed. We sacrificed our homes and our ancestors’ graves for the dam to be built, and in return we’ve been given nothing. We’ve been marginalized and made homeless.”

The journalist, Jamal El-Shayyal, indicates that the Nubians are farmers, but they are being forced to live in desert towns that are not developed, without houses. He walks among walls with no roofs—uncompleted or mostly destroyed houses. Apparently the resettlement site for the Nubians was poorly chosen because the land is geologically unstable. Homes have either not been built, or have been constructed and then collapsed.

A man rides past on a donkey cart as the reporter explains that, despite what has happened, the Nubians are optimistic. “We will never forget our origins, and even the Nubian child born today considers himself displaced and wants to return to the banks of the Nile,” one of the men tells the reporter. “We hope that the next president can relocate us to the Nile and give us back our livelihood.”

The reporter tells us that the Nubians continue to hold onto their culture. They dream that someday they will be able to leave the desert so they can again live next to the river. Can the Egyptians preserve the wildlife habitat of those important riverine islands in the face of such pressures?

Leading Hutterites last week expressed many objections about the current TV series on their society, despite all the self-congratulatory noise two weeks ago from the producer, the National Geographic Channel. The series, “American Colony: Meet the Hutterites,” which portrays life at the King colony in Montana, debuted on May 29th and is running for ten Tuesday evenings.

Mary-Ann Kirkby, herself raised until the age of 10 in a colony, said she had spoken with leading Hutterite bishops and she joined them in their criticisms of the show. Her memoir I Am Hutterite has sold widely, and she is a frequent speaker about the colonies. She told the press that the series portrays the Hutterites acting “completely out of character” and it shows “a great lack of judgment and decency.”

She feels that the program provides an improper interpretation of Hutterite society. She has spoken with many Hutterites in both Canada and the U.S. since the show began, and she has found the majority of them to be quite upset by what they are seeing. They feel the shows are staged, inaccurate, and “not representative of Hutterite colonies.”

The people Ms. Kirkby spoke with “expected the National Geographic treatment, but they got the Hollywood treatment,” she said. She added, from her own perspective, that Hutterites “are very charming individuals and worth knowing. We enrich the culture of both Canada and the United States.”

The bishops, representing different branches of Hutterite society, issued their own statement last Thursday expressing their deep disappointment with the National Geographic treatment of the King Colony.

“What was promised by the producers to be a ‘factual documentary’ is, in fact, a distorted and exploitative version of Hutterite life that paints all 50,000 Hutterites in North America in a negative and inaccurate way. Scenes and dialogue were contrived resulting in a ‘make believe’ depiction of how we live and the spiritual beliefs we cherish,” the bishops wrote.

The bishops indicated that everyone thought it would be an accurate, sensitive portrayal of Hutterite life due to the stellar reputation of National Geographic. Their statement continues, “We are deeply saddened by the skewed image with which the public may now perceive the Hutterite faith and way of life. It is distorted and damaging, and we feel betrayed. We understand very well that we are not perfect and we face many challenges. Nevertheless, our vision is to live meaningful Christian lives in community as Christ has instructed us to do.”

David Lyle, the CEO of the National Geographic Channel, issued an amazing response to the criticism by the bishops. “This is a declaration of war from the Hutterite elders against the National Geographic Society, calling into account our fairness,” he said. “We absolutely are fairly representing the King community.” Isn’t Mr. Lyle even aware that one of the hallmarks of Hutterite society is their almost fanatical refusal to ever fight, especially in wars? His “declaration of war” metaphor completely undercuts his statement and reflects the insensitivity the Hutterites are claiming. Sad.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

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Nunavut Day in Iqaluit

Nubian Progress Inspired by Young Demonstrators

Birhor Boys Go to School

A Tragedy in Tanzania Near an American Hotel

Amish Outhouses in Kansas

New Film Describes Malapandaram Forest Life

Is Buddhist/Muslim Harmony Growing in Ladakh?

Nubian Land Rights—or Wildlife Needs

A Sad Day for National Geographic

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