forests
Semai Incensed by Firearms
Last week, Tok Batin Apong resented the manner of ten Perak State Forestry officials, who had come into his village to discuss the ways the Semai were using land in the Chikus Permanent Forest Reserve. The incident occurred at the Semai settlement in Sungai Manik, near the city of Teluk Intan, in Perak, Malaysia. Mr. […]
Progress in the Anamalai Hills
A magazine article last week in The Hindu, one of India’s major papers, describes the health of the natural environment in southern India’s Kerala state from the perspective of a canarium tree growing high in the Anamalai Hills. The authors, T. R. Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa, scientists with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, […]
Healthy Forests in a Zapotec Community
The Zapotec people of one Mexican town, Ixtlán de Juárez, in Oaxaca State, respect each other, work together, and cherish their forests in order to live in peace. Their effective natural resource management strategies and sustainable wood-products industries are based on beliefs that they must treasure healthy community forests. The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin […]
Kadar News Increasingly Upbeat
The cause of peace is advanced when the rights and interests of minority peoples such as the Kadar are acknowledged and respected by larger states and nations. These small societies are often at the losing ends of disputes—the dams are built, the forests are clearcut, rights to lands are denied, communities are destroyed. Two of […]
Impact of Chalakudy Dam on Kadar Villages
A feature article last week in Express Buzz, a major South Indian magazine, provides an in depth review of the continuing controversy over the proposed Athirappilly hydropower project on the Chalakudy River. Unlike many such articles in recent years, this one describes the effects of the dam on the two Kadar villages located near the […]
Batek Ways of Walking [anthology chapter review]
When they are walking in the forest, the Batek are confident, even proud, of their abilities, but as they move along, they are also fearful at times of dangers. Lye Tuck-Po addresses this apparent paradox in a recent article appearing in an edited volume on the ethnography of walking. In the course of her discussion, […]
Blog Posts About the Batek
Last fall, Lye Tuck-Po launched a new blog in which she sometimes reports recollections of her anthropological field work among the Batek. On Sunday this week she posted an interesting story about a week 12 years ago when she camped with a Batek band on a high ridge along the spine of the Malay Peninsula. […]
Mbuti Press their Case in Washington
The indigenous peoples of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including the Mbuti, have taken their forest preservation campaign directly to the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington. Supported by the Rainforest Foundation and Greenpeace, the leaders of three indigenous organizations in the DRC flew to Washington last week to attend the annual meeting […]
Piaroa Farming Effectiveness [journal article review]
The Piaroa grow food in temporary gardens which support a growing population, supply them with good nutrition, and provide more income than modern, high-input agriculture would. Germán N. Freire carefully explains why in an upcoming journal article. His basic argument is that the Piaroa find their traditional swidden (shifting) agricultural pursuits to be quite effective. […]
Mbuti Appeal for their Rights
A recent international conference on indigenous (Pygmy) rights in Central Africa issued a call “for an immediate stop to practices that generate the destruction of our ways of life…” Indigenous delegates from Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Rwanda, and Uganda met in Impfondo, a city in Republic […]
