traditional ways
Semai Artist Produces Book for Children
A young Semai artist has produced, with the help of others, a children’s book that addresses the environmental issues faced by young Malaysians. The Star, a prominent Malaysian newspaper, featured the new book in a story on July 8. Saluji Yeok So Alu, the 26-year old artist, recently completed his second book, entitled Let the […]
Collective Spirit of Tristan da Cunha
A “collective spirit” still sustains Tristan da Cunha, the New York Times argues in a wonderfully illustrated story published on the Times website on May 20. The descriptive text and the photos of the island and its inhabitants are by Andy Isaacson, who spent a month there in 2009. He supplemented his investigation with recent […]
A Travel Writer Visits the Piaroa
Sometimes good travel writing provides insights into the ways of local people the writer visits. Such was the case of a writer named Karla Graterol who published a brief travel piece early last week in a major Venezuelan newspaper about her visit with some Piaroa. It was refreshing to read about something other than the […]
Ifaluk Fishermen
Two sailors on a cross-Pacific voyage kept running into very difficult sailing conditions so they decide to head for Ifaluk Atoll in search of better winds. Claude Appaldo and Tom Zydler sail into the Ifaluk lagoon in the western Pacific after a voyage across the ocean from Panama that took many months to complete. The […]
Warming Sea Distresses Inuit
The sea around the coast of Labrador is warming rapidly and the loss of winter ice threatens the culture and way of life of the Inuit in Rigolet. According to a report in The Guardian last week, Rigolet, located on the north shore of the Hamilton Inlet, is the southernmost Inuit village in Canada. The […]
Batek Change their Minds about Schooling
Some Batek living in a village called Kampung Dedari, located in Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park, have changed their minds about the value of their young people getting a formal education. Ahmad A. Talib traveled up the Tembeling River to visit the village, interview some parents and children, and write a piece last week for […]
Young Ladakhis Face Challenges
Young Ladakhis are coping with the changes that are sweeping their region by struggling to retain their identities, yet they are accepting new ways of looking at economic, political and social issues. Rinchen Norbu Wangchuk last week focused a perceptive analysis on young people who are seeking to maintain their Ladakhi traditions—and yet keeping up […]
Innovative Semai Learning Center
A community learning center in Malaysia serves to integrate, for some Semai children, formal academic classroom subjects with lessons about their traditional culture. A school day might begin with instruction in reading, writing, and math presented by their teacher, but it would be followed by the fun of learning to play the chentong, a musical […]
Energy Development versus the Zapotec
Bettina Cruz Velázquez, a fearless leader of the Zapotec land rights movement in Oaxaca State, spoke in Seattle in early October about the struggle against giant energy companies. Her description of the campaign to protect indigenous people from exploitation by the developers of huge wind plants on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec was described last week […]
Celebrating Elders
On Friday and Saturday, September 30 and October 1, a Tahitian group organized a contest to see who could prepare the best traditional feast celebrating elderly Tahitians, particularly older women. A group called the Fédération Te Ui Hotu Rau No Pare Nui and the town of Pirae, a part of Papeete, the capital city of […]
