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… Continue reading…
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… Continue reading…
Rural Thai society depends so much on abundant rainfall and numerous rivers to grow rice and fish that water is often featured in their national holidays and family events. Last week, Pattaya Today, a newspaper from the tourist city of Pattaya, published an interesting PR piece generated by the Tourism… Continue reading…
The Nanofasa Conservation Trust in Namibia has gotten a significant amount of funding to help it set up a “Barefoot Academy” for the Ju/’hoansi. The organization’s 2014 Annual Report, dated March 3, 2015 and available on its website, stated as one of its goals for the coming year that it… Continue reading…
A news report from the U.K. last week described the recent visit of the British photographer Joshua Gray to the Batek living near the Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia.
A delegation from Tahiti recently visited a Maori community in New Zealand in order to study their approaches to teaching their language to children, since the use of Tahitian is dying out.
According to Kachyo, police officers stationed at the entrance to the Dzongu Reserve in Sikkim have hardly any work to do—there is very little crime among the Lepcha people. One of the reasons might be their ancient ceremony, called the thoursu, which is performed to keep the peace among them… Continue reading…
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… Continue reading…
A well-known Malaysian sports figure recently spent a day at a Semai village to find out the needs of the people and to highlight a report on the major development issues facing the nation. According to the Wikipedia, the sports star, Nicol David, is ranked as the world’s number one… Continue reading…
A brief journal article published last year describes the ways the Lepchas have attempted to maintain their traditions despite outside domination and internal religious divisions, issues they are beginning to overcome. The article, by Rip Roshina Gowloog, was published in the journal Studies of Tribes and Tribals and is freely… Continue reading…
