indigenous people / minorities

What Is An “Ancient People”? – We are All Modern Now!

Published on November 21, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Us and Them

An cliché, guaranteed to be found in any newspaper article or TV show about indigenous peoples, is the moniker “ancient people”. The idea is that their way of life has remained unchanged for centuries. It is a nice fantasy, but it is almost never true, anthropologist Kerim Friedman writes and summarizes some central points:

We find it amusing that they might listen to rock music and enjoy Hollywood movies. It must all be so strange for them! But it is really strange for us. We need them to be ancient and traditional so that our own alienation can be better comprehended. (…) It is also an important myth for those who self-identify as members of an ancient people.

>> read the whole article on Savage Minds

SEE ALSO MY EARLIER COMMENT:
Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Blog: The Sami People of Northern America

Published on November 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Northern America, Saami, websites

In the 19th century, lots of Norwegians emigrated to America. Among them, there were many Sami people. Today, there’s still a large community of Sami in Northern America. The Sami Siida of North America is the single active representative of the Sami culture in North America. The organization maintains an observer seat on the International Sami Council and promotes the revival of cultural awareness in North America. On their blog they inform us on Sami issues both in America and Northern Europe

In the 19th century, lots of Norwegians emigrated to America. Among them, there were many Sami people. Today, there's still a large community of Sami in Northern America. The Sami Siida of North America is the single active representative of…

Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

Published on November 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ecology nature, fieldwork / methods, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania

A recent post by Alex Golub on Savage Minds is interesting for several reasons: Even a scientific project on a very narrow topic might suddenly be relevant for a wider audience. Golub has studied the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine. He writes:

I’ve been really amazed to see the New York Times’s series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently—suddenly my area of expertise is literally news.

Furthermore, Golub reminds us that – when doing fieldwork, it’s not always clear who “the exotic other” actually is. In Golub’s case it’s not the indigenous people, but the white mining employees, although, as he writes “mine management were supposedly ‘from my culture.’”:

Learning to like and respect these men (they were almost entirely men) was one of the hardest parts of my fieldwork. They were mostly Australian and Canadian, and had the usual Commonwealth suspicion of Yankees. I was an artist and an intellectual, and over-educated to boot. And they were MEN in a way that I was not—they talked about rugby and worked with their hands and had pictures of naked (or nearly naked) women on their walls, in there calendars, on their screen savers. And, of course, in the struggle between landowners and company, I was sympathetic to my indigenous hosts.

Golub also draws our attention to the consequences of our consumption of metals:

It is commonplace these days for people who drive cars to lament the way they are destroying the environment. Very few people realize what the set of silverware in their kitchen cupboard makes then an accessory to. (…) Look up from your computer screen for a moment and look around the room—how much metal do you see? Imagine the copper wires and metal pipes and lines of nails that stretch around you for thousands of miles. Where did they come from?

>> read the whole post on Savage Minds

Mining and tourism more important: Bushmen forcibly removed from Central Kalahari

Published on October 17, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, San-bushmen, tourism

(via Savage Minds) All but a few of the Bushmen living in Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forcibly removed from their homes in recent days in what spokesmen for the affected communities said is a final push by the government to end human habitation there after tens of thousands of years, according to Washington Post. Their increasingly sedentary lifestyle — which includes keeping domestic animals and using motorized vehicles — makes them incompatible with a park for wild animals, Goverment officials say. The Kalahari reserve is a major tourist attraction for the southern African nation of 1.6 million.

>> read the whole story

In a follow-up article in the Washington Post, we read;

According to Molapo’s chief, Molathwe Mokalaka, officials told the villagers that if they stayed, “you will eat the soil. Nothing else but the soil.” Villagers here said they never would have left Molapo if not for the guns and threats of police and wildlife officers. Some critics also contend that the government’s motive in removing the Bushmen is to gain easier access to deposits of diamonds located in the game reserve.

(…)

Molapo is now just a ghost town of empty huts made of sticks and grass. It was one of the last traditional communities of the hunter-gatherers who once roamed most of southern Africa.

>> read the whole story

Forcibly resettled by a Botswanan government eager to clear the way for diamond mining, the Bushmen are battling to regain their ancestral homeland (Mother Jones)

news archive San-bushmen

(via Savage Minds) All but a few of the Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forcibly removed from their homes in recent days in what spokesmen for the affected communities said is a final push by…

Photos and songs from fieldwork in Siberia, reflections on ethnographic photographing

Published on October 12, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, indigenous people / minorities, Visual Anthropology, websites

Estonian anthropologist Janno Simm has his own website with several exciting photos from his fieldwork in Northern Khanty fishing and reindeer communities in Siberia. You can even listen to two Khanty songs.

In his text Reflections on Ethnographic Photographing, he states, that “the best pictures depict the relationship between the ethnographer and the local subjects”.

In his text Reflections on Ethnographic Photographing, he…