indigenous people / minorities

Stolen remains coming home to Aborigines

Published on September 6, 2004 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, ethics, indigenous people / minorities

The Australian/ eniar

THE skeletal remains of up to 18 Aborigines, stolen by a Swedish anthropologist 90 years ago, will be returned to Australia this month in a landmark repatriation agreement. Aboriginal elders from Western Australia, Queensland, NSW and Victoria will travel to Stockholm in late September to receive the ancestral remains and begin the process of spiritual healing.

Most of the remains – which are held in Sweden’s Museum of Ethnography – were removed from the Kimberley by Swedish anthropologist Eric Mjoberg between 1910 and 1911.

Mjoberg’s methods were said to include bribing Aborigines to lead him to remains and then smuggling the skeletons out of Australia by telling authorities the bones were from kangaroos. >> continue

The Australian/ eniar

Northern Norway’s first ever witch conference

Published on September 1, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, religion cosmology, Saami, Us and Them

AP / Yahoo News

Nearly 400 years after the worst of the Norwegian witch trials ripped through the area, approximately 100 people have made their way to the small town of Vardoe, just over 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from the North Pole, for northern Norway’s first ever witch conference.

“When we take the low population of Finnmark (Norway’s northernmost county and home to Vardoe) into consideration, the persecution of accused witches is almost the worst in all of Europe,” Rune Blix Hagen Hagen, historian at the University of Tromsoe, says. Approximately 20 percent of the 138 people convicted of witchcraft in Finnmark county between 1598 and 1692 were Sami.

While the belief in witchcraft and magic may appear firmly lodged in the past, the willingness to participate in witch hunts has not ebbed with the passing centuries, according to social anthropologist Jan Broegger. >> continue

AP / Yahoo News

Missionaries focus their efforts on the most remote indigenous groups on earth

Published on August 29, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Latin- and Central America, religion cosmology

RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press

The Missions Institute of New Tribes Mission specializes in evangelism among the 3,000 indigenous groups in the world’s remotest tracts, places that remain isolated from the outside world and thus untouched by Christianity. Most operations are in Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa. New Tribes, based in Sanford, Fla., has assembled one of the largest missionary forces in the world: 3,200 workers in 17 nations, two-thirds of them Americans.

Teams of five or six missionaries leave the modern world and its conveniences behind to spend years living among tribespeople, learning their language and culture in order to translate the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into tribal languages, most of which have never before been reduced to writing. The workers then teach reading and writing, and establish churches to be run by tribal converts.

Survival International, the London-based tribal rights champion, and many academic anthropologists criticize incursions by missionaries. But Greg Sanford, the sophisticated but plainspoken director, vigorously defends New Tribes practices. He insists that the missionaries help preserve tribal cultures rather than undermining them, and are humanitarians who provide literacy, basic medical treatment and other helpful knowledge. >> continue

RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press

Multimedia website on American Indians lives in the 1830s

Published on August 26, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, websites

Christian Science Monitor

In the 1830s, native Americans from the eastern half of the United States were being “relocated” to the West, while those already in the West were having their last experience with living in a land that was actually under their own control. At the same time, George Catlin, an ex-lawyer from Philadelphia decided to “gain fame” by recording Indian lives and cultures before they were permanently altered by European influences.

Campfire Stories with George Catlin offers both historical and contemporary perspectives on the meetings and conflicts between native and European worlds.

Online for about two years, this multi-award winning site from the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum uses a Flash interface to showcase its collection of Catlin’s paintings. The paintings are presented with historical documents as well as commentary from modern experts on art, culture and anthropology. >> continue

Christian Science Monitor

In the 1830s, native Americans from the eastern half of the United States were being "relocated" to the West, while those already in the West were having their last experience with living in a land that was actually…

The complex relationship between culture and technology

Published on August 23, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, internet, technology

Telepolis

During the 4th conference on “Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication”, Internet researchers from about 30 countries focused on the differences, the potential conflicts and cultural discrepancies in cyberspace understood as a “urban metropolis”.

A special focus was laid on the investigation of the ICT access and usage by indigenous peoples. The ritual collective artwork of Australian aborigines seems to be endangered by a second expropriation in the anonymous global data worlds. On the other hand, a multi-lingual Internet could help to rescue small languages at the edge of extinction to survive in a kind of virtual reservoir.

Especially exciting were those presentations paying attention to alternative forms of Internet usage by the seemingly unprivileged and marginalized cultures. Thus the escape from spatially closed Internet-environments in South America or India underlined the potential creativity of these non-conventional solutions (Rodrigues). >>continue

(via ethno::log)

Telepolis

During the 4th conference on "Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication", Internet researchers from about 30 countries focused on the differences, the potential conflicts and cultural discrepancies in cyberspace understood as a "urban metropolis".

A special focus was laid on the…