indigenous people / minorities

Reconstructing tribal history

Published on April 1, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, history, indigenous people / minorities, Us and Them

The Telegraph, Calcutta

Tribal societies have seldom recorded their own history. They usually relied on oral transmission of events, which raises definite difficulties for mainstream historians, who have seldom given serious thought or space to tribal struggles or movements. Recently, Sussex University celebrated the 150th anniversary of the historic Santhal Hul calling for reconstruction of tribal history.

In the wake of this memorable event, a researcher should not forget that writing history has always been determined by the dominant ideologies and class interests, creating products more or less of specialised brands. >> continue

The Telegraph, Calcutta

Book review: Reindeer People – Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Published on March 28, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, books, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities

Ronald Hutton, Times Online

Piers Vitebsky is one of a tiny number of British experts on the region and an internationally renowned anthropologist. This book “REINDEER PEOPLE: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia” is the record of successive visits that he has made over the past 17 years to live with members of a native people called the Eveny in the Verkhoyansk Mountains in the far north-east. Like his earlier work, it shows him to be both an excellent scholar and a gifted writer, with a feeling for landscape and character and a knack for metaphor and allusion. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Piers Vitebsky: What is a shaman? – Worlds of the Shaman (Natural History, March 1997 / findarticles.com)
Peoples of the Russian North and Far East (Arctic Circle)

Ronald Hutton, Times Online

Piers Vitebsky is one of a tiny number of British experts on the region and an internationally renowned anthropologist. This book "REINDEER PEOPLE: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia" is the record of successive visits that…

Malaysian indigenous people seek land, cultural rights

Published on March 4, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Asia, indigenous people / minorities

Yahoo Asia News / AP

Malaysia’s indigenous tribes are hoping that a planned revision of a colonial-era law will grant them ownership of forests that their ancestors inhabited for more than 10,000 years, activists said.

They say the centuries-old culture and lifestyle of peninsular Malaysia’s Orang Asli, or “Original People,” have been threatened by developments such as airports, dams and highways that force tribes to move out of their homes _ located in forests owned by the state _ into semi-urban settings.

“Our main concern is land,” said Juli Edo, an anthropology professor at Kuala Lumpur’s University Malaya who belongs to an Orang Asli tribe. “We want a legal backup for the right to own land,” he said Wednesday. >> continue

Yahoo Asia News / AP

Malaysia's indigenous tribes are hoping that a planned revision of a colonial-era law will grant them ownership of forests that their ancestors inhabited for more than 10,000 years, activists said.

They say the centuries-old culture and lifestyle…

Disney-Film depicts indigenous people as involved in cannibalism

Published on March 2, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Latin- and Central America, media, Native American, persons and theories, Us and Them

IPS

The producers of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” are eagerly gearing up to film the sequels. But the project, due to be released on Jul. 7, 2006, is already proving to be a problem, as the descendants of the Caribs, historians and others are objecting to scenes depicting these indigenous people as involved in cannibalism.

Brinsley Samaroo, head of the history department of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), dismisses the claim of cannibalism as a “European myth”. He told IPS that it was nothing but “manufactured history” by the Europeans who came across the Caniba, a tribe found in North and South America. “The Caniba tribe was very hostile and resisting the Europeans very stoutly and in order to warn other Europeans about this, the early explorers spread the myth that the Caniba tribe eat people,” he said.

The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Historical and Archaeological Society has called on movie-goers to boycott the sequel unless the “grossly offensive” scenes depicting the Caribs as cannibals are removed from the script. >> continue

In the IPS-article, there’s also an link to a Brief history of cannibal controversies

SEE ALSO:
We do not eat people (Trinidad News)

UPDATE: More news on this controversy at warauduati, among others Boycott Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean and Racist Stereotypes in Pirates of the Caribbean

IPS

The producers of "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" are eagerly gearing up to film the sequels. But the project, due to be released on Jul. 7, 2006, is already proving to be a problem, as…

UPDATED – The future lies behind: How languages reflect our conception of time

Published on February 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, language, Latin- and Central America, media, Native American

Laura Spinney, The Guardian

For the Aymara people living in the Andes, the past lies ahead and the future lies behind. The Aymara word for past is transcribed as nayra , which literally means eye, sight or front. The word for future is q”ipa , which translates as behind or the back. Over the years, rumours have surfaced of similar strangeness in other languages.

The researcher is Rafael Núñez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego. With his collaborator, linguist Eve Sweetser, he will publish his findings later this year.

“This Aymara finding is big news,” says Vyvyan Evans, a theoretical cognitive linguist at the University of Sussex. “It is the first really well-documented example of the future and past being structured in a totally different way from lots of other languages, including English.” >> continue

UPDATE (28.2.05):
Anthropologist Kerim Friedman writes “I can’t understand the fuss being made over the Aymara people living in the Andes who supposedly have a unique spacial conception of time. My guess is that this is simply another example of reporters mangling academic research in order to make the story more exciting.” >> continue

Laura Spinney, The Guardian