Yammu and Kashmir’s traditional graziers, the nomadic Gujjars, rue the dying out of several indigenous species of goat and sheep after the introduction of foreign high-yielding breeds. The nomadic Gujjars move to highland pastures in summers and come down to the plains when winters set in. “These foreign breeds are not successful for nomadic conditions,”
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Wildland conservation has a recorded history and a literary tradition. Aborigines evicted from their homelands in the interest of conservation have only memory and the bitter oral narrative I heard again and again while visiting their makeshift villages and refugee camps; their pre-eviction experience is rarely recorded outside the literature of anthropology. So the concept…
An imminent decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court on the demarcation of the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle region has the country’s native communities on edge, because of the precedent it will set.
The 1.7 million hectare reserve was officially demarcated by the government in 2005, after debates that dragged on for nearly two decades. The Supreme Court is set to decide next week whether or not to uphold the demarcation of the reservation as a single, unbroken territory.
Illegal mahogany loggers are plundering uncontacted Indians’ land in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, according to a new report by the Upper Amazon Conservancy (UAC). The report says the logging ‘provides evidence that Peru is failing to uphold the environmental and forestry obligations of its 2009 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US’ because…
For the small Naso indigenous community of Panama, the curtain of 2009 opened on a heart wrenching scene of conflict over the native people’s longtime demand for respect of their territory and natural resources. As they watched heavy machinery demolish their houses and tear up their land, residents of San San Druy in the northern…
Human thought is inextricably tied to language. Diversity of language indicates diversity of humanity, so when a language dies, we are all impoverished. It seems from reading the articles listed below that only a couple of NGOs and some academics are concerned that the last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the…
A story on BBC News yesterday is another good example of how our services could benefit people living in remote areas. Hard Times for Afghan Nomads tells the story of mountain people stuck in the middle of other people’s wars many times, and now ignored by the authorities, whose priority is the population in the…