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| Indigenous Affairs no. 2/2000 |
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| Editorial from the theme issue on Hunter/Gatherers |
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By Espen Waehle
For ninety-nine per cent of human history we have been hunter-gatherers. Any other way of life is a very, very recent phenomenon. Hunting and gathering have thus been a part of us ever since the start of human evolution. Our common heritage as hunter-gatherers and how essential this life form has been in making us into what we are seems, however, to be forgotten and lost to most people today. And the few remaining hunter-gatherers suffer accordingly.
The term hunter-gatherer is applied to groups who primarily gain their subsistence from hunting wild animals (marine and terrestrial), fishing and gathering of wild plants and shellfish. By reserving the concept to groups who culturally, spiritually and in their social organisation are focused on hunting and gathering for subsistence and as a way of life, we conceptually separate these groups from, for example, hunting specialists or wild food collectors among agricultural peoples or hunters for sport in the industrialized world.
Today there are only a small number of societies (probably less than 0,001% of the world’s population) in which hunting and gathering still dominate everyday life. Yet, hunter-gatherers are to be found in most regions of the world: in Africa, in Asia, in Australia, in the Arctic and sub-Arctic as well as in the Americas and from the high Arctic to the tropics hunter-gatherers survive and continue their way of life , falsely perceived by some as isolated relics from an utterly primitive stage in human evolution. But today’s hunter-gatherers are not isolated survivors nor the direct descendants of the first humans. We are becoming increasingly aware that the pre-history and history of hunter-gatherer societies is rich, complex and full of surprises. And far from being isolated these groups are, and have been for ages, engaged in important exchange relations with neighbouring societies, ranging from trading wild food and selling their labour to offering ritual expertise and healing. Varying degrees of integration into regional economic and political systems has existed for a long time and is increasingly common.
This issue of Indigenous Affairs presents cases from almost all regions where hunter-gatherers are to be found today: Africa – west, east, central and south; Asia – south and southeast; Australia, the Arctic and sub-Arctic as well as the Americas.
As becomes evident from a number of the presentations, the groups concerned are best understood when we also study the colonization of their territories and subsequent events and processes in post-colonial times. Fom a photo reportage in a glossy magazine, for example, the naked, exotic and hostile Jarawa may appear to some as a highly anachronistic stone-age type of society, while the careful analysis presented here enables us to see Jarawa strategies and reactions as a legacy of colonial and post-colonial policies in India.
In many respects hunting and gathering could be described as a modern and well-suited life form. These groups live on and off the land and the sea, in most instances with relatively little damage to the surrounding environment. Their adaptation may be the only option available without having to rely totally on imports to subsidize human presence in certain environments. They have their own territories and intimate knowledge of the environment and the life forms surrounding them. Hunter-gatherers are flexible and versatile and often turn out to be quite eclectic in their choice of subsistence strategies. Current groups range from those who are almost entirely unplugged from the larger society to those who will have the pick-up truck as a primary tool and successfully market their bush food for the sophisticated tastes in the larger cities.
There is no reason to over-romanticise the life of hunter-gatherers or, for example, depict them as some sort of model eco-angels. They have their malpractices and problems like everyone else. And yet, most of the groups have survived in their environments for millennia. On the whole - it makes sense in this world to stick to such a life form. And many of the principles underlying their adaptation match the aims we have in mind when discussing the urgent need to radically change the life-destroying principles and practices of modern industrial societies.
Hunter-gatherers have shown a remarkable resilience and will to survive and thrive. It is important to stress this, as will become apparent in the following articles. Sadly, the presentations can stand for the predicament of the whole range of remaining hunter-gatherer societies as well as that of indigenous peoples in general. The life situations of the hunter-gatherer groups presented here reads like a catalogue of horrors: loss of land, loss of title to resources, diminishing land base, lack of security of tenure, marginalisation, forced resettlement, eviction from protected areas, destruction of ecosystems, domination, subjugation, exploitation, lack of recognition as peoples, exposure to serious health hazards, victims of surrounding wars and conflicts, ethnic cleansing, forced changes of their way of life and also loss of language, knowledge, spirituality and traditions. The few remaining hunter-gatherer groups are faced with a series of deeply serious problems.
Some decades ago protests regarding the fate of these groups were primarily voiced by hunter-gatherers in the Western hemisphere such as the Inuit and Indians of Canada and Alaska and the Inuit of Greenland, as well as by a few researchers and human rights organisations. Alongside the global growth of the indigenous movement and organisations, hunter-gatherers are also increasingly coming forward and protesting against the problems they face. Most hunter-gatherer societies are known to be strongly egalitarian and to emphasize respect for the individual; there are seldom positions of institutionalised leadership. This has been seen as a potential serious impediment to the hunter-gatherers’ need for self-organising when having to face up to the threats their communities encounter. Apparently such problems are being overcome: the World Council of Whalers, the Union of Marine Mammal Hunters in Russia, the Inuit Hunter and Trappers Association, land management groups in Australia, the Communauté des Autochtones Rwandais (CAURWA) in Rwanda, and the Programme d’Intégration et de Développement du Peuple Pygmée au Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all presented in this issue, are only some of many hunter-gatherer organisations operating today. These organisational efforts are essential for hunter-gatherers in order to be able and allowed to make an impact on decisions pertaining to their future and to the development in their areas. In many parts of the world, various types of NGOs and individuals are doing valuable work together with hunter-gatherer communities in order to protect their lands, resources and way of life.
All the articles in this issue review recent developments in a number of hunter-gatherer communities and thus add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of their current situation. Some of the articles report on how general development trends such as the alarming rates of forest loss and deforestation in Asia, Africa and South America, are closely related to the serious consequences faced by a number of smaller local communities like the forest peoples of Equatorial Africa, the Batek, Orang Rimba or Kubu, and the Negritos of Southeast Asia. Other articles present groups like the Haddad of Chad and the Jarawa of the Andaman Islands that seldom even appear in specialised research literature. The article from the Chaco area in Argentina reports on groups many thought were extinct. Yet, unable to continue their life form they now look for rights as indigenous communities. A review of the situation of the Pygmy groups of Equatorial Africa contains information on both the very well known groups and those we hardly have had any information about for decades. Tom Mexsis Happynook provides a review which not only relates his own and his people’s history on whaling and relations to nature, but also a fresh updated comparative review of indigenous whaling and resource management with news from both distant communities as well as the international political settings in which the future of whaling and whaling communities is discussed.
Through Brody’s article we are reminded of the immense loss to humanity that is happening by way of the erosion of languages - a thought provoking argument which has relevance for all places where hunter-gatherers are living. Young’s article on contemporary indigenous subsistence in Australia is one example of the need to break down obsolete conceptual barriers between the modern and the traditional in hunter-gatherer societies. She also stresses a theme recurring in several of the articles - a remarkable survival capacity in spite of long term and persistent attempts to degrade or even wipe out hunter-gatherers’ way of life and their religion and how their spiritual relations and obligations to the land is part of their way to maintain the environment.
IWGIA has a longstanding commitment to bringing attention to the predicament of groups like hunter-gatherers, to publish, to engage in human rights work and project activities. Some recent examples are projects entailing capacity building and organisational efforts among so-called Bushmen in Botswana, but also among the new Pygmy organisations. A document on the Twa around the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is in the pipeline for publication and our list of publications includes a number of documents that solely or partly deals with hunter-gatherers. Our most recent document (no. 98) outlines the serious problems faced by the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group in Tanzania. Just as the Hadza document was published we received the sad news of the untimely death of Bwire Kaare, the Tanzanian anthropologist who spent so much time and effort in studying the Hadza and lobbying for the protection of their rights. The loss of a fine researcher and a human rights defender reminds us not only of the fragility of human lives, but also of how much we still have to learn of the few struggling hunter-gatherer societies that remain in this world and how little we can afford to loose them.
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