Post #15: Indigenous rights

The first web resource I looked at was the website for The Akha Heritage Foundation. It is a rather small private organization, that is basically run by single Akha-American family (so indigenous people are very much involved with the foundation). The central mission of this foundation is to raise international (but mostly in the United States) awareness about the plight of the Akha people in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, China and Vietnam (link). The main causes that the foundation involves itself in are the protection of Akha language and culture, stopping abuse by local security forces as well as preventing Akha children from being taken from their traditional villages by Christian missionaries (link). The foundation very much tries to present the "authentic", traditional image of Akha culture to the American public by doing a cross-country bus/horse ride tour with stops in select American cities and towns to speak with politicians and reporters. On these road-stops the Akha family is frequently "shown off" wearing traditional Akha forms of dress.



In contrast the other website that I examined was the site of Bruno Manser Fonds, which is NGO (non-governmental organization) whose stated mission is the protection of the rights of the Penan people who live in rain forest on the island of Borneo (link). Unlike the Akha Heritage Foundation, this organization seems to have a much more formal structure as it has a board of chairmen/chairwomen as well as half a dozen employed office workers. This organization is taking a more ecological/environmental perspective in dealing with the social and economic problems faced by indigenous Penan. The organization recognizes that Penan have a strong spiritual connection with their ancestral forest and that recent unregulated logging in the area has a highly detrimental effect on the continued cultural survival of these people (link). Through projects like mapping the Serawak forest and land-right litigation, the Bruno Manser Fonds is attempting to halt this potential ethnocide on Borneo . Also the indigenous peoples themselves are closely involved with the on-the-ground work of the organization, such as in the case of performing "community mapping" projects with the resulting maps acting as evidence against illegal logging. The Penan are also setting up health care centers with Bruno Manser Fond's sponsorship.

Image: Penan people

Post #14: Globalized Communities

The plight of the San Bushmen people can be viewed as a model example of how development-induced displacement can drastically affect the indigenous people's traditional way of life and more importantly their subsistence strategy. The Botswana government's reason for the "voluntary relocation" was officially proclaimed as a way of "setting aside the protected area for wildlife and tourism development" while the suggestions from human rights groups, that diamond exploration was involved, were vehemently denied by the government (link) After being "evicted" from their ancestral homes in mid 1990s, the San have been relocated to government-built camps like the one at Nucati, where they were told by the officials that they could continue their hunter-gathering lifestyle at their new location. While to the government officials the new settlements like Nucati might have seemed very similar to the areas in Kalahari Game Reserve where Bushmen used to live, to the Bushmen themselves the situation couldn't be any worse.

According to the Bushmen chief, his people don't know the new area and can't find edible plants or figure out the "patterns of game" there (link). So not only are they unable to adapt to their new land, as such adaptive knowledge would take at least a generation to develop, but they think that their spirituality is at risk. Many San are now infected with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (link). Perhaps because young Bushmen are so demoralized by the general unemployment and poverty, they find themselves on a quick downhill road towards alcoholism and drug abuse. Tuberculosis is sometimes said to be the disease of poverty while drug abuse might be a possible contributing factor to the increased rate of HIV/AIDS infections. But such etic, scientific explanations don't matter to the San who see the cause for all the deaths originating from the angry ancestor spirits who cursed the people for leaving their Kalahari homeland, the land where these ancestors are still buried (link). While at the Nucati camp, the San people, once proud hunters, are completely dependent on the government for their subsistence which is provided in the form of fenced-off plots of land and food rations of cornmeal, pasteurized milk and tea (link).

PS: Internally displaced persons are not recognized by international treaties on refugees. Thus despite winning a historic court ruling against Botswana government in 2006, as of today only a few Bushmen have been allowed to return. The government has been blamed for putting further obstacles in this return (link).

Websites referenced:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/73a2331fd99df33a313ad4b103af74ca.htm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4968597

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=37858

Post #13: Review of an art gallery

Today I was lucky to stumble upon this online gallery of beautiful works by John Reuben, a self-taught Cree artist from Moosonee, Ontario. Most of his showcased paintings are done in acrylic paint on silk screens, although recently he's been known to experiment in other media (link). Mr. Reuben's favourite art subject appears to be scenes of Canadian wildlife and largely because of this combined with his almost photo-realistic style my first impression was that this wasn't really native art in its "authentic" or "traditional" sense. Yet it is obvious that through his "fine art" approach the artist is trying to convey a strong individual artistic identity in how he sees nature and his people's heritage which is perhaps somewhat different, in terms of media used, from other more representational, symbolic examples of Canadian indigenous folk art. But even though something like "Close Call-Loon" (painting pictured third from top) might not appear to a casual observer, from a different culture, (who I believe is largely the intended audience of this private gallery) as "traditional" Native American art, I sense that there is a strong cultural expression by the artist. When looking at the colour palette used one almost gets a feeling of seeing a snapshot of a particularly vivid dream or shamanistic meditation. Also almost every painting on the website reveals, either through its specific imagery or commentary provided by Mr. Reuben, a glimpse into an older culture that had great respect for nature because the livelihood of its people was so dependent on it.

All images of artwork taken from http://www.johnreuben.ca/

Post #12: Communication

According to the official Statistics Canada website's report on language diversity there were more than 100 languages spoken by Canadians at the time of 2001 census. Looking at some general trends, although many European languages were on the list, the language groups from Asia and Middle East recorded the biggest gain (link). More specifically, significant change was noted from 1996 census to 2001 census, as just over 5 million Canadians spoke a mother tongue other than French or English (allophones) in 2001. In comparison with 1996 census, there was 12.5% growth in the number of allophones (link). One of the demographic implications of this trend is that there were a lot more allophones immigrating to/born in Canada in 2001 than 10 years before. Related social, as well as cultural, implications of this trend is that there are now a number of rapidly growing diaspora populations inside Canada. The term diaspora refers to a permanently displaced group of people who share a common national and/or ethnic identity (link). The existence of large diaspora populations, such as those of Chinese, Ukrainians, Greek, Filipinos, Pakistanis and many other ethnic/national communities has long been the major factor in defining the identifying character of Canada as a truly multicultural nation. A nation where all kinds of people are allowed to call themselves Canadians, becoming part of the larger Canadian society but at the same time keep their unique ethnic identities at the forefront if they so wish, passing their culture and language to the next generation of Canadians. But in my opinion, there are important political implications to be aware of as well. As Canada becomes a new homes to numerous immigrants, these new Canadians bring different political identities along with their unique cultural identities. So sometimes there could arise some international/diplomatic tension between Canada and other states, as in the case of India which is often concerned with the activities of Canadian Sikh separatists whose expatriate political movement could potentially draw funding from their new home country's economy (link). And yet Canadian government cannot in no form attempt to limit the economic or social activities of such openly separatist groups, because such actions would undermine the open, multicultural reputation of Canadian society. These are some of the things that Canadian politicians and policymakers should keep in mind as Canada takes on greater economic and diplomatic roles in our increasingly globalized world.

In the photo: Canadian Sikh community celebrating Sikh New Year in Toronto, Canada.

Post #11: Religion

In 19th century Edward Tylor proposed one of the earliest anthropological theories about religion. At the core of his theory was the notion of animism, or the belief that souls or spirits inhabit not only humans but everything in our world, including animals, plants, inanimate objects such as rocks and even geographical features like rivers and mountains (link). According to Tylor animism was the first great theory in human history. It was first invented by our ancient forebears who "puzzled by their experiences of dreams and of visions, and desirous of achieving a satisfying account of death" decided to explain such things as being the actions of various independently-existing spirits (link).

It is rather obvious how Edward Tylor's theory of religion is influenced by his theoretical orientation on anthropology. Because Tylor was one of the founders of 19th century's school of cultural evolutionism he firmly believed that all cultures passed at varying rates through a set of stages of development, from "savagery" to "barbarism" and finally to "civilization". So in his theory of religion, Tyler brings up a similar idea of cultural progress in how he views world religions evolutionarily progressing from "savage" state of childlike inference (based on firsthand experience and dreams) on the polytheist/animist end of religious spectrum all the way to the "civilized" monotheist religions such as Christianity (link). Tylor proposed his theory of religion to counter the degenerationist theories of his Victorian contemporaries, who argued that contemporary religion such as Christianity were "degenerations" of the "higher" religions of our ancestors. Many of his modern critics note that in his theory Tylor overlooks the social and emotional dimensions of religion. On the other hand, Evans-Pritchard noted that Tylor's religion theory has the quality of a "just-so story"(link). The website also mentions that "many specifics of Tylor's theorizing are unacceptable to us today and I think it is easy to see that since Edward Tylor presents a very ethnocentric, or specifically eurocentric, point of view which wouldn't be acceptable by modern cultural relativist anthropologists because the theory intentionally critisizes other cultures based on their religious beliefs. Overall, I think that the website was very informative and did a great job of documenting the 19th century evolutionist perpective on the origin of religion.

Post #10: Feminist Anthropology as cultural critique

Women's labour activism is perhaps something that the current generation of women and men in the West had taken for granted as our industrialized society has taken significant steps in achieving a more egalitarian division of labour. But in the case of Indonesian women, the rise of women's labour activism stemmed from two rather different social class sources. On one side middle-class feminists in Indonesia who through the vehicle of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) were successful in raising national and international awareness of the problems that Indonesian women faced in general (link). These middle-class, privileged Indonesian women of the 90s used their social status and international NGO contacts in order to build up external pressure for local change. On the other hand the new wave of unions of Indonesian female factory workers, in calling for workplace gender equity, had acted as more of a self-help group/work group than a traditionally counter-cultural feminist organization of the middle-class women. The main struggle of these female migrant labourers and factory workers is to achieve better working conditions and not to further feminist agenda worldwide or reach some sort of solidarity with women in other countries (link). The two groups of Indonesian women present a case of defamiliarization by cultural juxtaposition in how they almost seem to outline the implicit western stereotype that all feminists are the same (pictures of angry hyperideological bra-burning American middle-class housewives of 1960-70s instantly come to mind) while at the same time giving the reader a glimpse at exactly the kind of everyday struggles (for better working opportunities, conditions and equal pay) that inspired the whole feminism movement in the first place. By looking at the similar case of female labour activism in the Philippines one realizes that not only are the feminists in other cultures evolving under different social pressures and norms but that these feminist movements arise while facing obstacles unique to that culture. So the poor migrant worker women activists in Indonesia are often ostracized and generally "considered as a threat"by their male Muslim coworkers and family (link). In the Philippines, the women's labour activism is an urban phenomenon in contrast to Indonesia's middle class-based feminism (which perhaps is more familiar to our western worldview) because Filipino feminists are concentrated in urban areas while the majority of poor female migrant workers still reside in the rural areas (link).

Post #9: Social groups and social stratification

Why are street gangs in retreat in New York City, a city that was once practically synonymous with the phrase urban street gang? That's the question asked by the author of the article "Gang Busters". One of the forces, suggested in the article, as being a contributing factor in the decline of gangs in the city, is urban renewal.The author brings up a good point that the urban landscape of New York has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Some iconic neighborhoods have been bulldozered in order to free up land for new urban developments like Lincoln Center (link). Similarly, new immigrant arrivals are "too savvy to move into the notorious inner-city neighborhoods"(link). But New York's street gangs have evolved too. Where before they were divided by race and/or ethnicity, presently (or as of 2002 when this article was written) these boundaries don't seem to stop members of different minorities such as Yugoslavian, Albanian and Pakistani youths from joining together to start their own gangs. Latinos and Caucasians are also becoming accepted in what once had been African American-only gangs such as the Crips or Bloods. To me it seems that the street gang culture has simply changed to be defined by different norms. So where in the past gangs would organize according to specific neighborhood affiliation or ethnic group loyalty, modern youths are more driven by the promise of making a quick buck on the drug market. Yet gang affiliations are still valued over simple freelance drug trafficking because gang membership offers important rewards such as social status, prestige and protection within a countercultural group context. And for many youths the idea of belonging to a recognized group/club, even a criminal one, is a reward in on itself. So from this article it seems that although the more infamous ethnic/racial gangs are losing ground, there are many new gangs being created in New York. These gangs are still formed as a way to construct an important social boundary, or perhaps a way to define newly-formed cultural distinctions, between the few gang members and "others"(law-abiding citizens) on the other side.

In words of Fredrik Barth, "the cultural features that signal the boundary may change, and the cultural characteristics of the members may likewise be transformed" yet the continuing dichotomization between members and outsiders remains.