There
is a moment of riveting poignancy in the Latin American film Bye,
Bye, Brazil that speaks volumes about the wholesale destruction
of indigenous minorities in the Third World. A track cuts through the
towering Amazon rain forest like the single vapour trail of a jet in
an empty sky. A troop of bumptious mountebanks resting by the roadside
is interrupted by a bedraggled band of Indians: a wizened grandmother,
scattered women and children, and the young chief, transistor radio
firmly clamped to the side of his head, blasting disco music into the
endless jungle. They are on their way to the busy frontier staging town,
the chief explains. His grandmother want to ride on an airplane before
she dies.
The ancient cultures of Brazil's isolated Amerindians are as delicate
as the perfect gaudy orchids that bloom and die unseen in the silent
Amazonian wilderness. There, as in northern Canada, Papua New Guinea,
the Philippines, India and dozens of other
Third World countries, tribal peoples occupy large tracts of land now
feverishly coveted by government treasuries and multinational mining
corporations.
'The overall interests of the nation-state must come first' ministers
say, 'there can be no economic development without sacrifice.' The Minority
Rights Group, among others, maintains that such priorities are indefensible.
But can Third World countries really afford to coddle ancient subsistence
cultures sitting on a mountain of timber, a cache of copper or the hydroelectric
potential of an untapped river?
The real question is who defines the 'national interest'. In most Third
World countries, the path development should take is chosen by city-dwelling
government ministers following Western industrial models of growth.
Foreign corporations with the capital and technology for mining and
forestry end up the biggest winners - along with local businessmen and
government officials.
For the natives whose territory is invaded the costs are direct and
catastrophic. Deprived of land where they have farmed, fished or hunted
for generations, they must integrate somehow into the new cash economy,
find other ways of survival - prostitution, begging, selling handicrafts
- or gradually die. Ancient cultures built on natural rhythms and developed
in relative isolation wither or disappear completely. Where the transition
is most abrupt, the destruction is most complete.
When the process of change has been more gradual and the gap in technologies
less dramatic, tribal minorities have fared better. In India, Adivasis
(aboriginal people) make up nearly seven per cent of the population.
Over the centuries their culture has been swamped by the Hindu majority,
but they were able to retreat into jungle and hilly areas and develop
outside the caste society.
During the British 'Raj' the Adivasis were edged out of their land by
Hindu merchants in search of minerals and timber. Today, most are peasant
sharecroppers, landless farm-workers or small craftspeople. Though victims
of vicious discrimination some Adivasis maintain strong traditions of
dance, song and religion. As in native communities in North America,
there has been a resurgence of pride and interest in their cultural
heritage. But most remain scattered among low and middle caste Hindus
- a barely visible thread in the vast tapestry of Indian life. Some
countries have set up reservations where native people are cordoned
off on small parcels of land. Canada, the US, Australia, Brazil and
South Africa have all followed this course. But reserves tend to be
situated on the least productive land, usually only a tiny fraction
of former homelands. And even then, promises can become elastic when
uranium or some other mineral is discovered.
Indigenous peoples cannot remain isolated, hermetically sealed in the
display cases of their reserves. Nor would most choose to be denied
the benefits of science and technology that could improve their living
standards. Change is inevitable. But it must be change that is controlled
by those who are most vulnerable.
That is the ultimate test of development that claims to be democratic.
Anything less amounts to a kind of internal colonialism: the dominant
culture imposing its priorities on a fragile minority.
Self-determination has been the rallying cry of Third World independence
movements for the last 50 years. But few have opted to apply the same
standards to their own internal politics. Development that sacrifices
the poor and the powerless in favour of ill-defined, vague, and destructive
'national interests' is not development. It is exploitation. And that
is no less true in Canada or Australia than it is in Brazil or the Philippines.
Voyeurs
in Eden
We are a group of tourists who have paid a substantial sum of
money to 'see the Amazon jungle', including some Yagua Indians.
The tourist leaflet advertises a visit to a group of head-hunting
Jibaros as well, but the Jibaros are no longer there. They just
left one day without explanation and vanished into the forest.
As we approach the Yagua settlement - a few houses built on stilts
in a little clearing - a few of the Indians come out to watch
us advance. But instead of greeting us, they turn back to tell
the others to get ready.
We look very big, soft and pink beside the lithe, olive skinned
Indians as we march into the clearing pointing and gawking. 'Look,
she is taking lice from her hair and eating them' says the guide.
When no-one comments he repats his sentence in case we haven't
heard.
Climbing a short ladder into a house, we peer at people and objects
with equal curiosity. The guide leads us around the house and
out again as if he were conducting a museum tour. Outside the
Yaguas are all carefully placed performing a variety of tasks.
One woman is weaving a basket. Another pulls fluff from the seed
pod of a balsa tree for use as pillow stuffing. Some young women
are offering necklaces they have made out of seeds, porcupine
quills, feathers, beetle wings and bones.
A beautiful girl asks if I have any cosmetics, such as lipstick,
to trade with her for a necklace. I say no, I am sorry. Seeing
that I am friendly, she touches the bracelet on my arm. Her touch
is gentle, yearning. But I am fond of that bracelet, so I say
I will come back tomorrow if I can find a tube of lipstick.
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Yagua
woman - forever on display.
Photo: Ellen Drake |
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'Do
these people get paid something every time tourists come to look
at them?' I ask the guide. He says no. The land is owned by the
touring company. The Indians are only there on sufferance. They
get free medical attention, food and other assistance when they
need it. But they would be evicted if they decided they no longer
cared to have their privacy invaded by large pink strangers.
Behind them, the forest, representing their old way of life, stands
tall and majestic. It looks as though it has been unchanged for
millenia. But in recent years lumber companies have been plundering
the jungle and cutting down trees that are centuries old. Oil
has been discovered too, bringing its heavy influx of people and
technology. Men with guns have depleted the animals the Indians
once hunted with blow guns and darts. And new diseases have come
with the new people: many Indians with no resistance died The
forest still stands, but changes have altered its character irrevocably.
For the Yagua it seems the choice is to be on perpetual display-
or forever in oblivion.
Ellen
Drake |
From
Cowrie to Cadillac
Nauru is a treasure island in the western Pacific - with hordes
of the world's finest phosphate of lime buried in an area just
21 kilometres square.
As early as 1910 the island was being heavily mined. Its people
stood by bemused, with no idea that large chunks of their homeland
were being taken away to fertilize the grain fields of the western
world. By 1980 Nauruans found themselves materially clothed, but
culturally naked.
The traders who came to sell arms and ammunition changed relatively
harmless intertribal rivalry into deadly guerilla war. American
whalers brought syphilis, a Gilbertest teacher brought yaws, and
a missionary missed out on a stack of converts by killing them
with his own influenza. A tradition of nude beach dancing at the
onset of menstruation was ended by shocked Christian missionaries
and age-old moonlight singing became a thing of the past. By the
time the phosphate miners hit Nauru, the people were already culturally
ragged.
After a visit to Nauru in 1936, anthropologist Camilla Wedgwood
observed that 'many of the young men and women know little or
nothing of the life of their great grandfathers. . . all too many
assume that European customs are superior . . . it is predominantly
the material side of European culture in which the young Nauruans
are interested.'
While British Phosphate Commissioners' (BPC) machinery chewed
on through the phosphate-rich central plateau - leaving a soil-less,
craggy, 'lunarscape' behind it - down on the more fertile coastal
strip, Nauruans got to thinking. Following the lead of people
like Chief Hammer DeRoburt, Nauruans decided to make their bid
for independence from Australia in 1968. Within two years they
had control of phosphate operations.
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Racing
into the 80s with a $4 million jet.
Photo:
Camera
Press
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Since
then Nauruans have invested their profits for the time - 12 years
hence - when all the phosphates will be gone. Nauru is now collecting
at the rate of $40 million a year. And its people have raced,
dollars in pockets,
into the 80s - starting an airline, a shipping line, buying hotels
overseas and building one of Melbourne's tallest skyscrapers.
Until the 1800s Nauruans were probably as pure, complete and self-sufficient
as any race ever has been. They still firmly believe they are
aboriginal. But pre-contact ways have faded in the minds of the
people, and there is little in anthropological writings to jog
their memories.
Life on Nauru today is expensive cars, nightclubs, alcohol, imported
food, video, hi-fi gadgetry - and the Nauru Phosphate Corporation
scratching its way through a last dozen years of phosphate wealth.
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new
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