Agir avec les peuples oubliés ICRA International

Although they live in areas considered by many to be exotic or even marginal (hot or cold deserts and their surroundings, tropical and equatorial forests, wooded savannahs), in parts of the world long protected from the so-called “civilized” world, today’s indigenous peoples and their lands (in the broadest sense) are more and more often threatened by developed nations and newly emerging countries in search of the raw materials they need to sustain or develop their way of life. As a result, in rainforests, in the wide pastures bordering desert lands, in the icy regions of the North, in the wooded savannahs of the southern hemisphere, indigenous lands become prey to greedy multinational corporations which destroy their lands and resources, colonize and pollute fragile ecosystems, and threaten the survival of populations whose land rights are rarely recognized.  

Beyond the traditional definitions of the word indigenous — be they historical, structuralist or cultural —, these peoples are first and foremost characterized by their closeness to, and a marked dependence on, a nurturing environment, by a moderate exploitation of its natural resources, and by a community-based management of the land, all of which with strong symbolic ties: if the industrialized world believes that the earth belongs to us, indigenous people think that we belong to the earth.

Ever since paleolithic and neolithic times, human societies have been collecting data on their environment. This has allowed them to adapt to it through a series of strategies, responses and regulatory information, so as to make the best possible use of it while taking its preservation into account, a prerequisite for their survival.

This functional and regulatory knowledge has usually been transmitted orally from generation to generation. Yet, a lot of it has been lost. “As a matter of fact, the development of science represents a sort of exile, the exile of human nature and of the nature of things; and the large body of knowledge accumulated so far has borne the stamp of “what goes without saying”. (1) This type of fission due to the advent of science has led to a huge loss in the knowledge contained in practices that science ignored because it assumed that nature is inexhaustible and limitless, and that man can do with it as he pleases. 

The Western approach to nature hinges on the duality of human vs non-human, of a natural world which is separate from society and subjected to us, its owners. This view is foreign to indigenous peoples, for whom nature and the human sphere are as one, closely related to each other. Many indigenous peoples confer most of the distinctive attributes of human society to plants and animals, too. 

Despite the colonization of bodies and minds by science and these models from the North, traditional and indigenous societies are still there — for many of them thanks to local ancestral knowledge that even now is alive and kicking, as it remains constantly nourished by the daily practices and experiences of individuals. 

In these societies, subsistence activities are not distinct from social and cultural activities; the economic sphere remains part and parcel of the social, spiritual and environmental spheres, which remain in control.

Along the Laos – Thailand border, the nomadic Mlabri, one of the last remaining groups of hunters-gatherers in South-East Asia, roam the forested hills and green valleys of the region. Their land is characterized by a continuous forest cover, mountainous terrain and a great number of small streams. The biodiversity is remarkable. The Mlabri move in small groups according to the season and forest cycle, following a precise migratory route. Food security and the availability of resources are the key criteria that inform their moves, as well as temperature (in the rain season higher routes are favored, so as to avoid mosquitoes), the amount of rainfall (for the flow of the rivers they must cross), the wind (bamboo forests offer protection when the monsoon changes), and the proximity of villages (in order to trade forest products for rice, cloth, etc).

The Mlabri have a great liking for tubers, rhizomes, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, rattan and palm. They also appreciate small mammals, birds, shrimps, snakes, and small fish — which they catch, hunt with spears, or just outrun. When they decide to stop, the Mlabri build huts or rather simple lean-tos, made of palm or wild banana leaves on a bamboo framework, where they can rest, cook, protect from the rain and celebrate.

In order to survive in near-autarky, they have inherited the technical knowledge and experience of their parents, transmitted through generations of empirical observation. They have always been guided by climate and resources. They belong in the forest, were born there and want to die there. It is their home, their reference point, their school, their world. They have never attempted to tame it, but rather to surrender to it as nomads who respect the elements of nature and leave no traces of their passage… or so few.

“We consider the forest as a home, the moon and stars are our lights, the wood is a pillow, and we sleep with our heads covered with tongued ants, our feet covered with clawed ants, and our backs and bellies covered with biting ants, and we are so happy.” (2)

For indigenous communities, natural resources are communal, collectively administered and redistributed. The communities see themselves as tenants of resources provided by the natural world. This world is only accessible within the limits of a set of practices that bind people and spirits, because this natural and vital space must be both valued and preserved. It is the convergence of all these practices which is at the root of the balance, the harmony between people and the environment that allows for the renewal of all the spheres making up society and the natural world.

These last decades, under the pressure of ever more powerful colonizing fronts, most indigenous peoples have had to find refuge in the margins of our world. But even these territories are now coveted by extractive industries, which destroy richly biodiverse ecosystems, pollute rivers, disrupt transhumance patterns and routes, and devastate primeval forests where indigenous peoples draw their sustenance.

Many of those communities are now compelled to survive in small untouched hideaways, such as the Bagyéli, who make do on a few acres of land in the middle of an unvaryingly green ocean of oil palms, which have replaced the nurturing woodland of the forest communities in southwestern Cameroon. Others have been expelled from their land after it was destroyed or colonized, and have moved to the outskirts of big cities, bereft of their environment and way of life. They will forever be deprived of the land of their ancestors, forced to join the masses of refugees already crowded on the fringes of the cities. 

Even so, some communities remain attached to the shreds of land that those shameful multinationals have condescended to leave them, where they practice some subsistence farming, find a job here and there while waiting for better days, with the hope of returning one day into the heart of the nurturing forest, their one and only Eden.