8-1 Nomads: Stopped in Their Tracks?

Small-scale Projects and Sahel Nomads

In the aftermath of the 1968-1973 drought in the Sahel many development agencies were anxious to respond to the pressing needs of pastoralists. Herders in the northern Sahel had lost a large proportion of their animals and hence their means or livelihood. Four small scale projects, undertaken by private voluntary agencies (PVOs) are described in Section I: Tin Aicha village and the Kidal wells…

Open Letter on the Ju/Wasi of Bushmanland

The Ju/Wasi people of Bushmanland need help and support to keep their land and develop a better way of life for themselves and their children. Picture a people… * who have lost 70 % of the land they had occupied for at least 1,000 and perhaps as long as 23,000 years… * who were the last independent, self-sufficient hunters and gatherers in Southern Africa - still practicing their ancient way of…

Introduction - 8.1

Pastoral nomadism provokes highly contrasting images. The romantic image of the nomad as a free spirit, untrammeled by the restrictions of sedentary life - such as the desert Bedouin - is strongly represented in Western literature while portraits of tall, haughty Masai leaning on their spears surrounded by cattle compete for our attention on the glossy pages of coffee table books. In some…

Generating Interest

Money for human rights work is scarce. For the past ten years, Cultural Survival has spent eighty percent of its' budget directly on projects for indigenous peoples, and reports which publicize their plight here and abroad. The organization has restricted its overhead expenses - salaries, offices, supplies, telephone, etcetera - to 20% - of its annual budget, an extremely low figure for any human…

Nomads in a Wider Society

Nomadism is found mostly in marginal areas which support only relatively sparse populations, particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia. It is a traditional form of society that allows the mobility and flexibility necessary for relatively even use of vegetation over large areas of low quality rangeland. It also facilitates more social interaction than would be possible…

Land and Pastoralists

No issue is more critical to the future well-being of Kenya's pastoral populations than secure land tenure. Herders' access, particularly during dry months, to grazing land and water resources is the essence of any pastoral existence. Pastoralists' concern with security of land tenure overrides other development considerations - provision of technical assistance in the areas of animal health,…

India: The Bharvad Predicament

We are like stepchildren, we are the government's stepsons. We are cattle people, we own no land, no fields; without fields we pay no tax to the government, farmers pay, and so you know "you look after those who feed yon." We are pressed from both sides. From one side the government has distributed the land (to the landless laborers) on the second side the government acquires waste land and…

Change and Egyptian Bedouins

Although they may appear as coastal communities on a map, Bedouin groups along the northern edge of the Egyptian Western Desert orient themselves south toward the desert where, until sedentarization, their migrations had taken them. Permanent water sources attract them to the coastal region during the summer season when the desert is parched. So does the need to sow barley in the fall and harvest…

Food and the Turkana in Kenya

The Turkana are nomadic pastoralists who live in the desert regions of northwestern Kenya. These people were one of many affected by a severe drought in 1979 and 1980. Although the famine which resulted from the sharp drop in food production was dramatized by the international press, insecurity of food availability is characteristic of pastoral production systems. The following discussion…

Do Relief Efforts Beget Famine?

The food supply of African pastoralists is precarious even in the best of times. When raiding, drought, and disease reduce the number and strength of the livestock upon which pastoralists' livelihood depends, shortages and famine often result. If circumstances permit, pastoralists will follow traditional strategies for coping with the problem, or if effective aid comes from the outside, disaster…

Chittagong Hill Tribes of Bangladesh

Resource Development and Ethnic Conflict Although Bangladesh's population consists mostly of Muslim, Bengali speakers, it also contains a variety of other ethnic groups (see Table). Most of these groups inhabit the district known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a region of hills and forests which was comparatively inaccessible until recently. Over the past century, however, the Hill Tracts have…

Toward a New Indian Policy in Brazil

"Perhaps many of its will have to write our Indian history with blood, but one day we will make the V of victory to the government an to FUNAI. We will be victorious." - Marcal Tupa-Y (Guarani leaders assassinated on 25/11/83) During the past year the Brazilian Indian movement made enormous strides in promoting progressive changes in national Indian policy. Simultaneously, Indian communities…

The Saami in a Shrinking World

In Europe's arctic periphery, one people straddles four nation-states. The traditional tracts of the Saami (formerly called "Lapps") dip south beyond central Norway and Sweden, and skim, across the arctic regions of Finland and the Kola peninsula of the USSR. Fifty-two thousand persons today call themselves Saami. About 70% speak Saami as well as the national language. As one of Europe's…

The Qashqa'i of Iran

In spite of debilitating political and economic transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, a large proportion of the 400,000 Qashqa'i of southwestern Iran still are pastoral nomads. The revolution of 1978-1979 and the creation of the new Islamic Republic of Iran have permitted a rapid resurgence of tribalism and a resumption of extremely productive pastoralism. Such changes, resulting from state…

Shahsavan in the Grip of Development

The Shahsavan are a nomadic pastoralist tribe located in northwest Iran near the Soviet frontier. These Azeri-Turkish speaking pastoralists migrate between their winter quarters, qishlaq, in the Mughan steppe of Azerbaijan, and their summer quarters, yeylaq, around Mount Sabalan, approximately one hundred fifty miles to the south. After visiting the Shahsavan from 1971 to 1977, we set out in…

Relocating Blacks in South Africa

Recent attempts by the South African government to relocate Blacks have met with strong protest from those targeted for removal and their supporters. Last December, 2,000 Bakwena, residing in Magopa, were given seven days to vacate their village and move to a new homeland. After seven days, government officials gave the order to bulldoze village churches and schools. On 11 January 1984, 300…

Peru: People, Parks and Petroleum

Reports in the Lima press on January 23 and 24, 1984, described a bow and arrow attack by a group or 20 to 50 naked and painted members of the "Pirumashco tribe," occurring on January 22 in the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald area of Mann Province, Madre de Dios, Peru. The victims were a crew of heliport construction workers; Segundo Brito Murallari, a 16-year-old trail clearer, received a 2-inch arrow…

Nomads in Jordan and Syria

The modern nation-states of Jordan and Syria encompass most of the Syrian desert (Badiyat al-Sham). Although the desert is, for the most part, unsuitable for farm agriculture, it is good pasture and has been used by Bedouin for thousands of years. Traditionally, Bedouin divided themselves into three groups based on their main sources of subsistence. The first group was the "true" Bedouin - camel-…

Brazil: Land Policy and the Indigenous Movement

Brazilian Indians have taken advantage of the process of abertura ("opening," the process of political democratization initiated by President Joao Figueiredo in 1979) to make significant political gains. But landowners and developers have not stood by idly, and the military government's growing tendency to see and administer land as a national security issue bodes ill for Indian interests.…

Afghanistan's Kirghiz in Turkey

The arrival in August 1982 of a group of 1,138 Afghan Kirghiz pastoral nomads in the village of Karagunduz, near the shores of Lake Van in Eastern Anatolia, seemed to mark the end of their sixty-five year search for a safe haven. The arrival of this small community of Turkic Central Asians in Anatolia may also mark the end of a significant historical process that began almost a thousand years ago…

Afghan Nomad Refugees in Pakistan

Since the Soviet army entered Afghanistan on December 27, 1979, approximately three million Afghans have crossed the border into Pakistan seeking safety and a livelihood. Among them are several groups of fully nomadic people, many others who have traditionally combined fettled agriculture with seasonal migration into the mountains with small herds, and pure agriculturalists. They have brought…