15-1 Romanticizing the Stone Age

Update from CS (Canada) - 15.1

The Oka Crisis As readers of Cultural Survival Quarterly will doubtless know, the Mohawk crisis at Oka, Kahnasate, Quebec, ended without further loss of life (one Quebec police officer was killed earlier in the crisis). The issue of land rights is hardly resolved, however. Mohawk Warriors who has held out for months, ultimately taking shelter in a drug rehabilitation center, surrendered to the…

The Incredible "Tasaday": Deconstructing the Myth of a "Stone-Age" People

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The Ecologically Noble Savage

To live and die with the land is to know its rules. When there is no hospital at the other end of the telephone and no grocery store at the end of the street, when there is no biweekly paycheck nor microwave oven, when there is nothing to fall back on but nature itself, then a society must discover the secrets of the plants and animals. Thus indigenous peoples possess extensive and intensive…

People of the Great White Lie?

John Paul Myburgh's film People of the Great Sandface (1986) has apparently been well received in Britain and Europe and hailed by respected, well-informed and critical South African media commentators as a breakthrough in South African ethnographic film. Yet People of the Great Sandface raises troubling questions, not only about how we portray the human dimension of southern Africa, but about…

Neither Warriors nor victims, the Wauja Peacefully Organize to Defend Their Land

Neither Warriors nor Victims, the Wauja Peacefully Organize to Defend. Their Land The Legacy of Altamira An idea is spreading in the rain forests of central Brazil, perhaps even more rapidly than the fires of deforestation: that Indians as a group are politically powerful. Indians living in isolated rainforest villages throughout Amazonia are coming to think of themselves as sharing an identity…

Insuring a Cooperative's Future

Cultural Survival responds to requests for aid from grassroots groups and projects that help indigenous people cope with situations that threaten their basic human rights. Since 1972 the organization has grown with the help of thousands of supporters. Contributions of time and money have strengthened Cultural Survival, making it a significant champion of human rights. To continue on an upward…

Film Reviews

Banking on Disaster. 1988, 78 minutes. Produced and directed by Adrian Cowell. (Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA 19547) Blowpipes and Bulldozers, 1988, 60 minutes. Directed by Jeni Kendall and Paul Tait. (Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA 19547) Contact: The Yanomami Indians of Brazil. 1989, 30 minutes. Produced and directed by Geoffrey O'Connor. (Filmakers Library Inc., 124 E. 40th St. #901, New York, NY 10016)…

Editorial: The Decade Ahead

The grim news of the Persian Gulf war hangs over us all this winter. One of the many painful lessons we should learn from this conflict is that we ignore human rights abuses at our peril. The West and the United States have known for a long time about the savage regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, yet we supported it and armed it to the teeth. The United Nations documented Iraq's use of poison gas…