16-2 At the Theshold: An Action Guide for Cultural Survival

YES! - Youth for Environmental Sanity

YES!, a national speaking and workshop tour, motivates young people to get involved with issues that affect their future. The 1990-91 YES! Tour - Youth for Environmental Sanity - swept 25 cities, directly touching the lives of 80,000 students and reaching 20 million more people through the media. An entirely youth-run organization, the main focus of Yes! is the environment, but we encourage…

xavante

Location, Land, and Climate The Xavante once lived in northern Brazil, between the Tocantines and Aragaia rivers. They moved away from advancing settlers in the early nineteenth century to lands they now occupy west of the Rio das Mortes. After Brazil's capital moved to Brasilia and the military government began "opening up" the interior in earnest, many indigenous peoples who had been protected…

wodaabe

Location, Land, and Climate Wodaabe are nomads, migrating through much of the Sahel from northern Cameroon to Chad, Niger, and northeast Nigeria. The last nomads in the area, the Wodaabe number between 160,000 and 200,000. Other around them - the Hausa, Fulani, and Tuaeg - regard the Wodaabe as wild people. The Wodaabe refer to the Fulani with equal disdain as Wodaabe who lost their way. The…

Why Rainforest Crunch?

"Why should a human rights group build markets for tropical forest products?" This often-asked question relates specifically to why Cultural Survival does it, but it also gets into how we do it and what we are accomplishing. Tropical rain forests are the earth's oldest, most productive, most diverse ecosystems. They cover less than 2 percent of the globe yet support nearly half of all species -…

Who Do We Think We Are?

Those concerned about the fate of the planet have used the now-famous photo of the earth taken by the first U.S. astronauts to mobilize constituencies for both conservation and peace. Its image of unity has proven powerful, helping us think, in practical terms, about global interdependence in relation to fragile ecosystems. The problem is that no people appear in the view, not does it give any…

weyewa

Location, Land, and Climate The Weyewa live on Sumba, one of the islands of eastern Indonesia. On the outer are of the Lesser Sundas, Sumba is 75 miles long and 200 miles wide. Grassy plateaus dominate central Sumba, the southern coast has small, scattered mountain area, the northern coast is a dry lowland, and the western part is a plateaus surrounded by hills. The soil is thin and poor for…

Veddhas Say No to Colonization Plan

When the following article came to Cultural Survival Trust of Sri Lanka, it was the first contact between our organizations. The Sir Lanka group is not affiliated with Cultural Survival, yet as the excerpt from their letter to us on the next page shows, we have much in common. The island-nation of Sri Lanka, an ethnically plural society with sizable Hindu, Muslim, and Christian minorities…

Tropical Rainforest Destruction: A Human-Rights Fact Sheet

The Losses * Inappropriate logging and farming have so devasted the rain forest on the Philippine island of Ormoc that it no longer functions as a natural flood barrier. In November 1991, a flash flood left over 3,000 dead and 20,000 homeless. * During the three years after golf was discovered on Yanomami territory in Brazil, 50,000 gold hunters flooded the land, killed and raped yanomami people…

The Peoples of "Millennium"

Cultural Survival has issued "At the Threshold" to accompany the 1992 premier of "Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World." We believe the 10-part TV series, hosted by Cultural Survival founder and board president David Maybury-Lewis, will convey a basic Cultural Survival message to millions of people in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and other developed countries. "What I hope…

Return to Porfirismo

In 1876, Porfirio Diaz opened Mexico to international investment, inaugurating decades of growing inequality. Recalling that era, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is now turning to an export-oriented economy to solve the country's pressing internal problems. He has backed the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada and accepted the conditions of the International Monetary Fund…

Pressing the Press: How the media became an asset in the campaign to convince the World Bank to respect the environment.

December 23, 1988, the day of Chico Mendes' murder, Marlise Simons fervently praised the life of the Brazilian labor leader and environmentalist. The New York Times correspondent in Brazil, Simons called the National Council of Rubber Tappeers Mendes headed "the only group that physically prevented deforestation." She placed responsibility for the violence that claimed his life on the shoulders…

nyimba

Location, Land, and Climate Some 1,200 Nyimba live in northwest Nepal, in the Humla district near Tibet. The sunny, agriculturally productive valleys of the region have been home to several generations of families, who trace their origins to western Tibet and Tibetan speakers in Nepal. The Nyimba culture combines elements of both Nepal and Tibet. Cultural Systems The Nyimba are Tibetan Buddhists…

navajo

Location, Land, and Climate Archeologists think the Navajo reached the American Southwest sometimes after 1300. Although the Spanish explored the region in the 1500s and 1600s, the Navajo had little contact with them until almost 1700. The Spanish lost control of the region in the late 1600s, but during their reconquest of 1696, Jemez, Tewa, and Keresan Pueblo Indians retreated with the Navajo to…

mohawk

Location, Land, and Climate The earliest known Mohawk villages were on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal. In 1535, when rivals drove them south, the Mohawk built three fortified villages along the Mohawk River in northeast New York. Great stands of oaks, chestnuts, alders, beeches, and pines then blanketed the Mohawk valley. Deer, turkeys, elks, bears, foxes, and wolves provided meat and…

makuna

Location, Land, and Climate The Makuna, 600 people strong, live the Colombia's Vaupes region, near the headwaters of the Comena River close to Brazil. In this part of the Amazonian rain forest, humidity and temperature are highall year. The neighboring Maku and Tukano speak similar languages. Other surrounding peoples are the Banyanin, Tutuyi, Tanimuka, and Yauna. The latter two are traditional…

huichol

Location, Land, and Climate Most Huichol Indians live in central northwest Mexico, in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains. Their territory is located roughly 60 miles east of San Blas on the Pacific coast north of Guadalajara. Estimating the population of Huichol is difficult, but there were at least 8,000 in the late 1970s. Livelihood The Huichol are subsistence farmers. Their main crop is…

gabra

Location, Land, and Climate The Gabra, a nomadic tribe of 31,000 people, live in northeast Kenya along both sides of its border with Ethiopia. They are an eastern Cushitic (Oromo) speaking people who originated in southern Ethiopia. Pastoralists with a strong attachment to camels, the Gabra developed a rich culture stemming from the harsh environment in which they live. The Gabra occupy territory…

dogon

Location, Land, and Climate The ancestors of the Dogon came from Mande, an area in southwest Mali and northeast Guinea that was home to the thirteenth-century Mali empire. The Dogon migrated after the empire's collapse to the cliffs of the Bandiagara plateau. The cliffs and rocky terrain provided excellent protection from slave raiders coming from the desert, but they also isolated communities,…

briefly noted - 16.2

No Peace for East Timor It an historic first, the Indonesian government has in effect blamed the military for a human-rights violation. On February 27, the Council of Military Honor, a commission appointed by President Suharto, investigated 19 soldiers for their involvement in the November 12, 1991, massacre in East Timor. Six officers were dismissed outrights, eight soldiers, face court martial…

australian aborigine

Location, Land, and Climate Australia, the aboriginal homeland, is earth's direst and flattest continent. Only the eastern seaboard and the northern tropical forests get consistent rainfall. Hundreds of linguistically and culturally distinct aboriginal tribes have lived in harmony with this harsh environment for over 30,000 years. After European settlers arrived in 1788, thousand of aborigines…

Truth and Travel: Alternative tourism isn't always responsible tourism

As travel to the Third World has expanded, so, too, has concern about the damage wrought by mass tourism on the people and places that play host to wandering North Americans and Europeans. This sensitivity is generating a different kind of tourism, an alternative that goes by the names of peaceful travel, eco-tourism, ethical travel, and responsible travel - to name just a few. It's easy to…