Anthropology

theHandpuppet

(19,964 posts) Sat Apr 5, 2014, 07:24 PM Apr 2014

Indigenous societies' 'first contact' typically brings collapse, but rebounds are possible

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/04/indigenous-societies-first-contact.html#.U0CQRK_D-M8
Indigenous societies' 'first contact' typically brings collapse, but rebounds are possible
Posted by TANN

It was disastrous when Europeans first arrived in what would become Brazil -- 95 percent of its population, the majority of its tribes, and essentially all of its urban and agricultural infrastructure vanished. The experiences of Brazil's indigenous societies mirror those of other indigenous peoples following "first contact."

A new study of Brazil's indigenous societies led by Santa Fe Institute researcher Marcus Hamilton paints a grim picture of their experiences, but also offers a glimmer of hope to those seeking ways to preserve indigenous societies.

Even among the indigenous societies contacted in just the last 50 years, says Hamilton, "all of them went through a collapse, and for the majority of them it was disastrous," with disease and violence responsible in most cases, and with lasting detrimental effects. "That's going on today -- right now."

Brazil is "a tragic natural experiment," Hamilton says: several hundred native tribes contacted by outsiders remain, according to Instituto Socioambiental, a non-governmental organization that reports census data on 238 of those societies going back a half-century or more. That volume of data makes possible a detailed analysis of the health and prospects of the surviving contacted -- and uncontacted -- societies, an analysis that wouldn't be possible any where else in the world.... MORE

1 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Indigenous societies' 'first contact' typically brings collapse, but rebounds are possible (Original Post) theHandpuppet Apr 2014 OP

The Onge settled b/t India and Thailand RainDog Apr 2014 #1

RainDog

(28,784 posts)

1. The Onge settled b/t India and Thailand

Reply to theHandpuppet (Original post)

Sun Apr 6, 2014, 07:01 PM

Apr 2014

on the Andaman Islands - one of the Jarawa tribes that settled the islands est. around 40,000 y/a.

They're hunter/gathers. The British tried to colonize them and failed, but harmed them all the same with the diseases they brought.

But now the tribe is down to 100 people and people from the Indian continent have moved to the islands and removed people from their hunting lands.

They have a very low rate of fertility among females and males are required to kill a wild pig before marriage - but the animals are being taken by the settlers.

Horribly, someone cut a road through their land and people go on "human safaris" to look at the hunter/gathers. ugh.

Another tribe has never allowed contact with outsiders, the Sentinelese. One of them was photographed shooting an arrow at a helicopter after the 2004 tsunami. The Onge have a myth about the ground moving a great water drowning the land, so they moved up country during the tsunami.

Anyway, some of longest contact with the Onge was in the 1930s, and they were filmed. Part of their hunter/gatherer culture involves long hugging sessions, so the outsider said - and offered film footage.

100 people. And out of those, eight recently died or were injured when a petrol can washed up on shore and some drank it, not knowing it would harm them, because alcohol has already been introduced to the culture.

It's amazing the impact of poverty via "modernization," removal from one's homeland, and destruction of an environment - across cultures across parts of the world - reminds me of the impact white culture has had on Native Americans.

Reply to this discussion