Some Balinese practice their Hindu faith / Photo by Stephen Chapman

Trust is always an issue when abroad

Everyone who travels abroad to a new place, particularly a new culture sacrifices the ability to confidently trust people they meet, atleast for a short while.  Many of us will have experienced this with the endlessly evolving plethora of intricately composed scams that target tourists the world over.  I’ve suffered the hard sell of gems in Bangkok; the ‘friendly’ money changer in Havana, Cuba; the sob stories of art gallery owners in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to name a few, and they are tough experiences that I don’t think you ever really get used to, or anymore adept at spotting.  Nobody likes to be made a fool of.

Who do we and who should we trust at home?

These issues of trust are equally present when we’re at home, only we’re often running too much on auto-pilot to acknowledge the automated process of acceptance.  Anything the media tells us, anything the government tells us, anything an NGO or charity tells us we tend to listen to and value for no other reason than the fact that we trust the source.  This inherent trust can be a dangerous thing, but it also necessary.  We cannot possibly question everything we are told and research the facts ourselves.  In the same way we all choose to have faith in different religions so too we all choose to trust different sources of information, and we can’t expect these to be correct 100% of the time.

Responsible tourism companies question facts of Survival International campaign

‘Celebrity resort threatens isolated tribe‘ was the story run by UK based charity Survival International, referring to a new project being setup on the Andaman Islands by India based company, Barefoot.  This company is featured on the India based responsible tourism site Travel to Care, and as such there have been questions raised (by Travel to Care) as to whether the claims made by Survival International are simply sensationalist, out of touch and attention seeking.  Barefoot’s response to Survival International’s press release tends to suggest that they may well be in this case.  The letter sent to Barefoot by Survival International can also be read online. Neither side is without an agenda.

Survival International stand by their claims

Following the initial publication of this article Survival International have issued a response and stand by their claims.  The location of the reserve perimeter to which they refer, and hence proximity of the resort to the Jarawa people is contested by both parties.  If Barefoot can prove that it is indeed 3.2kms away and not the 500m claimed by Survival International then there will no doubt be a mutual acceptance of these facts.  It is important to note that Survival International have visited the site and spoken with reliable sources themselves.

Great discussion taking place on the Irresponsible Tourism Forum.

Where do you place your trust?

Bushman child, Botswana / Photo by Survival International

One of the judges making the 2006 ruling said that the government’s refusal to allow the Bushmen to hunt ‘was tantamount to condemning the residents of the CKGR to death by starvation.’ Yet two years after the ruling, the government has not issued the Bushmen with a single licence to hunt inside the reserve.  A Bushman spokesman said, ‘Hunting is not out of date. We want to be hunters and gatherers today. This is the best way for us to survive in the Kalahari.’

Diamond mine on Bushman land gets government approval on condition Bushmen receive no water

The Botswana government has approved plans for a diamond mine on the Bushmen’s land, on the condition that the mining company Gem Diamonds does not provide the Bushmen with water. It has banned the Bushmen from using a water borehole at one of their communities, but is allowing a nearby tourist lodge to pump water for its guests.

Gem Diamonds claims that the Bushmen are in favour of the mine, but the Bushmen have had no independent advice on its probable impact.  A consulting firm visited the Bushmen earlier this year, supposedly to obtain their views on diamond mining on their land. The company’s project manager joined the board of Gem Diamonds soon after the project ended, calling the impartiality of the consultation process into serious question.

Botswana’s President Khama is a board member of the US-based conservation organisation Conservation International.

Jarawa, Andaman Islands / Photo by Survival International

The poachers were camping near one of the Jarawa’s huts. When the Jarawa demanded some of the fish that had been caught in their reserve, the fishermen threw boiling water at them and beat them with sticks. The Jarawa killed one of the fishermen with their arrows, and the fishermen attacked a Jarawa man by beating him when he jumped into a river in an attempt to escape. The invasion of their land by poachers poses a serious threat to the Jarawa, who number 320 and have only had friendly contact with the outside world since 1998. Poachers risk bringing in diseases to which the Jarawa have no immunity, and are rapidly depleting the wild foods on which the Jarawa are totally dependent. Entry to the Jarawa reserve by outsiders is illegal without a special permit, but poaching is now widespread.

“This tragedy must surely galvanise the Indian government to act to keep poachers off the Jarawa’s land. The Jarawa have hunted and fished on their land for 60,000 years, but the number of poachers has become so great that they pose a serious threat to the tribe’s survival. Now two men have died in the conflict. Poaching must not be allowed to continue.”

- Stephen Corry, Director, Survival International

Further information:

• For more information please contact Miriam Ross at Survival International on (+44) 20 7687 8734 or (+44) 7504 543 367 or email mr@survival-international.org
• Watch the first-ever filmed interview with a Jarawa talking about the invasion of their land by poachers.
• Read more about the Jarawa tribe.

Enawene Nawe man / Photo by Fiona Watson, Survival International

During the fishing season the men build dams across rivers in this area and spend several months camped in the forest, catching and smoking the fish which is then transported by canoe to their village. Fish is an essential part of the Enawene Nawe diet and plays a vital part in rituals such as Yãkwa, a four-month exchange of food between humans and spirits.  The Enawene Nawe also grow manioc and corn in gardens and gather forest products. Honey gathering is celebrated in keteoko (the honey feast) when men collect large amounts of wild honey in the forest and hide it on their return to the village, only revealing it when the women start to dance. Unusually for an Amazonian tribe, they do not hunt or eat red meat.  Most of their land was officially recognised in 1996, but this crucial area called the Rio Preto where they gather to fish was left out.

Land invasion is destroying the forest and polluting the land and rivers

For decades the Enawene Nawe have faced invasion of their lands by rubber tappers, diamond prospectors, cattle ranchers and more recently soya planters, all destroying the forest and polluting the land and rivers. Maggi, the largest soya company in Brazil illegally built a road on their land in 1997. This was subsequently closed by a federal prosecutor. Blairo Maggi who owns the soya company is also the governor of Mato Grosso state who are now building this vast complex of hydroelectric dams upriver from the Rio Preto.

“They are at a critical point in their history. Either the deforestation of the Rio Preto area and the dams are stopped or the Enawene Nawe will no longer be able to fish, which is crucial to their survival, their beliefs and their relationship with the spirit world.”

- Survival

You can read more about the plight of the Enawene Nawe on the Survival website.  Survival supports a land protection project run by the Enawene Nawe and the Brazilian non-governmental organisation OPAN.  A short film on their Tribal Channel, shows how the Enawene Nawe rely on the forest and the rivers, and tells how their ancestral spirits will respond to the destruction of their land.

Asmat man, Papua / Photo by Jeanne Herbert, Survival International

The mining and logging industries have brought environmental destruction and social catastrophe to West Papua’s tribal people. They have also brought the military, which supports many of the businesses, and provides protection for others. The armed forces have an appalling reputation for human rights violations against the tribes.  This industrial development is now also responsible for the spread of the deadly HIV virus. Most of the cases of HIV/AIDS in West Papua can be traced back to the commercial sex industry, which has sprung up around logging and mining projects.  A recent investigation by the Al Jazeera programme ‘101 East’ has shown the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis amongst the tribal people of West Papua, Indonesia.  West Papua has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate outside Africa. 3% of the population are now infected with the virus, and experts fear that by 2025 that figure will rise to 7%. Of every four people who are infected, three are indigenous, even though almost half of those now living in the province are outsiders.

A study in 2001 found that more than a quarter of prostitutes tested were HIV positive. Papuan men, drawn to these industries for work, have now taken HIV/AIDS back to their villages. Official figures put the HIV/AIDS figures at 15 times the Indonesian national average, but field workers say the real figure is closer to 50 times.  The Papuans have suffered years of violence and brutality at the hands of the Indonesian military. As a result, many tribal people blame the government and the military for introducing sex workers infected with HIV, and for failing to take adequate measures to halt the spread of the disease.  Much government treatment and awareness raising about the disease is failing to reach the Papuans – most is centred in the towns, which are dominated by the Indonesian outsiders. Many worry that the epidemic is even worse than feared because so few people in the remote areas have ever been tested, or are even aware of how to prevent the disease.

You can read more about the plight of the Papuan Tribes on the Survival website.  Survival is calling on the Indonesian government to enter into dialogue with the Papuan people so that they are able to decide their own way of life and their future.

The Chesapeake Bay area today

The English, Italians and Spanish all sailed up the North American coast countless times at the end of the 15th Century and during the 16th Century, but no real effort was ever made to colonise it until 1585.

The first inhabitants of North America were nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands across the continent. Most of them migrated with the seasons in search of food and temperate locales. They built few permanent structures and tended to own land communally. At the time of European contact, many native people lived at the waters edge around cornfields and gardens of squash, beans and potatoes. For generations they prophesised that strangers from across the sea would come and destroy their people.

The first European colony was established on Roanoke Island just south of the Chesapeake in modern North Carolina, however it vanished mysteriously several years later. The Jamestown colony was founded in 1607 and local tribes under the powerful chief Powhatan warned the colonists that they would need to plant corn to sustain them through the cold months, when hunting and fishing were difficult. Few settlers had the inclination or skill to plant, tend, and harvest corn and as a result they verged on starvation for many winters. Low on funds and without direction or initiative, Jamestown was close to collapse.

At this time the British were paying big money for tobacco that ship captains purchased from planters in the West Indies. The Native Indians were already smoking tobacco, but it was not the same variety that was fetching high prices in Europe. An enterprising Englishman named John Rolfe joined the colony in 1609 and married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas five years later. Rolfe managed to obtain some seeds of the West Indian plants and cultivated them in the rich tidewater soil of the Chesapeake Bay. This was the beginning of a new cash crop for the colonists.

Beginnings Of The Slave Trade

Once the Indians had been driven off prospective plantation land and seeds had been planted, tobacco supply was limitless, but the labour supply was not. In the early colonial period, Europeans tried enslaving the Native Indians as a cheap source of labour, but many escaped back into familiar terrain. Some of the colonists eventually returned to England offering to pay passage for anyone willing to work on the tobacco plantations for several years (typically 5-7), in exchange for room and board. Tobacco plantations began to spread all along the shores of the southern Chesapeake and its tributaries. Thousands left England for Virginia seeking fortune and a new life, but the influx of people still did not meet the demand for plantation labour. The slave trade began.

In 1619 a Dutch merchant ship sailed into Jamestown full of indentured English servants to “sell” to local plantation owners striving to produce more tobacco. Onboard the ship were 20 Africans the captain had picked up on his travels. The Virginians bought these Africans together with the English. Due to their distinctive appearance and unfamiliarity with local language and terrain the Africans found it nearly impossible to escape their servitude, and planters soon realised that the Africans could be ruthlessly exploited beyond their agreed years of labour. As oversupply of tobacco began to lower prices and cut into profits, ruthless planters conspired to keep servants in bondage. From here the transistion to outright slavery was swift.

The slave trade reached its height in the 18th Century; yet its legacy continues to shape contemporary society throughout the Americas.

• Visit the Jamestown website and plan your visit, or make a virtual visit on The National Geographic website.
• Survival International has downloadable education packs on the ‘Jamestown Landings: 400 years on’.