Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, January 07, 2005
Tsunamis, tribes, and tossing your cookies
A CBSNews.com item out of Jirkatang, India announced: “Ancient Tribe Survives Tsunami.” The piece begins:
“Members of the ancient Jarawa tribe emerged from their forest habitat Thursday for the first time since the Dec. 26 tsunami and earthquakes that rocked the isolated Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and in a rare interaction with outsiders announced that all 250 of their fellow tribespeople had survived.”
(photo found at: http://www.survival-international.org/jarawa.htm)
A Jarawa man named Ashu (described here as “arrow-wielding") explained:
“We are all safe after the earthquake. We are in the forest in Balughat.”
From there the fetishizing of indigenous people hit full stride: It seems “government officials and anthropologists” credited “ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds” as saving the Jarawa from the tsunami. Their garb and behavior were described in intimate detail:
“wearing only underwear and amulets”
“carrying bows and five arrows each”
“wore colored headbands with leaves”
“a metal box tied around his waist with a thread containing ash with which he smeared his face and forehead during ceremonies”
“The men stopped an AP photographer from taking pictures” ("We fall sick if we are photographed,” Ashu said.)
After that, things took a fascinating turn:
Ashu explained that tourists sometimes “throw packages of cookies” at the Jarawa from tour buses, but the packaged food upsets their stomachs.
Let’s take a second to digest (sorry, couldn’t resist) this situation:
1. Ecocidal buses are driven through indigenous peoples’ land so tourists can gawk at the savages.
2. It’s acceptable—or at least tolerated—for said tourists to throw packages of cookies from the buses onto that land.
3. The processed food makes the indigenous people sick.
Goddamn...I could write an entire book based on those three sentences alone.
“My world is in the forest,” Ashu summed up wisely. “Your world is outside. We don’t like people from outside.”
Can you blame him?
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Speaking of upset stomachs, here’s an interview I did that’s been re-posted by a vegan/AR site:
http://www.animal-lib.org.au/more_interviews/mickeyz
It originally appeared in Vegan Voice.
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
