Saturday, March 11, 2006

unintelligible tribes?



Unintelligible. This is how reporter Jim Lobe described the five native tribes that managed to survive the Indonesian tsunami last year. He meant it in the sense that these people have no knowledge of the Western world, ex - Capitalism, McDonalds, SUVs, plastic surgery, cellphones, and all the other things we pride ourselves on. The five tribes: Jarawa, Onge, Sentinelese, Shompens, and the Great Andamanese are nomadic hunter-gatherers who inhabit the Andaman Islands. One member who had contact with a scientist after the tsunami explained why his people had survived. They had recalled the knowledge of their ancestors; the land and the sea fight over the boundary between them and nothing is ever safe or intact. As soon as people saw the sea receeding, they warned others and ran deep into the forest. "We waited in the forest while the land and sea figured it out and decided where to draw the new boundary," he recalled. Other tribes were did not want to contact outsiders in order to share their methods of survival or accept the government aid. Neelesh Misra reported, "A lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter. He then took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, the tribesmen... learned nature's sights, sounds and smells to survive." Furthermore, "Outsiders are forbidden from interacting with the tribesmen because such contact has led in the past to alcoholism and disease among the islanders, and sexual abuse of local women." And you call that unintelligible? These people have resisted Western culture and have retained their connection with the Earth so well that they could survive a devastating tsunami. And how do they keep the government from interfering with their lives? They shoot arrows at them. The rest of the world could learn alot from these tribes.

2 comments:

Emmanuela said...

Wow, I like them. I want to be reincarnated as one of them!! lol

Know And Be Free said...

indeed. we sure can learn something from them, can't we?