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14.4 (Winter 1990) Land and Resources

The Tawahka Sumu: A Delicate Balance in Mosquitia

Mosquitia is one of the last great wilderness regions remaining in Central America. The name Mosquitia is a historic term used to refer to an isolated region of land located in eastern Nicarague and Honduras. While variously defined, the region holds some cultural and ecological integrity from the Rio Tinto in Honduras to the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua. The well-known eastern part of the region, an area of flat, pine-covered savannas with a network of lagoons and swamps along the Caribbean coast, is the home of the familiar Miskito (sometimes spelled Miskitu) Indians.

The Pehuenche and the Monkey-Puzzle Tree

While traveling with "Expedition Alerce '90", in southern Chile, trekking in a little-known area called Cahuelmo Fjord, I was told about a valley known as Quinquen. Located near the headwaters of the Bio-Bio River, Quinquen lies east of Temuco, near the Chile-Argentina border, Quinquen is the Mapuche word for "place of refuge." There an indigenous community struggles to maintain its connections with the past while the land is being contested by logging interests. The araucaria, the monkey-puzzle tree, sacred to these people, is being cut for profit.

The Paipai of Jamau: A Test Case for Constitutional Reform

Perhaps the least-known indigenous region of Mexico is that of Northern Baja California. Here vestiges of once large populations live in the mountain range of the Sierra Juarez and the Sierra San Pedro Martir and along the northern Gulf of California coast on the Colorado River Delta. Today California coast on the Colorado River Delta. Today a total of some 500 indigenous inhabitants of the Kiliwa, Cochimi, Kumiai, Cucapa, and Paipai groups live in this northern range, which stretches some 200 miles south of the US-Mexico border, between the urban metropolises of Tijuana and Mexicali.

The Macaw Feather Project

Students often ask what they, as individuals, can do to help native peoples and to promote cultural survival. What follows is a brief discussion of one project that in a small but meaningful way provides an answer within an environmentally acceptable framework. The program was begun in response to requests for feathers from Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest; it was not imposed upon them.

The Land Issue in the Ecuadorian Highlands

On 27 May 1990, 160 Ecuadorian Indians took over the Santo Domingo cathedral in the heart of old Quito, converting it into a communal living and eating space. The Indians, representatives of indigenous communities of the six sierra (highland) provinces of Ecuador, demanded that the government immediately resolve 72 individual land conflicts between sierra communities and large-scale landowners (hacendados). The issues of land ownership, tenancy, and distribution, the dominating themes of sierra Indian existence, were suddenly forced to the front pages of Quito's newspapers.

Strangers in Their Own Land

West Papua's natural resources became the pivotal point in the public debate over its fate nearly 30 years ago. Had West Papuan aspirations for self-determination been acknowledged at that time, Papuans themselves would now have the final say in the exploitation of West Papua's gold, silver, oil, timber, cooper, nickel, and land development. Unfortunately, in 1962, the US government forced the Dutch to hand over West Papuan to Indonesia.

Searching for Life on Zaire's Ituri Forest Frontier

Numerous scenes and images depict the various pressures being placed on Zaire's northeastern forests: a local Kumu woodcutter wielding a whining chainsaw atop a recently felled Afromosia, the open blade four inches away from his bare foot; Mbuti hunter-gatherers turned porters, carrying 50-pound packs of bottled beer over muddied and gorged trails, three days' walk into a Wild West-style gold camp of 3,000 people; the discovery of yet another elephant skeleton, bones strewn here and there, machete marks on the skull revealing the work of poachers; seven-ton trucks bearing bulging loads of c

Sarawak: The Human Consequences of Logging

The physical and mental health consequences of logging on the native peoples of eastern Malaysia have, to date, not been fully realized in the West. Instead, local, Malaysian, and international efforts to adequately protect the native forests of the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah have primarily focused on the ecological and cultural damages incurred through logging. Recent reports from local native groups and from international visitors, however, have brought attention to health problems and inadequate medical care of the area's indigenous people.

Maya Survival in Ixil Country, Guatemala

That the Maya of Ixil country have suffered dreadfully as a result of counterinsurgency is but one of Guatemala's many depressing realities (Manz 1988; Stoll 1988; Guatemalan Church in Exile 1989). There is no adequate way that one person can tell of another's pain, but try we must, especially if our lives as privileged North American scholars are to reflect any semblance of academic responsibility.

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