28.2 (Summer 2004) Worlds Transformed: Indigenous Peoples' Health in Changing Rainforests

During the first two weeks of January 2004, the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne received an extraordinary series of letters from Papua New Guineans objecting to the pending settlement of their legal case against the Ok Tedi mine and BHP Billiton (formerly BHP).

The letters pleaded with the courts to address their concerns about the impacts of the Ok Tedi mine on their rivers and forests: “Can your Honour tell us who will be responsible for the environmental damage that has been caused?” They disputed claims that their primary concern was to increase the amount of monetary com

In 1874, a band in Southern Saskatchewan living on the margins of Canadian society signed Treaty No. 4 with the Canadian government and released most of its traditional territory in exchange for a much smaller reserve and promises of farm implements and an annual annuity to ensure its survival. Within 30 years the band’s population decreased nearly 50 percent from starvation and disease and the band was devoid of leadership.

In order to live well, every community needs a shaman with inherited knowledge. This knowledge comes to us from the origin of times. Back in the olden times of our ancestors, we learned to relate with all the other living beings through concentration.

Tourism threatens the cultures and environments of indigenous communities all over the world.

Archaeology has widely documented that rainforests have been inhabited and cultivated for millenia, and greatly modified by human presence. In central Africa, the forest is occupied by two sets of communities, hunter-gatherers (commonly called Pygmies) now turning to agriculture, and traditional Bantu farmers. Both communities are exposed to common diseases, which are particularly diverse in the moist and hot ecosystem. But differing histories, cultures, and ways of life result in differences in health status.

Thirty-two years ago when Cultural Survival was founded, its name aptly described its mission.

Forty years ago the island of Borneo was covered by the world’s oldest and perhaps most biologically diverse rainforest. Logging and land conversion has since led to deforestation of about half of this great island. Even most national parks in Borneo are now being illegally logged. It is an ecological disaster of the first order.

Forest People in Peril

The Center for Andean Ethnomusicology (CAE), a Cultural Survival Special Project, works to revive local cultures and promote ethnic diversity in Andean countries, through the study and documentation of traditional cultures. Its work often centers on recording cultural representations like music, ritual, and the dance-drama.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Burji community arrived in Kenya from Yavelo Province, Ethiopia, courtesy of the then-commissioner of the Marsabit District in northern Kenya. To encourage farming in his administrative area and feed the colonists and inhabitants -the Borana, Rendille and Gabra- who were predominantly pastoralists, the British colonial official decided to ask his Ethiopian counterpart to send a few Burjis, renowned for their farming and entrepreneurial skills, to initiate farming in Marsabit.

The Achuar Indians live on the upper Pastaza River in the Peruvian Amazon near the Ecuadorian border. They are one of the four tribes of the Jivaroan family that inhabit the vast regions of northeastern Peru and southern Ecuador.

South Africa’s Northern Cape, home to the Nama, Griqua, and Cape Khoi peoples, is one of the most biologically diverse flora regions in South Africa, extending in the northwest region of the country from the craggy desert mountains of t

Amazonian indigenous peoples understand and manage health as a vital expression ofthe way in which human beings and the rainforest environment interact. Health is a cross-cutting theme of social life that is closely related to the cultural dynamics of family and community life, the ecological relations between local settlements and the surrounding natural ecosystems, and the way people conceive and relate to non-human forms of life.

Over the past half-century tropical humid forests have undergone unprecedented pressure to make way for people, often at the cost of ecological functions that may affect human health.

On March 25, in a victory for Niger Delta region indigenous groups involved in a lawsuit against ChevronTexaco, a federal district court in San Francisco found that the oil company can be held liable for the actions of its subsidiary, Chevron Nigeria Ltd.