siberia to sarawak -...

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Siberia to SarawakTribal peoples of Asia

Map 2

introduct ion 5

who are the t r ibes of Asia?

Andaman Islands, India 13

surviving paradise

Papua, Indonesia 21

a brutal invasion

Sarawak, Malaysia 29

guardians of the forest

Chit tagong Hil l Tracts, Bangladesh 35

genocide in the hi l ls

Siberia, Russia 41

tr ibes of the f rozen north

Survival 48

Siberia to SarawakTribal peoples ofAsia

CONTENTS

Map 32 Map

INDIABhilGaro GondGreatAndamaneseHoIrulaJarawaJuang

KhasiKhond MundaNagaOngeOraon SanthalSavaraSentinelese

CHINADaiDongLisuMiaoTujiaYi

Hong Kong

Shanghai

Bangkok

Tokyo

Manila

Karachi

SeoulBejing

Hanoi

Jakarta

Kolkatta

DelhiKathmandu

Mumbai

Ho Chi MinhPhomhPenh

INDIA

SRI LANKA

NEPAL

BHUTAN

PAKISTAN

CHINA

NORTH KOREA

SOUTH KOREA

TIBET

TAIWAN

LAOS

CAMBODIA

BORNEO

PAPUA NEW

GUINEA

MONGOLIA

AUSTRALIA

RUSSIA

VIETNAMBahnarHmongHreMontagnardXapho

THE PHILIPPINESAgtaAtuBatakIbaloiIfugaoKalingaPalawaniSubanenTagbanwaTao-Buhid

PAPUAAuyuAmungmeAsmatDaniEkariKamoroMoni NdugaYali

BateqIbanJahaiKenyahKelabit

KayanPenanSemaiTemuan INDONESIA

Engano Galela Gayo KubuKuhumamaoMentawaiNgaju PunanWanaToala

THAILANDAkha

KarenLisuMeo

BURMAChin

KarenPaduang

Wa

BANGLADESHChakmaMarma

MruTripura

JAPANAinu

MALAYSIA

This map shows a small selectionof the tribal peoples in Asia. Thosementioned in the text are in italics.For Siberia please see page 42.

Introduction 3Introduction 5

Asian tribal peoples, like tribal peopleseverywhere, are usually minorities, andsee themselves as distinct from themainstream. They speak their ownlanguages, are largely self-sufficient, and their economies are tightly bound to their intimate relationship with theirland. Their culture is different from themainstream, inherited from theirforebears and adapted to their currentsituation. They have often lived on theirland for thousands of years. Beyond this,it is very difficult to generalise about thetribal peoples in Asia. They encompass ahuge variety of tribes, living verydifferent ways of life in an incrediblediversity of environments. They includeherders in arctic Siberia; cultivators inthe rugged hills of Thailand andBangladesh and the forests of Malaysiaand Papua; and hunter-gatherers acrossthe continent, from frozen Siberia to the

tropical Andaman Islands. They varygreatly in their level of contact withoutsiders: tribal peoples in Sarawak,Borneo, for instance, have been incontinuous contact with outsiders sincecolonisation in the 19th century, whilethe Sentinelese of the Andaman Islandshave no friendly contact with anyoneoutside the tribe. In some places, such asPapua, there is huge variation in levels ofcontact even within one country. In mostparts of Asia, tribal people are a smallminority of the population – but thepopulation of the island of New Guineais entirely tribal except for the settlerswho arrived in the western half, Papua,in the wake of the Indonesian takeover.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Who are thetribes of Asia?

Asia is home to tribes whohave no contact with outsiders.

Koryak woman, Kamchatka, Siberia

‘WE C ANNOT WAIT, WE C ANNOT WAIT FOR THE LAND OFOUR ANCESTORS TO BE DESTROYED, FOR OUR CULTURETO DIE, OUR CULTURE WHICH IS DEEPLY ROOTED INNATURE, A L IVING NATURE; WE C ANNOT WAIT BEC AUSETHERE ARE SO FEW OF US LEFT.’ Udege leader, Siberia, 1998


peoples’ land rights are ignored in favourof economic development – withdisastrous consequences for the tribe.

Integration

Often governments claim, perhaps evenbelieve, that they are acting in theinterest of the tribe concerned. There is awidespread perception in Asia that tribalpeoples are ‘primitive’and ‘backward’,that another way of life must be imposedupon them, by force if necessary. This isused to justify the theft of their land forbig projects, as well as governmentviolence against them. It is also behindefforts to ‘assimilate’or ‘integrate’atribe, as for instance in the AndamanIslands. Here the population of the GreatAndamanese fell from 5,000 to only 41 inless than 150 years – through disastrous

policies guided by paternalism and thenotion that ‘progress’ lay in settling thetribe and teaching them agriculturerather than hunting and gathering.Survival is now working to ensure thatthe same fate does not befall other tribesin the Islands.

Most tribal people face many threats at a time. In Papua, for instance, theAmungme and Kamoro tribes have had their land destroyed by the world’sbiggest copper and gold mine whilehaving to face the threat of death andtorture at the hands of Indonesiansoldiers, there to ‘protect’ the mine. In Siberia, the Soviet desire for ahomogeneous people led to policies ofassimilation – including the removal oftribal children to boarding schools wherethey were forbidden to speak their ownlanguages – which caused terrible socialbreakdown and appallingly high rates of

Itel’men girl, Kamchatka, Siberia

6 Introduction

Violence

One thing the tribal peoples of Asia dohave in common is the oppression andmarginalisation they experience. Oftenthey suffer direct violence: some of theworst atrocities against tribal peoples inrecent years have taken place in Asia.The continuing genocide against thetribal peoples of Papua – whereIndonesian armed forces routinely rape,kill and torture innocent tribal villagers –constitutes the worst current oppressionof tribal peoples anywhere in the world.In Burma, tribal people are forced intoslave labour and are massacred by thearmy. In Bangladesh, the Jumma tribalpeoples have endured almost thirty yearsof attempted genocide, which ishopefully now drawing to a close withthe recent signing of an agreement withthe government.

Tribal peoples in Asia – even the mostisolated tribes – have also been victimsof wars between others. When Japanesetroops bombed and occupied theAndaman Islands from 1942 to 1945,

many isolated tribal people are thoughtto have died. Armed conflicts havecaused huge numbers of deaths of tribal people in Vietnam, Bangladeshand Cambodia in the past, and still do in China, Burma and parts of Indonesia today.

‘Development’

Tribal peoples in Asia, even if theyescape such direct violence, often fallvictim to the rapid economic‘development’of the region and thetakeover of their land by multinationalsand governments. In most parts of Asiawhere tribal peoples’ land rights arerecognised, the government retains thepower to overrule these rights in the‘economic interest’of the state. Anydevelopment, from logging to dambuilding, can be justified in this way –leaving no protection for the millions oftribal people who rely on their land fortheir survival. In Malaysia, for example,10,000 tribal people have been thrownoff their land for a hydroelectric damwhich may still never be built. In thePhilippines, a third of all land, much of itbelonging to tribal peoples, has beenclaimed by mining companies. Whetherit be for oil exploitation in Siberia,logging in Sarawak, or any one ofcountless other ‘developments’, tribal

Asian governments justifyoppression by claiming tribalpeoples are ‘primitive’.

‘In no Asian society should we be prepared to perpetuate theexistence of groups which will be fascinating human anachronismsworthy only for the study of 21st century anthropologists.’Commission for a New Asia, 1995


pressuring the Bangladesh government,without them the Bangladeshgovernment would never have come tothe negotiation table.’Survival’scampaigns have also had success inIndonesia, Papua and Siberia, wheretribal peoples have had their lands savedfrom pulp paper industries, logging,encroachment from outsiders and oilexploitation.

‘First peoples’

As well as their problems and struggles,Asia’s tribal peoples, like tribal peopleseverywhere, share a deep attachment totheir territory – often the loss anddestruction of their land is at the root ofthe terrible difficulties they face. Usuallythey have lived on their land forthousands if not tens of thousands ofyears, and are what we would call‘indigenous’ to that area – that is, theylived there first, inhabiting the territorylong before any other peoples or tribesarrived. Using the term ‘indigenous’ inAsia, however, can be controversial.

In the Americas and Australia, it issimple to say who are the indigenouspeople: they lived there alone until onlythe last few hundred years and are easilydistinguished from newer arrivals.Today’s indigenous people are thedescendants of those who survived the

massacres, disease and oppression ofcolonisation. But Asia has seensuccessive waves of populations movingthrough it over most of 100,000 years, sothat many Asian peoples have been in aplace for thousands of years withoutbeing the ‘first’. Some countriestherefore claim they have no indigenouspopulation, others that everyone isindigenous – these claims arecontroversial and are contested,particularly by those who feel they havea more concrete claim to be indigenous.Independent estimates reckon Asia to behome to 150 million indigenous people,half the world’s total. Many, but not all,of these people are tribal.

The ‘Negrito’peoples of Malaysia,India, Thailand, the Philippines and theAndaman Islands are among those Asianpeoples most clearly indigenous to theirland, and they also live a distinctly tribalway of life. Recent studies suggest thattheir ancestors arrived during migrationsfrom Africa to Australia and NewGuinea as much as 60,000 years ago –making them by far the earliest

‘Their aim was that I’d shut my mouth. But I opened it more! … I don’t know how to read or write but I know the truth. I’m not afraid of anybody. I feel I cannot be defeated.’ Mama Yosepha Alomang, Amungme woman, Papua, 2001

Tribes in Asia have succeededin resisting threats to theirlands and lives from bothgovernments and companies.

8 Introduction

alcoholism and suicide; at the same time,tribal peoples’ land was being taken overby the state-run oil and gas industries.

Resistance

But although the problems facing tribalpeoples in Asia may appearinsurmountable, many tribes havesucceeded in resisting the threats andovercoming their problems. Forexample, the isolated Jarawa of India’sAndaman Islands have recently seen adramatic change in their situation. Theyfaced government plans to settle them by force – which would almostinevitably have wiped them out throughdisease, depression and despair – while aroad through their territory every daybrought the danger of disease along withsettlers, poachers and loggers. AfterSurvival’s campaign, India’s supremecourt ordered that the road be closed,settlers and encroachers on tribal land

removed, and all logging in the Islandsstopped. This is one of the most dramaticinterventions in support of tribal peoplesthat Survival has seen, but there havebeen many others.

In 1997, the Jumma people ofBangladesh signed a peace deal with thegovernment. The agreement for the firsttime acknowledged their land as a ‘tribalpopulated region’, and gave the Jummassome control over the government of theregion and what happens there.Although there are still problems withimplementation, it was a significantmove forward for the Jumma people.A Jumma representative told Survival,‘We take this agreement as a positivestep.... We are very grateful to Survivaland the international community for

The nomadic Penan in Sarawak, Malaysia,get most of their meat by hunting wild boar. They tend to hunt alone or with one other person.

10 Introduction

inhabitants of their lands. They lookvery different to the more typicallyAsian peoples who surround them,tending to be smaller and darker, withcurly black hair. Some of these Negritopeoples are today among the mostisolated tribal peoples on earth.

India officially views all its inhabitantsas ‘indigenous’, but does recognise some, the so-called ‘scheduled tribes’, as distinctly tribal. In fact, these tribesare probably the descendants of theregion’s original peoples. The ancestorsof most of today’s Indians, who arelargely fairer-skinned and taller,probably arrived through a series ofmigrations from the north-eastthousands of years ago, pushing thetribes they found into the land they did not want – and perhaps killing many.Today’s so-called ‘untouchables’, orDalits, may well be descended fromtribes who were driven from their land in this way and stripped of every element of their ancestry – except thedisdain with which they were treated by outsiders.

There are some Asian tribal peoples whoare probably not indigenous in the senseof having been in a place first. Forinstance, in the Philippines, the Negritotribes were later joined by ethnicallyMalay people, who now make up mostof the population. Today, mainstreamFilipino culture is the product of fourcenturies of European colonisation. Butsome Malays have remained isolatedfrom this colonial-influenced society,retaining tribal societies and culture.

These peoples are classed as indigenousalong with the few remaining Negritotribes, more because of their tribal way of life than because of when theyarrived. Other tribes – for example some of the hill tribes of Burma andThailand who migrated from furthernorth, in some cases only in recentcenturies – are also not ‘indigenous’ totheir current homelands, but clearly dohave tribal societies.

Our aim

This book does not attempt to present allof Asia’s tribal peoples. It describes aselection of peoples living very differentlives – including the most isolated andthose suffering the worst problems – togive an idea of the differences and thesimilarities between Asian tribalpeoples’ lives and experiences.

From the frozen tundra of Siberia to thetropical rainforests of Sarawak, Asia’stribal peoples are refusing to give in toviolent armies, to the destruction of their land and to attempts to destroythem as peoples. Instead they aremaintaining vibrant and sustainablelifestyles. This book celebrates them and enables readers to take action insupport of tribal peoples – to help themprotect their lives, lands, and ways of life and make their own decisions abouttheir futures.

The Asmat live in Papua’s lowlands. ThePapuans experience the worst oppression ofany tribal peoples in the world today.

Introduction 3India 13

The peoples and the islands

The Andaman Islands lie 700 miles off the east coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal. They are made up of 500separate isles, of which just 27 areinhabited. The Andamans are home tofour tribes – the Great Andamanese,Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese.

All four are what anthropologists call‘Negrito’, and recent studies suggest that their closest relatives are African.They are believed to have travelled from Africa anything up to 60,000 yearsago. As the tribes’ languages aremutually unintelligible, it is thought thatthey lived isolated lives on reaching theislands. There are, however, similaritiesin their ways of life, as far as we can tell– very little is known about the lifestyleof the largely uncontacted Jarawa andSentinelese. We do know that all four

tribes are nomadic hunter-gatherers,hunting wild pig and monitor lizard andcatching fish with bows and arrows.They also collect honey, roots andberries from the forest.

The Andaman tribes have a long historyof hostility to outsiders – and to eachother. The earliest records of theAndamans feature fearful and fabulousdescriptions of the tribespeople: MarcoPolo, for instance, reported that theinhabitants ‘have heads like that of thedog with teeth and eyes likewise.’

In 1858, the British set up a penal colony in the Andamans – in the 150years since then, the original tribalinhabitants have suffered sustainedattacks from British and then Indiancolonisers. Before colonisation, thetribal people altogether numberedaround 8,000. Today there are 400 to 800 of them, swamped in the islands’total population of around 350,000.

A N D A M A N I S L A N D S, I N D I A

Survivingparadise

Jarawa man

NO ONE OUTSIDE THE JARAWA TRIBE SPEAKS THEIRLANGUAGE – SO NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY REALLYWANT TO SAY TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD. WHEN WE AREABLE TO TALK WITH THEM, THEIR STORY MUST NOT BEONE OF LOSING THEIR LAND AND THEIR WAY OF LIFE.


The islands are now a ‘union territory’of India, administered directly by theIndian government in Delhi.

The only remaining rainforest in theAndaman Islands is inhabited by thetribal people. This is no coincidence –without their forest the Andaman tribescannot survive, and were it not for thepresence of these tribes the rainforestwould almost certainly have alreadybeen destroyed.

Andamanese

When the British first arrived 150 yearsago, there were more than 5,000 GreatAndamanese. Today, they number 41.The Andamanese were extremely hostileto the British settlers, who cut down theirforest, stole their land and killed theirgame. The tribe was provoked intoattack; the British responded violently,killing hundreds. After some years offighting, the colonisers abandoned thesemethods for others which proved just asdeadly. In the capital, Port Blair, theyestablished the ‘Andaman Home’, where

they kept captured Andamanese. Thetribespeople were treated well and givengifts; then they were taken back to theforest, where it was hoped they wouldspread the news of their good treatment.The policy worked as planned – but theAndaman Home became not a haven buta tool of genocide. Disease and abusebecame rife: of the 150 children born inthe home, none survived beyond the ageof two. By 1901, only 625 Andamaneseremained alive – just 12% of the pre-settlement number. By 1931, there wereonly 90. In 1970, with fewer than 30Great Andamanese remaining, the tribewas moved to the tiny Strait Island bythe Indian authorities, on whom theyhave been totally dependent for food,clothing and shelter ever since.

Onge

The Onge tribe now numbers 99individuals living on Little Andaman, in a reserve less than a third of the size of the land they originally inhabited.They too have experienced dramaticpopulation loss, their numbers dropping

THE ‘PERFECT PEOPLE’The Onge call themselves ‘En-iregale’ which means ‘perfect person’. Ongewomen paint their husbands with white clay for special occasions such asweddings or celebrations after a successful hunt, and the tribe believes bodypainting to have medicinal powers to take away pain and repel mosquitoes.Hunting pigs is important in Onge life, with cultural and social as well as practicalsignificance. Boys have to catch a male pig before the initiation rites which makethem a man. The influx of outsiders into their area means that few pigs are nowfound there – many boys are unable to marry as a result.

INDIA

BURMA

SRI LANKA

ANDAMAN

ISLANDS

Port Blair

Bay of Bengal

Andaman Trunk Road

Jarawa

Sentinelese

The Onge live on Little Andaman,about 50 kms south of this area.

Great Andamanese

SOUTH ANDAMAN

MIDDLE ANDAMAN

NORTH ANDAMAN

There are over 500 islands in theAndaman group, stretching overabout 470 kms in length andaveraging only 24 kms in width.

14 India

‘I am civilised, and they are notcivilised.’ Indian lawyer urging forcible settlement of the Jarawa, 2001


– and their clearly expressed wish to doso – must be respected.

The future

Pressure is now mounting for all thetribes to become assimilated intomainstream Indian society – particularlythe Jarawa, who have established limitedfriendly contact. If forced to leave theirland and lead a settled lifestyle theJarawa would become dependent on theadministration; assuming, that is, thatthey survive the onslaught of disease anddespondency invariably brought on byforced settlement. The same could alsohappen to the Sentinelese. So far,Survival’s campaign for the Jarawa ishaving a significant impact: the highcourt has temporarily halted local

government plans to settle the tribeforcibly, while the supreme court ofIndia has ordered that the trunk roadwhich passes through their territory,bringing with it settlers, loggers,poachers and disease, be closed. It hasalso ordered that all logging in theAndamans cease and all settlers on tribaland forest lands be immediatelyremoved. This adds up to one of thebiggest successes in Survival’s history.But we must continue our campaign toensure that these orders are implementedfully and that the temporary order to haltsettlement plans is made permanent. TheAndaman tribes must have their rightsrecognised – to make their owndecisions about their way of life, and toown and control their land and forests.

18 India

by more than 85% in the hundred yearsfrom 1901. Like the Andamanese, theonce independent and self-sufficientOnge have been made dependent on theadministration. The Indian governmentestablished a plantation in which theyattempted to force the tribe to work aspayment for food and housing – a formof ‘bonded labour’, close to slavery. Butthe Onge have largely refused to work inthe plantation, and the government hashad to continue to give them rations.

As with all the Andaman tribes, theOnge, though regarded as ‘primitives’ inneed of ‘civilising’, are experts at livingin their rainforest home. The IndianFisheries Department, for instance, onceposted an inspector and fishermen withthe Onge to teach them modern fishery.The fishermen soon admitted that it wasthey who had much to learn from theOnge about how to fish in their waters.

Jarawa

‘Jarawa’means ‘strangers’or ‘the otherpeople’ in the Andamanese language; thepeople we call the Jarawa are believed tocall themselves ‘Ya-eng-nga’. Unlike theOnge and Great Andamanese, theyremained voluntarily isolated from thesettlers on their islands for nearly 150years, hostile to these invaders whoencroached upon their land and poachedtheir game. In 1974, the Indiangovernment began holding monthly‘contact meetings’with Jarawa groups –but the tribespeople never allowed themto enter their forests or approach themfrom land, nor did they return the visits.

But in late 1998, the Jarawa suddenlybegan to come out of their forests intoIndian settlements, without their bowsand arrows. From what little isunderstood of their language, it appearsthat pressure from poachers along thecoast drove them inland onto the mainroad and into settlements. This changeplaces them in grave danger. Firstly, they have no immunity to commondiseases such as measles and flu, whichcan therefore be fatal. An epidemiccould quite easily wipe out the wholetribe in just a couple of months.Furthermore, they face an even greaterrisk of losing their land. The other tribesof the Andamans lost almost all theirland soon after making friendly contactwith outsiders. It is predominantly theJarawa’s reputation for hostility whichhas protected their land from invasion by settlers – now they are losing thatreputation, their land is increasinglyunder threat.

Sentinelese

The Sentinelese probably number 50 to200 people and have no friendly contactwith outsiders. They live on their own(47 sq km) island and attack anyone whocomes near it. The Indian governmenthas made a number of unsuccessfulattempts to befriend them, but at presentno attempts at contact are being made.Survival believes this should continue,as the tribe’s right to remain uncontacted

Jarawa men. The administration‘befriended’ the Jarawa by bringing giftssuch as red cloth and coconuts.

Introduction 3Papua 21

The peoples and the island

Papua – formerly called Irian Jaya by the Indonesians – is the western half ofthe island of New Guinea. The other half is the independent country of PapuaNew Guinea. New Guinea is the secondlargest island in the world, and has anastonishing cultural and linguisticdiversity: it contains only 0.01% of theworld’s population, but contains 15% of the world’s known languages.

Papua itself is home to about 2.2 millionpeople. There are 312 tribes, somenumbering as few as four people – untila census in 2000 only around 250 tribeswere known of, and it is likely that thereare others who still have no contact withoutsiders. All Papua’s tribal people areMelanesians, ethnically, culturally andlinguistically distinct from the MalayIndonesians who rule them from Jakarta,

3,000 miles to the west. They do not seethemselves as Asians.

Papua and its peoples are dividedbetween the highlands and the lowlands. The central mountainousrange is home to the highland tribes,sometimes known as the kotekas afterthe hollow gourds which the men wearover their penises. These tribes rear pigs,grow sweet potatoes, hunt, and gathersome roots, berries and nuts; theyinclude the Amungme, on whose landthe giant Grasberg mine is built, and theDani of the Baliem valley. The lowlandpeoples, such as the Asmat and Kamoro,live in the swampy and malarial coastalareas which contain abundant sagopalms and game.

History

The Dutch colonised Papua in 1714, but actually had very little presencethere. When they handed over their East

PA P U A, I N D O N E S I A

A brutal invasion

Asmat woman, Papua

‘ I HAVE ONLY THE NAME “AMUNGME” LEFT. THEMOUNTAINS, THE RIVERS, THE FORESTS ALL BELONG TO FREEPORT AND THE GOVERNMENT NOW. I HAVENOTHING .’ Amungme elder, 1995

AMUNGME LIFEThe Amungme tribe lives in the central highlands; in their language, their namemeans ‘the first’ or ‘the real people’. The Amungme, like other tribes in Papua,want to be recognised as a distinct people.

Amungme men and women live in separate houses, the children with the women.Reciprocity is one of the four basic principles of Amungme life. One reason theAmungme are so angered by the mining companies on their land is the lack ofreciprocity shown towards them. They have given their land, copper and gold –and have received almost nothing in return. Under Amungme law, land cannot be sold, and its owners are always entitled to its profits – be they sweet potatoesor gold.

The Amungme have many taboos about what can and cannot be destroyed, whicheffectively conserve their forest. But the mining companies have broken many ofthem and destroyed much sacred land – including the mountain peaks andglaciers where the Amungme believe their ancestors’ spirits live.

22 Papua

Indies colony to Indonesia in 1950 theydid not include Papua – which has noethnic or geographical connection withthe rest of Indonesia – intending insteadto prepare it for its own independence. The Papuans began to choose a name(Papua), a flag and a system ofleadership. But Indonesia insisted thatthe Dutch must hand over their formercolony in its entirety – and threatenedotherwise to take it by force with supportfrom the Soviet Union. In 1962, underpressure from the US which was fearfulof an Indonesian-Soviet alliance, theDutch agreed to a deal brokered by theUnited Nations (UN). Under the terms of the deal, the UN would administer‘West New Guinea’ in preparation for a referendum, called ‘The Act of FreeChoice’. In this referendum, the Papuans were supposed to vote either for independence or to become part of Indonesia.

In 1963, the UN handed the territory tothe Indonesians, who renamed it IrianBarat, then Irian Jaya, before finallyagreeing to the name ‘Papua’ in 2002. In 1969, ‘The Act of Free Choice’ finallytook place. It is commonly known inPapua as ‘The Act Free of Choice’, asonly 1,025 handpicked Papuans wereallowed to vote, some literally with guns at their heads. Unsurprisingly, they voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

Papua’s tribal peoples were deeplyunhappy at the Indonesian takeover of their land. The Organisasi PapuaMerdeka (OPM – the Free PapuaMovement) was formed, an armedindependence movement which is stillactive. It made international headlines in 1996 by taking hostage a group ofEuropean and Indonesian scientists forfour months: two Indonesians werekilled when the hostages were freed bythe Indonesian army.

Transmigration

The Indonesian government’stransmigration programme aims to movemillions of people from the denselypopulated central islands of Indonesiainto the outer islands, such as Papua. Theprogramme assumes that there are largetracts of unused land on these islands;but in reality these are the homes oftribal peoples who depend on their landsfor their survival. The programme alsohas a more sinister and racist agenda; to‘Indonesianise’ the tribal peoples.Government officials have spoken ofbreeding the Papuans out of existence.The governor of Papua has said,‘[Intermarriage] will give birth to a newgeneration of people without curly hair,sowing the seeds for greater beauty.’

Although the official transmigrationprogramme has slowed in recent years,spontaneous migration is a grave and

‘You can kill me, cut off my head if you will, but my body will walkback to that land. It is ours.’ Papuan man sent to prison over a land dispute, 1980s

Papua 25

MILITARYThe Indonesian military has a long and shocking history of horrific human rightsviolations against the Papuans – including murder, rape, massacres and torture.Amongst all the terrible abuse of tribal peoples in the modern world, Indonesia’streatment of the Papuans stands out as the worst for its sheer scale and ferocity.

‘Operation Annihilation’, launched in 1977, was a violent attack against thepeoples of the central highlands. The military bombed villages from planes;others they occupied on the ground, shooting people at random. Tribal leadersthought to be sympathetic to the OPM (Free Papua Movement) were dropped outof helicopters over tribal villages as an ‘example’. The rivers were full of bodies,and almost every family in the highlands lost someone to the violence. Manyfamilies were wiped out completely.

Today the military operates more subtly, and the army bans all outsiders,including Papuans, from many areas where it is operating. What information it is possible to get suggests that the abuse, although not matching the appallingscale of the late 1970s, is still horrendous. Church and human rights teams findevidence of murder, abduction and torture of innocent people in reprisal for realor imagined sympathy for the independence movement. In areas where the armyis operating, hundreds have been known to die from hunger or disease, becausethey are too scared to leave their hiding places to hunt or gather food. Women andgirls as young as three years old have been systematically raped and gang-raped.

In one incident in July 1998, a large group of independence supporters wasgathered peacefully around the banned Papuan flag on the island of Biak whenthe army and police opened fire. Survivors were taken prisoner. Eyewitnesseswho escaped reported that people were loaded onto navy ships and taken out tosea where they were shot and then thrown into the sea; women were raped andsexually mutilated before they were thrown overboard. No one knows how manypeople died: only eight deaths have been confirmed, and three people officiallyreported missing – many are too afraid to report the disappeared. But soonafterwards, 32 bodies, many badly mutilated and some with their hands tiedtogether, were washed up on the Biak shore. Others will probably never be found.

In total, an estimated 100,000 Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian armedforces since 1963.

24 Papua

continuing problem for Papua’s tribalpeoples: hundreds of settlers arrive eachweek by boat, leaving the Papuans evermore marginalised in their own land.

Grasberg

Exploitation of their natural resources is a major problem for the peoples ofPapua. The notorious Grasberg mine in the south-central highlands is thelargest copper and gold mine in theworld, making more than US $1 millionprofit per day. The American companyFreeport McMoRan owns over 80% ofGrasberg; the Indonesian governmentand British company Rio Tinto also have financial interests in it. The minehas had a devastating impact on both the highland Amungme, whose land it occupies, and the lowland Kamoro,who suffer from the effects of the mine’swaste. In the last 35 years, the Amungmehave seen their sacred mountainsdestroyed by the mine, and watched astheir relatives are killed by Indonesiansoldiers ‘defending’ it, while theKamoro have well over 200,000 tons ofmining waste pumped into their rivers

each day. Neither tribe has had theirrights recognised or received propercompensation.

Freeport has been working in the area since 1967. Since then manyAmungme who had been living in thearea of the mine have been relocated tolowland villages, where they suffer fromdiseases such as malaria. Amungme landand forests are also under pressure fromthe many outsiders who have moved into the area for jobs. Kamoro have also been relocated because of the pollution,which has flooded their rivers and killednot only the fish, but also the sago treeswhich are their main source of food.Freeport’s current expansion of the minewith the help of more than US $750million from the British company RioTinto spells more disaster for theAmungme and Kamoro.

The mine is seen as a ‘vital project’bythe government of Indonesia, whichprovides soldiers to protect it. As aconsequence, the area around the mine is now one of the most militarised areasin Indonesia – leading to many terriblehuman rights violations. Local peoplebelieve that Freeport’s own securitypersonnel have been involved in thekillings, torture and disappearances thathave occurred around the mine.

Freeport is currently exploring alongalmost the entire central mountain range.

‘If you ask whether they agree to move from the area, of course they agree because they are being forced with a gun.’ Amungme leader, about the displacement of his people by the Freeport mine, 1997

New Guinea contains 0.01% of the world’s population, but15% of the world's knownlanguages.

Introduction 3

Many other tribes fear that they too willlose their land and way of life. Proposedlogging, oil-palm plantations, a roadacross the province and hydroelectricpower stations also threaten the landsand livelihoods of the Papuans.

The future

Despite their many problems, there ishope for the peoples of Papua. Localopposition and international campaignshave stopped some of the worst‘development’projects. For example,Survival supported the Auyu peopleagainst the building of a Scott Paper pulpproject which would have devastatedtheir environment and way of life:

Scott Paper abandoned the project. After many years of campaigning fromSurvival and other organisations, theWorld Bank stopped funding thetransmigration programme, which hasled to a slowdown in the process. Thetribal peoples of Papua are organisingthemselves to stand up against theiroppressors. Tribal leaders from all over Papua met in 2000 and formed the ‘Presidium Council’. The council,together with other leaders, is pushingfor peaceful solutions to Papua’sproblems.

Altogether, the tribal peoples of Papuaare calling increasingly loudly for theirright to decide their own future, to beindependent from Indonesia and to liveon their own lands in peace.

Papua 27

Dani girl. Her tribe probably suffered more than any other during the Indonesianmilitary’s Operation Annihilation in 1977.

RACISM‘In West Papua, the killings are motivated by racism.’ John Rumbiak, Papuan human rights campaigner, 2001

Almost all the atrocities against the Papuans are generated by racism, which isprevalent at every level. Racism is not just offensive to the peoples of Papua, ithas been used to justify the theft of their land and the deaths of an estimated100,000 people. The genocide continues.

Racist assumptions that the Papuans were too ‘primitive’ to decide their ownfuture first led the international community to allow Indonesia to manipulate thePapuan vote on independence. This has resulted in more than 30 years ofIndonesian oppression and brutality.

‘I cannot imagine the US, Japanese, Dutch or Australian governments putting atrisk their... relations with Indonesia on a matter of principle involving a relativelysmall number of very primitive people.’ British diplomat, 1968

The racist view that Papuans should be ‘bred out of existence’ by bringing in ‘more civilised’ people from outside drives the Indonesian government’sdevastating transmigration policy, which has thrown Papuans off their lands and threatens to make them a minority in their own country.

‘(Transmigration) was probably the only way of getting stone age, primitive andbackward people into the mainstream of Indonesian development.’Mochtar Kusamaatmadja, Government minister, Indonesia, 1985

The racist belief that the Papuans are little more than animals is used byIndonesian soldiers to justify the horrific violence they mete out.

‘There’s nothing we can do. Everyone knows what the army is up to. They kill uslike animals. If we protest more people will be murdered.’ Family of murdered youth, Weni Tabuni, 1997

The racist belief in the inferiority of the Papuans enables international companiesto ignore their rights to the lands they have lived on for up to 40,000 years.

‘Foreign people see us not as human beings, but as creatures that are still in theevolution stage to becoming human beings. Consequently these people,especially the companies and the Indonesian government, treat us like animals,with rough and cruel measures.’ Tom Beanal, Amungme Chief, 1999

26 Papua

Introduction 3Malaysia 29

The peoples and the island

On the north-west coast of Borneo isSarawak, the largest of the Malaysianstates, rich in natural resources such as gas and oil, and covered with largeareas of dense rainforest. This forest is home to about 200,000 tribal people.Many more people of tribal descent live in the towns, making up almost half of Sarawak’s population of 2million. But more recent arrivals,ethnically Malay, dominate Sarawak’spolitical hierarchy, while commerce and industry are mainly in the hands of people of Chinese descent.

Most of Sarawak’s tribal peoples live inlonghouses and cultivate rice. Thelargest tribe is the Iban, often calledDayaks, but there are around two dozenother peoples such as the Kayan,Kenyah, and Kelabit, who also live in

settled villages and practise agriculture.A small minority of Sarawak’s tribalpeoples are traditionally nomadichunter-gatherers. Today, the onlynomads are from the Penan tribe: mostPenan are now settled or semi-settled,growing some crops along with huntingand gathering, but about 300 still lead anentirely nomadic way of life. The landand its resources are vital for thesurvival of Sarawak’s tribal population.It provides them with their livelihoodand also the focus for many of theirspiritual beliefs.

The longhouses of the settled tribes areeach home to a whole village. Everyfamily occupies a separate room whichopens onto a shared verandah. Eachlonghouse community shares a largearea of communal land for hunting andcollecting forest produce. The land isalso a reserve for future cultivation.Each family has access to enough land

S A R AWA K, M A L AY S I A

Guardians of the forest

Penan man with jack fruit

‘THE GOVERNMENT SAYS WE ARE ANIMALS, L IKEANIMALS IN THE FOREST. WE ARE NOT ANIMALS IN THEFOREST. WE ARE PENAN . HUMANS. I MYSELF KNOW I AMHUMAN .’ Penan man, 1997


territory – crisscrossed by a maze ofhunting tracks and trading paths – isdefined by streams, rivers, rocks andmountains, all of which they havenamed. Within this territory, no one isconsidered to own individually any partof the land, but particular fruit trees andgroves of sago palm do have specificowners. The Penan have a gentle andegalitarian society with no hierarchy, in which no one can force anyone to doanything. Children are full members of society, and from a very young ageenjoy its privileges and contribute bycollecting food, hunting, weaving orgathering firewood. No Penan wouldever cut across another’s speech, letalone shout. Sharing is taken for granted:there is no Penan word for ‘thank you’,and a hunter must not eat his game untilhe has divided it into equal shares anddistributed it to all the families in thecommunity.

The Penan rely heavily on sago, a fast-growing wild palm tree. To make flour,they fell trees, shred the pithy wood andfilter it to extract the starch. This flour isthe Penan’s staple food, and with huntedmeat and wild fruit gives the Penan oneof the world’s healthiest diets. Gatheringand preparing sago is less work than

growing food, giving the nomadic Penanhuge amounts of leisure time.

Colonisation

In 1839, an English adventurer calledJames Brooke arrived in Borneo andestablished a personal kingdom whichhe called Sarawak. He founded adynasty of ‘White Rajahs’, which endedwith the Japanese occupation duringWorld War II. In 1946, Sarawak washanded over to British colonial rule, andin 1963 incorporated into the Federationof Malaysian States. Today, Sarawak isstill a part of Malaysia.

The current Malaysian government has a policy of settling the nomadic Penan,believing a nomadic life is ‘backward’and an agricultural existence more‘developed’. All but about 300 Penanhave been settled, and some now live ingovernment-built longhouses, ratherthan the smaller, temporary homes they

‘There is a saying in Penan — like fish being abandoned by water.That is how the ‘development’ from the government affects us. We donot get anything from it, we cannot even move. We cannot breathe.We die. What we want is our forest. We are not asking for all theforest there is — we only want a little, just enough for our needs.’ Johnny Lalang, Penan man, 2002

About 300 Penan still lead anentirely nomadic way of life.

to feed itself, and by cultivating a plot ofland acquires rights over it.

The settled communities are scatteredalong the rivers and their tributaries,along which they travel and whichprovide them with fish. Many

communities practise a form ofagriculture called ‘shifting cultivation’.An area of forest is cleared and plantedwith crops, usually rice, and after twoseasons the land is allowed to revert toforest and the farmers clear a new area.Although this system is much criticised,it is generally the only sustainable wayof cultivating tropical forest soils.

The nomadic Penan live well back fromthe main rivers, building their temporaryshelters on forested ridge tops. Their

Whatever Penan adults do, they are usuallyaccompanied by children, who learn bywatching and copying them. Children areexpected to share everything in the sameway as adults – one boy was nicknamed‘Teléé’ (pygmy squirrel) for not sharing one with his friends.

30 Malaysia


for long periods, and come into conflictwith the logging companies.

The government and the loggingcompanies reacted to these peacefulprotests by changing the law to makeblockading of roads a criminal offence;hundreds of tribal people have beenharassed, arrested and imprisoned as a result. But this has not stopped theblockades. The Penan and other tribalpeoples are determined not to let theirlast remaining forest be destroyed.

The future

Despite the bleak situation in Sarawakthere have been some encouraging signs.In the past, logging companies workedfreely even on those parts of the tribal

lands that had been officially recognisedas belonging to tribal people – butblockades have been successful inforcing them off such lands, and somelegal cases have gone in the favour of the tribes. In May 2001, in a landmarkruling in a case brought by members ofthe Iban tribe, a judge finally recognisedthat tribes like the Iban do actually owntheir land, and companies have no rightto log on it, irrespective of whether thegovernment has given them permits. Thetribal peoples of Sarawak hope that theircontinued resistance to the theft of theirland will help them to win back morecontrol over it.

Penan argue so rarely that places whereconfrontations have taken place are stillnamed after the argument decades later.

32 Malaysia

build for themselves. But even thosewho have been settled and are growingsome food still rely heavily on huntingand gathering. They have neither theexpertise nor the enthusiasm for farmingto provide enough food for their familiesby this method alone. Instead, they stillrely very heavily on forest sago, huntedmeat and other forest products.

Problems

Since the 1970s, the tribal peoples’land has been taken to make way for‘development’ in the form of logging,mining, tourism, dams and oil palmplantations. Thousands have beenresettled or forced to move to the towns.They crowd into slum dwellings wherepoor nutrition, lack of employment andappalling sanitation cause dire problemsand reduce the people to abject poverty.Shifting cultivators have been forced offtheir lands, and the nomadic Penan havebeen told by the government that theyhave no rights to any land at all until they‘settle down’. The tribal peoples’way oflife and their balanced system of rightsand obligations are being destroyed bylegal systems imposed from outside andstate propaganda about the cultural‘inferiority’of tribal peoples. The fewrights the tribes have to their lands can

be taken away from them at the whim ofthe government.

One current project, the Bakun dam, willflood an area the size of Singapore andhas already displaced 10,000 tribalpeople who have been given inadequatecompensation and poor living conditionsin return for their forest homes.

Logging

The logging industry has had the mostdevastating impact on the lives ofSarawak’s tribes. Timber is the singlelargest source of export revenue for thestate government, with the biggestmarket being Japan, and the control of the timber trade is at the heart ofSarawak’s politics. The Malaysiangovernment claims that Sarawak isbeing logged sustainably – but in factSarawak’s forests are being destroyed atone of the fastest rates in the world. In1991, a World Bank report estimated therate of logging in Sarawak to be fourtimes above the sustainable rate.

As a result, the rivers are silted up,pollution is killing the fish and the game is being scared deeper into the few remaining forests. The resultingmalnutrition and water-borne diseaseskill tribal people. But they have fiercelyresisted this destruction of their land andthreat to their lives. After repeatedappeals to both federal and stategovernments, they were forced to adoptmore direct methods. Since 1987, men,women and children have repeatedlyblockaded the logging roads, sometimes

Sharing is taken for granted in Penan society: there is noPenan word for ‘thank you’.

Introduction 3Bangladesh 35

The peoples and the land

The eleven Jumma tribes of theChittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) number600,000 people altogether. They are the original inhabitants of the HillTracts, and their cultures, religions,languages and ethnic origin are entirelydifferent to those of the majority Bengalipopulation of Bangladesh. The BuddhistChakma and Marma tribes are thelargest, numbering 350,000 and 140,000people each, followed by the HinduTripura, of whom there are 60,000. The other tribes number another 50,000or so people altogether. The Buddhistemphasis on the scriptures has helpedgive the CHT the highest literacy rates in Bangladesh.

The rugged Chittagong Hill Tracts coveran area of around 13,200 sq km. There islittle flat land suitable for intensive

agriculture, so the tribes of the HillTracts practise a sophisticated form of ‘shifting cultivation’ to get the bestout of their steep slopes. They clear and burn the surface vegetation beforeplanting a mixture of crops to provide a variety of foods all year round. At theend of the annual cycle the land is left to recover, and the people move on to a new area. Communities need largeareas of land, as only a small fraction isin use at any one time. This practice isknown locally as ‘Jhum cultivating’–hence the name ‘Jumma’ to refer to thetribes of the area. The system hasworked for centuries, and is the onlytruly sustainable way to farm in the hilly regions.

In 1947, 98% of the population of theCHT was Jumma. Now it is only half,and the Jummas are in danger ofbecoming a minority in their own land.

C H I T TA G O N G H I L L T R A C T S, B A N G L A D E S H

Genocide in the hills

Chakma child‘WE ARE ON THE EVE OF TOTAL ANNIHILATION .’Upendra Lal Chakma, 1980s

36 Bangladesh

The history

The Jummas have been ruled byoutsiders for many years. Under Britishcolonial rule, they enjoyed relativeautonomy. At first a superintendentpoliced the area with three tribal chiefswho were recognised as rajahs, or rulers.Then in 1900, the Jummas were formallygranted self-government in internalaffairs, with the Chittagong Hill TractsRegulation, which also prevented non-tribal people from settling in tribal areas.

With Indian independence and partitionin 1947, the CHT, along with the rest ofBangladesh, became part of Pakistan –and the Jummas lost much of theirautonomy. The Pakistani governmentallowed Bengali Muslims to move intothe CHT and take the best land, causinggreat resentment amongst the Jummasand driving many into India. In 1964, theJummas of the CHT lost the right to self-government, although the CHTRegulation was never formally annulled.

In the 1960s, the situation for the Jummatribes began a slide towards catastrophe.The Kaptai Dam was built by thePakistani government in the heart of the CHT to generate electricity. Itsubmerged almost half of the most fertileland and displaced one third of the

population. Tribal people were driveninto more barren land in the hills, and asmany as 40,000 fled to north-east India,where many still live. There they aredenied their rights, not accepted ascitizens of either India or Bangladesh.

After Bangladesh’s independence fromPakistan in 1971, matters worsened. Thenew government refused the Jummas’request for a return to autonomy, andunleashed violent military raids. Manymore tribal people fled in fear to India,and their lands were given to Bengaliswho were moved into the CHT. Thisviolence continues today.

In response to these attacks, a Jummapolitical party, the Jana Samhati Samiti,was formed. Its military wing, the ShantiBahini, waged a war against governmenttroops. Government retribution attacksand ‘counter-insurgency’ forced manymore Jummas to flee. By 1990, around57,000 Jummas – 10% – were living incamps in India and about 30,000 werehiding in the forests of the Hill Tracts.

From 1988, many of the Jummas weremoved into ‘cluster villages’ to isolatethem from the Shanti Bahini. They were‘guarded’by the military and theirmovements controlled. Not surprisinglymany described these ‘villages’asconcentration camps.

Bengali settlers

The movement of Bengali settlers intothe Chittagong Hill Tracts has been

‘It is only because of your[Survival’s] efforts that wehave a ray of hope for oursurvival.’ Jumma, 1999

Chakma mother and child

In April 1992, Survival reported that anestimated 1,200 tribal people were burntalive in their homes by the military in the‘cluster village’of Logang. In November1993, the military and Bengali settlersjoined together to attack a peacefuldemonstration in Naniachar – more than100 Jummas were massacred and up to500 injured.

Due in part to pressure from Survival,the situation improved after 1993. Butabuses – including disappearances,killings, and rape by soldiers – still tookplace. Kalpana Chakma, 23, leader ofthe Jumma organisation the HillWomen’s Federation, was abductedfrom her home by security forces in June1996; she is still missing. An officialenquiry has not publicised its findings.

The future

Negotiations between the Jana SamhatiSamiti and the army began in 1992 andresulted in a long ceasefire between themilitary and the Shanti Bahini. But manyviolations were reported, and the armymaintained its heavy presence in theChittagong Hill Tracts.

In December 1997 the Jummas signed apeace deal with the Bangladeshgovernment. It includes the setting up of a regional council led by Jummas toadminister the CHT, and gives themsome control over their land. The deal isnot an end to the problems of theJummas, but was seen by most as asignificant move forward. A Jummarepresentative told Survival that it was a‘positive step’and that the Bangladeshgovernment ‘would never have come tothe negotiation table’without pressurefrom Survival and other organisations.

But the government has failed to realisemany of the promises it made to theJummas. The army still has a huge,dominant presence in the CHT andsettlers are still armed and supported by the military. Many of the Jummaswho returned from the refugee campshave not yet had their land returned tothem. Survival is maintaining pressureon the government of Bangladesh.

The Mru live in thatched bamboo houses raised on stilts, usually remote from otherJumma tribes.

38 Bangladesh

engineered by the government as a way to assimilate the Jummas intoBengali culture. Underway since the late 1940s, it became official policy in1979 when the ‘Bangladeshi PopulationTransfer Programme’was launched,backed by a larger army presence. Thegovernment saw the CHT as empty landonto which it could put landless Bengalipoor: settlers were offered cash, Jummaland and food rations as incentives tomove to the area. From 1977 to 1987about 300,000 Bengalis moved into the Hill Tracts.

In the face of protests, the governmentpromised that no more Bengalis wouldbe moved into the CHT. Yet there is stilla steady stream of Bengali men going tothe area, mostly surreptitiously, andmarrying Bengali women already there.Many settlers who were given the bestlands in the area are still receiving therations which they were originallyoffered as an incentive.

Human rights abuses

The CHT was for a long time closed to outsiders, meaning that many of the human rights abuses that occurredhave gone unreported. But in November1990, an independent body ofinternational experts, the CHTCommission, was invited to the HillTracts by the Bangladesh government,which wanted to counter the accusationsagainst it. The plan backfired, as theteam discovered overwhelmingevidence of human rights abuses.

The commission found that people were regularly tortured and killed,women raped, villages burned andplaces of worship destroyed. There were over 600 reported serious humanrights violations in 1990 alone. Thecommission was shocked by the numberof soldiers in the area – approximatelyone for every six tribal people – and theconstant state of terror in which theJummas live.

MRUThe Mru are one of the smaller tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They numberaround 22,000, and live high up in the hills. Mru men wear loin-cloths and thewomen short cloth skirts. Both men and women wear their hair long and tied in ahigh knot; on special occasions, they wear elaborate combs and flowers in it, andthe men decorate themselves by colouring their lips red and blackening theirteeth. Mru houses stand on stilts to protect them from the monsoon rains anduneven ground. Racist attitudes towards them are common, unfortunately bothinside and outside the CHT, for example in the claims that they are the most‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ tribe.

Introduction 3Russia 41

The peoples and the land

Siberia is a land of long, bitterly coldwinters where temperatures reach as lowas -70˚C. It is home to 30 distinct tribes,the ‘northern indigenous peoples’, who range in number from under 200(the Oroks) to as many as 34,000 (theNenets); together they number morethan 200,000 people. Two largerindigenous peoples, the Sakha (formerlyknown as Yakuts) and Komi, have theirown republics within the Russian state.The origins of these tribes are distantand complex. Their languages belong tomany different linguistic families; some speak languages with no similarities toany other; none are related to Russian.

Russia’s indigenous peoples live in threedistinct climatic zones: tundra (arcticplain), forest tundra (where a few stubbytrees manage to grow), and taiga

(coniferous forest). The forest tundraand taiga are home to bears, elk, foxesand birds. The Udege, in the far south-east, share their land with bears and therare Siberian tiger, which is sacred tothem. Further north, in the tundra, it is so cold that very few species of animalor plant can survive, leaving onlyreindeer, arctic foxes, lichen and a fewspecies of bird and fish. The ecosystemis so fragile that it can take more than 50 years for a tree to grow head high.

The tribal peoples in the tundra arereindeer-herders, while those in theforest or by the sea live by herding,hunting and fishing. The reindeer-

S I B E R I A, R U S S I A

Tribes of the frozen north

The tribal peoples of Siberialive in an area which covers58% of Russia.

Chukchee reindeer herders, Kamchatka

‘O GODS, DELIVER MY LAND FROM OIL!O GODS, PUT THE LAND BACK IN MY HANDS! ’

Yeremai Aipin, Khanty poet and writer, 1989

Russia 4342 Russia

with them food and their way of life.Industrialisation brought migrants toSiberia, making the indigenous peoplesa minority in their own land. The arrivalswere paid more for the same work andhad a far higher standard of living – adisparity which continues today.

From 1950 to the mid-1980s, theauthorities tried to suppress all ethnic,linguistic and cultural differences – evento the point of destroying languages andcultures. Shamans were killed. Childrenwere sent to schools which did not teach

their own languages, and some werepunished for speaking them. In manycommunities now, young people, whospeak only Russian, cannot talk withtheir own grandparents, who speak onlytheir own indigenous language.

Meanwhile, the government clearedmany tribal villages, forcing the peopleinto larger official settlements. Differenttribes’communities were amalgamatedin an attempt to turn the country into ahomogeneous Soviet state. Tribalpeoples’means of providing for

herders are nomads, and follow thereindeer around their land in a cyclicalpattern. They make their houses, calledchum, from reindeer skins, and takethem with them as they move from placeto place. The hunters live in permanentor semi-permanent settlements. Theirhouses are made from wood andinsulated with earth and moss; often theyare sunken into the ground for extrawarmth. In the past, these peoples wouldmove around between up to fivedifferent settlements in separate huntinggrounds, but many now stay in the same

place all the time. Today only 10% of thetribal people live a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, compared to 70% just 30years ago. Most of the others live inSoviet-style settlements, where almosthalf the population are involved inherding, fishing and hunting.

History

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Sovietauthorities took over much tribal land forstate-run industries. The tribes lost theirreindeer pastures and fishing sites, and

Arctic Ocean

Moscow

St Petersberg

Sea of Okhotsk

Sea of Japan

Lake Baykal

Saami

Komi Nenets

Mansi

Khanty

Sel’kupKets

Entsy

Nganasans

Dolgans

Sakha

Sakha

Evenks

Evenks

Chukchee

Yupigyts

Evens

Itel’mens

Koryaks

Oroks

NivkhiOrochi

Nivkhi

Udege

Negidals

Nanais

Ul’chiEvenks

TofalarsTRIBES OF S IBERIA

Introduction 3Russia 45

DEMITRI ’S STORY As told to Survival, 2000

‘I was born in 1963 in the place where there is now Pokachi town. When I

was 11 years old a company came to our land and tested it for oil, then they

built the town. They didn’t come and talk to us about it. Lots of machines

came onto our land and workers too. Before the workers came, a lot of

families lived on the land and they all herded reindeer. But when the oil

workers came we lost lots of reindeer; the oil workers would eat them. We

never got any compensation for lost reindeer or for our land. The oil people

brought in vodka and gave it in exchange for fish or meat or furs. Before the

oil people came we only had vodka maybe once a year.

My father died and we had to move. The other families welcomed us;

relations between families were better than now – there was more land to

share, and the land was beautiful. Sometimes we lived in chum [reindeer

skin tents] and sometimes in winter we used log houses as they are warmer.

I was forced to leave my family and community to go to boarding school.

We all were. Of the 27 people in my class at school only six or seven are alive

now. At least two hanged themselves, and many others died of drink-related

incidents. I am 37 years old now.

I live on a land which is rich in oil but I don’t even have petrol for my skidoo.

People say a lot of beautiful words about it being a rich region but in reality

the Khanty are very poor. There are no benefits from the oil companies,

no positive things. The oil companies say that they have brought civilisation

to the Khanty, energy and so on. But if there were no oil workers the Khanty

could do everything without these comfortable things.

It is difficult to speak to the director of the oil companies in his office, it is

easier to see a king than the employers of the oil companies.’Demitri Aipin, Khanty reindeer herder, hunter and fisherman

44 Russia

themselves were stolen from them, asnomads were made to settle in areas thatwere impractical for hunting or grazing,and restrictions were imposed onhunting and fishing. Instead peoplebecame dependent on the state forsubsidies and salaries. This loss of thetribal peoples’own ways of life led todespair, alcoholism and high suiciderates – problems that still today plaguethe peoples of the north.

With the collapse of Soviet communism,the infrastructure that supported thelarge state enterprises broke down andwith it went salaries and subsidies. Manypeople have now returned to subsistenceherding and hunting to survive.

Pollution & health

In western Siberia, pollution from the oil and gas industries has affected vastareas of tribal land. Huge flares burn off excess gas day and night, and oiloften gets into the rivers, killing the fish and plant life. Forests have been cut down and reindeer pastures havebeen devastated. The delicate ecosystem of the tundra will takegenerations to recover.

Industry has also destroyed sacred sites.The Khanty watched in horror as their

sacred riverbed, a fish spawning groundon the river Sob, was dug up to minegravel. Now the fish can no longer breedthere, destroying both the Khanty’slivelihood and way of life. In the south-east, the Udege’s forests are under threatfrom loggers, while in the north-east theEvenks’, Evens’and Yukagirs’ lands arecontaminated by radiation from failednuclear tests.

Such pollution has ravaged the health of Siberia’s tribal peoples. Radiationfrom the nuclear testing in the early1970s has caused very high levels ofcancers; tuberculosis and otherrespiratory illnesses are rife, and madeworse by poor living conditions. Childmortality is nearly twice the nationalaverage. The Tchita Evenk are a typicalcase: one in every five of their children isinfected with tuberculosis; half have aneurological disorder. Birth rates aredecreasing and life expectancy for thetribal peoples is 18 years less than for therest of the Russian population.

Land rights

The issue of indigenous land rights iscomplicated in Russia, as there is almostno legal land ownership. The Sovietgovernment saw no value in land, or itsresources, unless it was utilised in a waythey understood. The Land LegislationAct of 1968 made all land – includingtribal peoples’ land – available free ofcharge to communal farms andenterprises. The concept of awardingcompensation to indigenous people fordamages caused to their land by such

Land ownership rights are thekey to Siberia’s tribal peoplesgaining control of their future.

things as oil pollution is only slowlyemerging, and the issue of their landownership rights has not yet beenaddressed fully. A law passed in 1999decreed that most issues concerningtribal peoples should be resolved atregional level, meaning that they areheavily dependent on the whim ofparticular local governments for therecognition of their rights.

The future

In 1990, the first congress of the RussianAssociation of Indigenous Peoples of theNorth (RAIPON) took place in Moscow,its goal ‘to unite all our strengths in orderto survive.’ Its demands, aimed at greatercontrol over land and resources, have yetto be met – tribal land rights are still notrecognised, companies do not properlyconsult the indigenous peoples beforethey take their resources from their land,and the ILO convention on tribal andindigenous peoples has yet to be ratified.

But since the foundation of RAIPON,things have improved and importantconcessions are being won. Logging and oil companies, and particularly the Russian authorities, have beensusceptible to international pressure and Survival’s campaigns have had anumber of successes. Following aSurvival campaign, logging was stoppedon Udege land in 1992. In 1999, a fewmonths after Survival asked itssupporters to write to the governor of theregion, a five year moratorium on oil andgas exploration was ordered on the landof the Yugan Khanty.

As with tribal peoples all over Asia, and the rest of the world, recognition of land ownership rights is the real key to Siberia’s tribal peoples gaining control over their land and their lives.When concerned individuals around theworld are prepared to take action, thetribal peoples of Siberia – and the rest ofAsia – have a chance to have their landrights recognised and thus a real hope fortheir future. he

Chukchee children, Chukotka

‘I don’t want anything, only my land. Give me my land back where I can graze

my reindeer, hunt game and catch fish. Give me my land where my deer are

not attacked by stray dogs, where my hunting trails are not trampled down

by poachers or fouled up by vehicles, where the rivers and lakes have no oil

slicks. I want land where my home, my sanctuary and graveyard can remain

inviolable. I want land where I could not be robbed of my clothes or boots in

broad daylight. Give me my own land, not someone else’s. Just a tiny patch of

my own land.’ Khanty elder, 1989

Russia 47

48 Survival

SurvivalSurvival International is a worldwide organisation supporting tribal peoples. It stands

for their right to decide their own future and helps them protect their lives, lands and

human rights. Survival is the only international organisation dedicated to campaigning

for tribal peoples and works closely with hundreds of tribal organisations and

communities in over 30 countries.

In order to maintain its integrity and independence, Survival does not accept money

from any national government, or from any company which violates tribal peoples’

rights. This ensures it retains a powerful and independent voice, and makes it reliant

on individual supporters who provide nearly all of its funds. Survival has supporters

in over 90 countries.

Survival is a registered charity, founded in 1969 in London, where it has its head office.

It also has offices in France, Italy and Spain. Survival’s staff and governing committee

are drawn from many nationalities.

photo credits front cover: Jarawa women (Andaman Islands) © Salome/Survival; inside cover: Yali woman (Papua) © Jerry Callow/Survival; pp 4 and 7 © Paul Harris/Survival; p8 © Robin Hanbury-Tenison/Survival; p11 © Jeanne Herbert/Survival; pp 12, 16 and 19 © Salome/Survival; pp 20, 23 and 27 © Jeanne Herbert/Survival; p28 © Payne/Survival; p30 © Ben Gibson/Survival, p33 Robin Hanbury-Tenison/Survival; pp 34, 37 and 39 © MarkMcEvoy/Survival; p40 © Paul Harris/Survival; p46 ©Adam Fowler/Survival; back cover: Penan man © JeanneHerbert/Survival. map software (pp 2, 14 and 42) © 1993 Digital Wisdom, Inc.

© Survival International, 2002

ISBN 0 946592 21 7

Editorial team Sophie Grig and Caroline PearceDesign Honor DrysdalePrint Waterside Press

Published by Survival InternationalRegistered Charity 267444

Produced with assistance from the Community Fund

Survival International6 Charterhouse BuildingsLondonEC1M 7ETUnited Kingdom

T +44 (0)20 7687 8700F +44 (0)20 7687 [email protected]

www.survival-international.org

‘LAND IS OUR LIFE AND BLOOD – WITHOUT OUR FOREST

WE C ANNOT SURVIVE.’

Penan man, Sarawak, Malaysia

‘OUR LAND IS EVERYTHING TO US. OUR LIFE AND OUR

FUTURE COME ONLY FROM THE LAND.’

Amungme leader, Papua, Indonesia

a Survival International publicationwww.survival-international.org

siberia to sarawak -...

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