'DON'T DESTROY US - OUR WAY OF LIFE IS AS MODERN AS YOURS.'

Hunter-gatherers' plea to outside world on UN Day of Indigenous Peoples

Remote hunter-gatherer tribes have issued a plea
to the outside world to mark the UN Day of
Indigenous Peoples on 9 August, saying, 'We are
not backward, our way of life is as modern as
yours'. The appeal comes as isolated tribal
people face a wave of persecution and attacks on
their way of life.

In the remote Andaman Islands of the Indian
Ocean, the isolated Jarawa tribe are suffering
from new diseases, sexual exploitation and the
loss of their land. Outsiders kill the game on
which they depend. The Indian government calls
them 'primitive'. The Jarawa have only recently
started to communicate with the outside world.
One Jarawa man called Enmei said, 'The outsiders
are bad menŠ They abuse us... The jungle is
better. Even if I have to stay outside for a few
days, I would like to return to my family in the
jungle.'

In the Brazilian Amazon one of the last nomadic
tribes, the Awá, are now barely 300-strong. Their
land is being taken by cattle ranchers and
settlers. An Awá man called To'o said, 'We're
getting cornered as the whites close in... We are
always fleeing. Without the forest we have no way
of surviving and we'll be extinct. But we're
going to fight for our land, we're not going to
let the whites in. We're not going to let them
finish our land. We want to raise our children
here.'

The Gana and Gwi Bushmen of Botswana were until
recently some of the last hunter-gatherers of the
Kalahari desert. Thrown off their land by the
government, barely 200 cling on. The government
has called them 'Stone Age' and 'prehistoric'.
But speaking today one Bushman said, 'Our way of
life is just as modern as yours. There's no
reason why we can't wear clothes, send our
children to school, and still be
hunter-gatherers.'

Survival's Director Stephen Corry said today,
'Hunter-gatherers extend from those still
uncontacted by anyone else to those who wear
watches, listen to the radio and complain to the
UN when they are abused. White people have now
accepted that black people are not inferior to
themselves, it's high time everyone now realised
that hunter-gatherers are not inferior to farmers
or bankers.'


Photos and footage available. Fore more
information contact Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20
7687 8734 or email  mr@survival-international.org.

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