Omo Valley Tribespeople Live as Their Ancestors Did (Except with Lots of AK-47s)

In 2007, photojournalist Brent Stirton went to the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia to document the life of people of remote tribal groups that continue to live as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Except that they have AK-47. Plenty of AK-47s:

In the sprawling, desolate Southern Omo River Valley region of Ethiopia are several tribes living as they have for centuries, in voluntary isolation from the modern world. Recently, however, the tribes — Dassanech, Mursi, Hamar, Karo, Bume, Beshadar and others — are under increasing pressure from the outside world. Most recent is the Omo River dam project to provide hydroelectric power to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. This will reduce the river to one-fifth its size and eliminate the flood plain so valuable to Omo Valley tribal farmers. The geographically distant government in Addis Ababa appears to place little importance on the threat to these unique Omo Valley cultures, and the days of their existence as intact cultures are numbered. […]

Outsiders are regarded as a source of money, AK47s are everywhere and people are aggressive in their pursuit of cash for photographs. It’s sad really, for the people of the region have a limited idea of what money can buy but already have a taste for it. As money acquires more value in their society, it will eat away all that makes their society unique.

via (Neatorama)

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Saturday that $500 million in federal stimulus money would go to American Indian tribes across the nation for schools, housing, infrastructure improvements and job programs on reservations.

Mr. Salazar made the announcement at the United Tribes Technical College here.

He was in North Dakota to visit several places, including an energy center on the Fort Berthold Reservation and the Great Plains Synfuels plant to look at its carbon capture project.

He also planned to visit North Dakota communities that were flooded this spring.

lenxo:

With millions of dollars flowing into the Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino near Coarsegold each month, the Indians of the Picayune Rancheria have tapped into a source of wealth they hope will end decades of poverty.

But not everyone gets to share the bounty.

Over the last several years, the tribe has expelled about half its members, stripping them of their Native American heritage, former members say.

This makes me sick.  The old ways are definitely dying.

The red road is a humble one.

Tribe vows to fight mine with axes and arrows | Intercontinental Cry

“One of India’s most isolated tribes, the Dongria Kondh, is preparing to stop British FTSE 100 company Vedanta from mining aluminium ore on their sacred mountain, after police and hired thugs forced protesters to dismantle a barricade over the weekend,” reports Survival International.

“About 150 people had blocked the road in Orissa state on Wednesday [October 8] after hearing that Vedanta intended to start survey work for a planned aluminium mine which would destroy an ecologically vital hill, and the Dongria Kondh’s most sacred site. Vedanta employees visited the blockade repeatedly, threatening the protestors. On Friday the villagers gave in and took down the barricade, but about 100 are still at the side of the road, blocking traffic when Vedanta vehicles approach,” Survival continues.

And today, 30 years later, it sometimes seems we treasure our victimhood. Through guilt and public embarrassment, we reason, pressure is kept on our federal trustee to do more for our people. In that sense, victimhood is working for us. But we must ask ourselves: what is victimhood doing to us?

Victimhood is a prison from which we must free ourselves if we mean for our children to go forward into a better future. The generally pathetic conditions in reservation communities cannot be simply shed or denied. Those conditions are real, and it’s going to take a persistent effort and a long time to remedy them. We must understand that our problems cannot be solved by anyone but ourselves, our tribal communities and leaders. And we must begin now. There is not much more time, and resources will dwindle when we are seen as hopeless.

We must first reject the notion that poverty and suffering on Indian reservations is inevitable for our people and our children - or that it is part of being a real Indian. There are Indians who say that an Indian person who makes a decent salary and enjoys material goods is not a real Indian; that the real Indians live in poverty on the reservations; that being poor is the price of being real Indian. But the notion that it is somehow noble to forego financial security, material goods, modern conveniences, and self care for the sake of some strange fantasy of Indianness is folly. From the beginning, our tribes were formed as survival units to collectively deal with want and suffering, not to perpetuate it.

But the inevitability of our plight and the nobility of our sacrifice are being instilled in the minds of many of our young people when we keep reliving it in our writings and our classrooms, in Indian studies courses in colleges and universities, especially.

The history of injustice and inhumanity to the tribes must be taught, for history not learned is history to be repeated. But the history must be taught with accuracy and dispassion, as history and not as indoctrination to give Native youth a sense of resentment or embitterment, and the white students a sense of guilt. And journalists have a responsibility as well to relate history with accuracy and truth.