Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.
--Tecumseh of the Shawnee 1813
In the late 1700s an Indian chief named Tecumseh lived along the East Coast of the North American continent. In his lifetime he witnessed the defeat and disappearance of numerous Indian tribes as the region was deforested and settled by European descendants.
Today, as unspoiled rainforest regions are deforested and settled by outsiders, primitive Indian tribes again are being extinguished. History is repeating itself.
Tecumseh
Tecumseh belonged to a tribe called the Shawnee. In its formative years, the United States forced the Shawnee and many other eastern Indian tribes to move to land west of the Mississippi River.
Tecumseh, however, would not move west. His father and brother had been killed by American troops and he was determined to resist the American conquest of his tribe's former home.
Tecumseh instead traveled to regions inhabited by other tribes. He urged these tribes to form an alliance to stop the expansion of the United States. Tecumseh's travels were so extensive that it is believed he contacted every Indian tribe between the Atlantic coast and the Rocky Mountains.
By the early 1800s, Tecumseh had assembled a following of about 800 warriors from the tribes he had contacted. His forces, however, were ill-equipped to fight the U.S. Army. In 1811, at the Battle of Tippecanoe they were defeated.
Despite this defeat, Tecumseh and what remained of his followers continued to resist the Americans. In the War of 1812, they joined the British to fight against the United States. In this conflict, at the Battle of Thames River, Tecumseh was killed.
Because of his effort to build an Indian confederacy and protect his homeland, Tecumseh is regarded today as one of the greatest Indians who ever lived.
Andrew Jackson
During the time of Tecumseh, Andrew Jackson, who would later be elected the 7th president of the United States, became famous for fighting against the Indians.
As a young man, Jackson had an illustrious military career, serving as a major general in both the Tennessee militia and the United States Army. During this time, Jackson helped kill thousands of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
Years later, as President of the United States, Jackson continued his crusade against the Indians. In his first address to Congress, Jackson spoke about his plans for the Indians. His remarks underscore the connection between native cultures, natural resources, and colonial powers.
Our ancestors found them (the Indians) the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force, they have been made to retire from river to river, and from mountain to mountain; until some of the tribes have become extinct, and others have left but remnants....Surrounded by the Whites, with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage, doom him to weakness and decay; the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware, is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek....I suggest the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State or Territory, now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes, as long as they shall occupy it.
To Jackson, relocating the Indians west of the Mississippi River must have seemed the best solution to the problems facing his young nation. In June of 1834, during Jackson's second term as president, Congress concurred and passed An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes and to Preserve Peace on the Frontiers.
This Act decreed that all land west of the Mississippi River was to be Indian Country except the existing states and territories of Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. This solution, however, did little to quench the United States' thirst for resources.
Thirsting for Resources
Within the next 80 years, the United States expanded westward into 48 states. Within these states burgeoning agricultural and timber industries deforested some 400 million acres of Indian land--an area twice the size of Texas.
As this annexation and development of Indian land occurred, the rights of native Americans were systematically taken away: the U.S. Army forced Indians onto reservations; the U.S. Supreme Court declared that an American Indian did not have the right to vote; and the U.S. Congress passed laws that sold Indian land to U.S. homesteaders. (In fact, the sale of Indian land raised enough money to pay off the national debt.)
Also during this time, successive westward waves of American and European immigrants, the diseases they brought, and the United States Army decimated the population of Native Americans to less than one-third its pre-colonial number.
Repeating History
The price Native Americans paid for the progress of the United States is well known. Less well known, however, is that today Indian tribes in tropical rainforests are besieged by similar colonial powers.
Now, as in the formative years of the United States, some of these Indians are fighting to preserve their ancient cultures and their primeval forests.
What follows is an examination of four such tribes, their beliefs, and their battles to resist incursions on their land.
The Penan Battle International Logging Companies
The Penan Indians are one of the world's last nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers. They live on the island of Borneo in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The largest of 14 Malaysian states, Sarawak has about 34,200 square miles of rainforest, all of which is state-owned.
The Penan Way of Life
The Penan lead a nomadic life that does not damage the environment. They do not clear land for farms; all that the tribe needs is produced naturally by the rainforest, as it has been for centuries.
The Penan are a primitive people. Visually striking, they still dress in loincloths, hunt with blow-pipes, and decorate themselves with huge, circular earrings that stretch their earlobes to their shoulders.
The Penan have a superstitious respect for their environment. They believe that their rainforest is full of spirits. They refuse to cut down large trees or take more than they need from the forest for fear of angering these spirits.
The Penan also have beliefs that keep them nomadic. Certain bird calls and other animal signs are considered omens to move from place to place. Whenever a member of the tribe dies, the entire village relocates to another part of the rainforest. These beliefs keep the tribe from over-harvesting the forest in any one area.
To outsiders, Penan superstitions are not meaningful. But for the Penan, their beliefs are what protect their environment.
Changing Times
Several decades ago, the modern world began to undermine the nomadic and spiritual ways of the Penan.
Christian missionaries were the first to influence the tribe. Less than fifty years ago, these missionaries urged the Penan to cut down large trees, build permanent houses, and remain settled despite the misgivings of tribal elders.
In the 1970s the Malaysian government also tried to "civilize" the tribe by sending Penan children to boarding schools. Attending these schools, however, separated the children from their parents and the lessons and traditions of their culture.
Today, the last of the Penan forest culture is threatened by big business and deforestation. In the past two decades, international lumber companies have created a huge logging industry in Sarawak. This industry is so big that it now accounts for almost half of Sarawak's total state revenues and about half the exports of tropical logs worldwide.
As a result, deforestation rates in Sarawak are among the highest in the world. In 1991, the logging rate for this region was estimated at 850,000 to 1,000,000 acres a year--almost two acres a minute.
This logging of Sarawak is destroying the rainforest where the Penan live. Today, only a fraction of the tribe can still survive by hunting and gathering in the rainforest. Most Penan have had to switch to subsistence farming, abandoning their traditional culture.
Tribal Resistance
The Penan have tried to fight Sarawak's timber industry, but with limited success. In 1987 the tribe barricaded logging roads with tree branches. When these efforts failed to stop the loggers, the Penan used themselves as human barricades to protect their rainforests.
The Sarawak police then arrested a number of the Penan. The road blocks, however, did not stop.
Soon, the attention of the Western news media was captured as were the hearts of some Western leaders. In a February 1990 speech, England's Prince Charles condemned Malaysia's treatment of the Penan, saying, "The Penan in Sarawak are hassled and even imprisoned for defending their own tribal lands. Even now, that dreadful pattern of collective genocide continues."
Sympathetic Europeans began to boycott products made with Malaysian timber. To help with these boycotts, the Austrian government passed a law requiring tropical wood products labeled "made of tropical wood."
Boycotts in Europe had little impact, however, because almost half of Sarawak's lumber is exported to Japan. After an investigative trip to both Sarawak and Japan in 1991, the New Yorker reporter Stan Sesser wrote, "The voracious Japanese appetite for tropical hardwood has turned Sarawak into something resembling a Japanese plantation."
Sesser described the effects of this deforestation on the few remaining Penan who refuse to abandon their hunting culture, "The hunters had walked for miles and had been without food for the entire day, but when I glanced at their faces I saw more than hunger. A pall hung over them--the look of men who could no longer provide for their families."
Despite the work of Sesser and the efforts of European boycotters, it is unlikely that the Penan culture will survive much longer. The tropical timber industry's own trade association, called the International Tropical Timber Organization, estimates that Sarawak's remaining undisturbed forests will be logged out by 2001. Once this happens, the last of the Penan hunting and gathering culture will be gone.
The Yanomami and the Gold Rush of the 1980s
Another rainforest Indian tribe facing development pressures is the Yanomami of Brazil. The Yanomami, however, are not only experiencing a cultural change, they are facing extinction.
The Yanomami
Like the Penan, the Yanomami are a primitive tribe of hunter-gatherers. They wear little clothing, preferring instead to adorn themselves with feathers, flowers, and skin dyes.
The Yanomami share with other Indian tribes a remote 60,000-square-mile rainforest habitat along the Venezuelan and Brazilian border in the Parima Mountains. It is estimated that the Yanomami number about 25,000 people, but the size of their tribe is decreasing rapidly.
Yanomami Society
The Yanomami tribe consists of roughly 200 separate villages, each of which relocates every few years to allow the surrounding forest to regenerate. Each village consists of several large, round, thatched huts within which several Yanomami families live communally.
Anthropologists consider the Yanomami tribe to be one of the world's most violent cultures. Disagreements often are settled by fights to the death.
Yanomami conflicts differ, however, from violence in the developed world. A recent study by Napoleon Chagnon, an anthropologist from the University of California at Santa Barbara, reveals that the Yanomami are polygamous and fight, not for possessions, land, or resources, but for wives.
Disease Invades the Yanomami Territory
Despite the fierceness of the Yanomami, outsiders have not been deterred from invading the territory of these Indians. When gold was discovered on Yanomami land in the 1980s, tens of thousands of prospectors and panhandlers moved in.
These miners far outnumber the Yanomami. According to Science magazine, "As many as 70,000 gold prospectors have invaded an area in northern Brazil traditionally occupied by 7,500 Yanomami. More miners, poor but dreaming of gold, come every day."
Contracting diseases from these prospectors is the greatest threat to the Yanomami. Living in virtual isolation until the 1980s, the tribe has developed little natural immunity against many viruses. Simple infections, even colds, can kill these Indians.
Previous contact with outsiders has been limited to the area's few missionaries. According to Charles Brewer-Carias, a naturalist working to establish a Yanomami reserve in Venezuela, even these missionaries have given fatal diseases to the Yanomami.
Carias wants to establish a preserve for the Yanomami that is off-limits not only to merchants, prospectors, and tourists, but also to missionaries. Carias realizes that this is considered a radical idea in a predominantly Roman-Catholic country like Venezuela, but he observes, "Our religion has no place in their lives. The Yanomami have nothing to be saved from but ourselves."
Government Action
Environmental and indigenous rights organizations have demanded that Brazil protect the Yanomami. However, the Brazilian government also is interested in mining Yanomami lands, not only for gold but also for diamonds, titanium, tin, and uranium.
The rainforests along Brazil's northern border, which include the Yanomami lands, are thought to contain enough mineral resources to pay off almost all of Brazil's $120 billion foreign debt.
To protect these resources, Brazil's military is establishing outposts in the region. The official plan is called Calha Norte and eventually will deforest much of the area.
Calha Norte is, in effect, a security zone 4,000 miles long and 93 miles wide between Brazil and its neighbors: Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and the three Guianas. The plan's ultimate goal is to establish a self-sufficient region connected with roads, communications, and power systems.
The first part of the plan was started in 1986 with the building of air fields in the jungle. Unfortunately for the Yanomami, these airfields only brought in more miners.
Within four years after the completion of these airfields, 15 percent of the Brazilian Yanomami had died from outside diseases. In 1991 Science magazine reported the annual Yanomami death rate to be 13 percent and the fertility rate near zero. Some Yanomami villages are suffering a 90-percent sickness rate.
If the Yanomami are to be saved, the Brazilian government needs to quickly preserve a territory for the tribe and Carias's Venezuelan plan must be implemented soon. According to the American Anthropological Association, the Yanomami, without protection, will be extinct within the next decade.
Environmental Organizations on the War-Path
It appears that the Penan and the Yanomami have little chance for survival. But there are some tribes, like the Kuna of Panama and the Kayapo of Brazil, whose rainforest and sustainable way of life are being protected with the help of environmental organizations.
These environmental organizations include, among many others, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, Cultural Survival, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Although generally concerned with environmental issues, these organizations realize that by protecting indigenous cultures, they also are preserving the earth's natural resources.
The Kayapo Stop the World's Largest Dam Project
For many centuries an Indian tribe called the Kayapo has fought to defend its rainforest homeland along the Xingu tributary of the Amazon River. In the 17th through 19th centuries this tribe battled Portuguese slave traders and gold prospectors in the rainforest.
In the 20th century, however, the Kayapo have existed peacefully with the outside world. But, this was before the outside world threatened to completely destroy their rainforest homeland.
The Kayapo Indians
The Kayapo are a tribe of about 3,000 people. They live in 13 known villages scattered throughout hundreds of miles of Brazilian rainforest, an area they share with a number of other Indian tribes.
The Kayapo are a statuesque people, standing over 6 feet tall. Bands of beads adorn their necks and arms, and both men and women wear large feathered earrings. On ceremonial occasions these Indians dress in feathered headdresses and stretch their lower lips outward over large wooden disks.
Kayapo Knowledge of the Rainforest
The Kayapo are not a nomadic people, however, they do practice a unique "nomadic agriculture." Their farms are only a few feet wide and meander for miles along trails in the rainforest.
This forest-agriculture is, in effect, the opposite of Western agricultural practices; there is no clearing of fields or environmental damage, just a few plants sown every few feet along either side of a rainforest trail.
The Kayapo also possess a unique knowledge of rainforest plants. This knowledge has been studied by American ethnobiologist Darrell Posey in the Kayapo village of Gorotire for over twelve years.
Posey's work reveals that the Kayapo, in addition to knowing what is edible and what is poisonous, use some plants as natural insecticides and others as natural herbicides. A number of plants have medicinal purposes. Some even prevent pregnancy.
Government Policy
As is the case with the Yanomami, the Kayapo way of life is not valued by Brazil. It is government policy to assimilate all Indians into the country's larger society.
Brazil, however, has designated a reserve for the Kayapo. But its boundaries are not well marked nor permanent.
Electronorte
Recently, the Brazilian power company, Electronorte, tried to alter the boundaries of the Kayapo reservation to build a series of hydroelectric dams. If completed these dams would have submerged enormous areas of rainforest, much of which belongs to the Kayapo and other Indian tribes.
The Electronorte project was to be Called the Xingu River Complex and was to be financed by the World Bank. In all, the project would have included 47 dams along the Xingu River and would have created the world's largest man-made body of water.
Two of the dams would have required the relocation of several Kayapo villages. Five of the dams would have created a reservoir covering 6,800 square miles of rainforest--an area almost as big as New Jersey.
No one knows exactly how much flooding would have resulted had the entire project been completed. But to the Kayapo, no amount of electricity was worth the loss of their homeland.
The Kayapo Fight Back with Modern Technology
One of the Kayapo chiefs, Paulinho Paiakan, decided to fight the project.
For many years Paiakan had served the Kayapo as a liaison to the outside world. Because of this experience, Paiakan was acquainted with a number of environmental and indigenous-rights organizations and familiar with modern-day technology.
Paiakan convinced several other Kayapo chiefs that, with the help of these outside groups and the use of modern technology, they could save their rainforest by exposing Electronorte's plan as an environmental disaster.
The first thing Paiakan needed to do was educate and unite his tribe. He and the other chiefs did this by touring and filming with camcorders a recently built dam on the Tocantins River. This dam's reservoir had submerged some 800 square miles of rainforest--the homelands of the Parakanan and Gavioes Indians.
The chiefs then transferred their films onto video tapes. Using gasoline-powered generators, VCRs, and portable TVs (which the Kayapo call the Big Ghost), the chiefs showed the video tapes in the scattered Kayapo villages.
The Kayapo understood. They discussed the situation and agreed that the best way to expose the Electronorte project was to protest the largest proposed dam near the town of Altamira.
With telephones and modern-day fax machines, they notified the world press and environmental groups of their plans.
Then, in February 1989, 500 Kayapo converged on Altamira in full ceremonial dress.
With their war-clubs in hand, the 500 Kayapo emerged from the forest and surrounded a meeting of Electronorte officials. Before the watchful eyes of the media, the tribe staged a dramatic but peaceful demonstration. They danced tribal dances, performed ancient rituals, and made speeches denouncing Electronorte's flooding of rainforests. The Kayapo protest received worldwide media coverage.
A Trip to Washington
The National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund also focused attention on Electronorte's proposed Xingu River Complex. These environmental organizations brought Chief Paiakan and another Kayapo leader, Chief Kube-i, to Washington D.C. to lobby World Bank officials not to fund the project.
The Kayapo chiefs, accompanied by their ethnobiologist friend Darrell Posey, also met with members of the U.S. Congress and officials from the U.S. state and treasury departments.
Under pressure from the international environmental community, the World Bank withheld the project's initial $500 million funding. Without funding, the project was canceled. The Xingu River Complex and the rainforest destruction it would have caused had received too much attention.
Pressure to develop the Amazon, however, remains. Electronorte still has plans to build 11 other dams in the region, which, if completed, will submerge 3,800 square miles of rainforest.
The Kuna Save Their Reserve From Slash and Burn
Large-scale development projects and international demand for natural resources are not the only threats to the rainforest and its Indian inhabitants. Recently, the Kuna, a tribe of Panamanian Indians, found their reservation threatened by scores of small-scale farmers.
For the most part, these small-scale farmers are the result of exploding urban populations. In search of a better life, they move into rainforests along jungle roads built by their governments or by logging companies. Once in the jungle, they settle on land they do not own, clearing small plots in order to grow crops or raise cattle.
The environmental damage that each individual farmer does is relatively small, but cumulatively the damage of many such farmers is tremendous.
The Kuna Tribe
The Kuna Indians of Panama are among the world's shortest people; most are no taller than 5 feet. The Kuna number about 30,000 and are the largest Indian tribe in the American tropics. Typical dress for the Kuna includes beads, gold jewelry, and hand-made clothes that are brightly colored.
Kuna Isolation
The Kuna possess an 1,800-square-mile rainforest reservation between Panama's Caribbean coast and the San Blas Mountains to the southwest. Most Kuna live on small coral islands located just off the coast but travel daily by canoe to their mainland reservation for farming, hunting, and gathering.
For the Kuna, there is no reason to store produce or interact with the outside world. Their jungle and coastal area provide food and supplies year-round. Their reservation is completely isolated. No roads lead to it. The only access is by boat.
An Army of Small-scale Farmers
The Kuna have legal title to their reservation. Panamanian law forbids any non-Kuna from owning land or squatting in the tribe's territory. But because Panamanian police cannot patrol the entire rainforest, these laws are not enforced.
Consequently, the Kuna became concerned when a feeder road from the Pan-American Highway, called the El Llano-Carti road, was being built through the jungle toward their isolated reserve. Already, small-scale farmers were burning the rainforest and establishing farms illegally along the completed portions of the El Llano-Carti road. It was only a matter of time until the road and the migrant farmers reached the Kuna reservation.
A Defensive Strategy
The Kuna reviewed the situation with forestry experts from the Tropical Agronomic Center for Research and Training in Costa Rica. All agreed that the building of the El Llano-Carti road could not be stopped. The Kuna's only defense was to develop their land before the squatters arrived.
So, with technical and financial assistance from various international organizations, including the Intra-American Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund-U.S., the tribe created a 230-square-mile botanical park on the edge of their reserve.
The Kuna strategically situated the park at the very point where the new road would intersect their land. The park's perimeter is clearly marked and constantly patrolled by Kuna rangers. No one gets in or out without Kuna permission.
As part of the park, the Kuna built housing for tourists and scientists. Revenues from these facilities pay the park's expenses. The park is now constantly occupied. In the vastness of the jungle, occupying land is often what determines legal ownership.
As another protection, the Kuna want Panama and the United Nations to declare their park a "biosphere reserve."
A biosphere reserve is an area of land voluntarily set aside by a country and monitored for environmental protection by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). To date, UNESCO monitors 300 biosphere reserves in 76 different countries, protecting 600,000 square miles of wildlife habitat.
The Kuna believe that if their park becomes a biosphere reserve it will be better protected; any incursions on their land would then receive international attention. But even without this designation, the Kuna's park has protected their rainforest from the most pervasive deforestor, the slash-and-burn farmer.
Remaining Tribes
The Kuna, Yanomami, Kayapo, and Penan represent only a fraction of the world's remaining rainforest Indians. Their struggles, however, are representative of a larger effort worldwide to preserve Indian cultures and the environment.
The plight of these four tribes is also a modern-day version of the battles that North American Indians fought and lost a century ago on the frontiers of North America.
The settlement and development of Indian lands by foreign cultures is not just a phenomenon of the past. In this century, incursions into the Amazon region alone have resulted in the loss of over 80 tribes, and many of the surviving tribes have dwindled to fewer than 1,000 people. Unless something is done, the world's remaining forest cultures will disappear in our lifetime.
