Assignment 17

Assignment 17
Tribal people across the world have been affected by encroaching industrial civilizations throughout the ages. It has happened in the past and it is still taking place today. The Native Americans struggled with the white expansion across the United States and were nearly exterminated due to violence, disease, harsh conditions, and famine. While the Bushmen, also known as the San in South Africa continue to strive for the rights to stay in their homelands and keep their way of life. They are thought to be one of the longest surviving hunter-gatherer societies to have ever existed. These days they are in danger of completely losing their culture due to corrupt governments, overhunting, and loss of their ancestral lands.

Genocide and European diseases are a few of the reasons the population of San number only 85,000 today. Living in remote regions of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, they have made a life where few others could survive. Nearly 150 years after the Dutch arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, thousands of Bushmen (San) were shot and killed and many more were forced to work for their captors as virtual slaves. The same happened to the Native Americans in a lot of situations. By 1840 all of the eastern tribes had been exterminated or had moved west. From 1860 to 1890 the Native Americans fought diligently to keep their lands in the Great Plains and their culture, but many were hunted down and killed in the process. Innocent women and children were slaughtered in several acts of genocide like Wounded Knee Creek. Similar to the Native Americans, the San were thought of as inferior by the whites. Europeans deemed the Bushmen untamable and killed them off in large numbers because they thought they were a threat to livestock. Native Americans were killed off because they resisted conforming and sometimes they resisted violently.

Acculturation is massive, disruptive change that is forced upon a society by contact with a more powerful, “advanced” society. The San have been affected by acculturation in similar ways the Native Americans were in the 1800s. Native Americans like the Lakota Sioux were encroached upon by whites in search of land and gold and fought to keep their lands and freedoms. However, the San are more pacifists and were moved off ancestral lands to provide settlers with land and in some circumstances; they are being moved from their lands for companies and governments in search of diamond prospecting. These two groups are widely different, but they have been persecuted for similar reasons, ultimately, the profit of the advanced more powerful society. It is interesting to note that both tribal units, the Lakota Sioux and the San, were sought to move because the advanced society thought it had rights to minerals (gold or diamonds) on the others’ ancestral land.

The Sioux responded to acculturation through a variety of means, mainly violent resistance at first, but some groups eventually assimilated into the dominant culture. Another form of resistance for the Native Americans was one of religious revitalization through the Ghost Dance. Through the Ghost Dance, they were creating a sense of hope in a desperate situation. They responded to the abrupt changes by creating a new set of religious beliefs to help them cope with the pressures. Interestingly, Bushmen tribes participate in a comparable dance called the Giraffe Dance which causes them to drift into an altered state where they can get visions. In the Giraffe Dance, an older man or shaman leads it and while performing the dance, one can communicate with dead or absent relatives. The Lakota Sioux’s Ghost Dance had similar components and they would dance and receive visions, believed they could cure the sick, and could communicate with the dead.

Both Native American tribes in the 1800s and the Bushmen have depended on a hunter-gatherer existence. For the Native Americans, that existence was nearly impossible to continue after all the buffalo and game had been extinguished. Not to mention that when most of them had been moved to reservations, they were disarmed and were no longer allowed to hunt what game they could find. In most circumstances, they were forced to give up their entire culture in order to learn and live as the white’s did. They were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and live in a permanent home, and they had to give up their Indian garments for traditional clothing and they were taught English and Christianity. Fewer than 10,000 Bushmen live in the traditional hunter-gatherer way dressed in loin cloths and hunting with bows and arrows on foot.

The largest groups of 47,500 Bushmen live in Botswana. Due to farmers fencing much of the land and over hunting by non natives, there is no more game to hunt and most make a living as ranch hands. However, some have managed to remain on their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The government initially decided they could remain there as long as they used traditional hunting methods and had no guns or horses. Despite this agreement, they were later encouraged to leave the reserve lured on promises of schools, clinics, fresh water, and a resettlement bonus of five cows or fifteen goats each. Removals from the communities started in 1997 and most have relocated outside the park in exchange for deeds to the lands appropriated for them and were given goats and cattle. About 1,645 individuals from the Gana and Gwi Bushmen tribes remain inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and continue their lives even though the government destructed the Bushmen’s water pump in the park. Botswana’s government insists their intentions are to preserve the integrity of the Game Reserve and to integrate the San into the country’s social and economic life.

The major question of dispute remains whether the government is truly trying to preserve the park’s integrity or whether they are clearing the way for diamond-prospecting companies. Looking back at the Native Americans, it is all too clear that history repeats itself. United States government officials coerced the Sioux for their lands in order to mine gold, even after they had written it in the treaty of 1868 that it should be forever Indian Territory. Through intimidation and threats, they were able to swindle the Sioux into giving up their lands. However, despite threats of legal action from diamond prospecting companies, Survival International, an advocate for tribal people’s rights, said “Survival has been threatened many times by companies and governments which put profits before tribal people’s rights. However, we have not the slightest intention of betraying the responsibility which, for many years, so many Gana and Gwi Bushmen have asked us to shoulder.” It is nice to see that even though these tribes are struggling, they have someone to help them fight for their rights. Survival also accuses the Botswana government of torture, beatings, and arrests for supposedly overhunting or hunting without a license. Harassment from the government led to the destruction of the Bushmens’ water pump and the draining of their existing water supplies in the desert and banning of hunting and gathering. Botswana’s government officials, in their defense, claimed the San had been engaging in income-generating projects which would enable them to live self-reliant sustainable livelihoods and therefore would no longer need to rely on government handouts. Possibly through interventions such as Survival International, the San people will be able to continue inhabiting their native lands with the culture of their ancestors. It is sad to think it has not been that long ago that the Native Americans were treated so poorly and now that kind of persecution is still taking place.