This is an excerpt from a news article originally published on Mongabay.
Featured image: Sinjajevina, by JYB Devot, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Montenegro’s military — and maybe NATO — want the Sinjajevina Highlands for maneuvers; traditional herding communities want these biodiverse alpine pasturelands conserved.
A 2019 decree by the government of Montenegro sets forth the country’s intention to set up a military training ground in the highland grasslands of Sinjajevina in the northern part of the country.
But the pastures of Sinjajevina have supported herders for centuries, and scientists say that this sustainable use is responsible in part for the wide array of life that the mountain supports; activists say an incursion by the military would destroy livelihoods, biodiversity and vital ecosystem services.
A new coalition now governs Montenegro, one that has promised to reevaluate the military’s use of Sinjajevina.
But with the country’s politics and position in Europe in flux, the movement against the military is pushing for formal designation of a park that would permanently protect the region’s herders and the environment.
Mileva “Gara” Jovanović’s family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest on Europe’s Balkan Peninsula, and they’ve provided her family not only with milk, cheese, and meat, but with an enduring livelihood and the means to send five of her six children to university.
“It gives us life,”
said Gara, an elected spokesperson for the eight self-described tribes who share the summer pasture. But, Gara says, this alpine pasture — “the Mountain,” she calls it — is under serious threat, and with it the tribes’ way of life. Two years ago, Montenegro’s military moved ahead with plans to develop a training ground where soldiers would carry out maneuvers and artillery practice in these grasslands. No stranger to the daunting challenges of life as an alpine herder, Gara said that when she first heard of the military’s plans, it brought her to tears.
“It’s going to destroy the Mountain because it’s impossible to have both the military polygon there and cattle,”
she told Mongabay.
Anthropologists who have studied the region say that pastoralists have been bringing their herds to the Sinjajevina grasslands for around 3,000 years.
Now, Gara fears that the military’s use of the land will utterly disrupt the current natural balance that 250 local families have carefully cultivated. The tribes are all part of the same ethnic group, and they meet periodically to discuss the management of the pasturelands. Thanks to their nurturing efforts, verdant grasses carpet the Mountain each spring that feed not only their cattle, sheep and horses. The long-sustained partnership between natural and human communities also engenders a unique and richly specied landscape, while snowmelt flowing down from Sinjajevina supplies Montenegro with water and supports its human population.
“Maintaining a diversity of uses and practices up there is helping conserve some very valuable stuff,”
Pablo Domínguez, an environmental anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Toulouse, told Mongabay.
The battle over Sinjajevina’s future — whether it remains a rare example of nature coexisting alongside humanity, or becomes a proving ground for kitted-out troops and heavy artillery — has embroiled not just Gara, the eight tribes, and the government of a small Balkans nation; it may also figure significantly into the global geopolitics of NATO and the European Union.
To many, including Gara, the two paths are incompatible.
That stance led to a 51-day protest in late 2020. Around 150 farmers and activists camped on the Mountain in the fall, blocking the military’s deployment with little more than their presence and sheer determination. For now, at least, they’ve succeeded, coinciding with a seismic, generational political shift in Montenegro. Today, the challenge that preservation proponents like Gara and Domínguez face is to parlay this ephemeral triumph into permanent protections for Sinjajevina and its people.
A highland and homeland of surprising diversity
The Sinjajevina grasslands cover a rocky, rolling plain in northern Montenegro of more than 450 square kilometers (147 square miles), according to the government, amid the craggy dolomitic peaks and limestone karsts of the Dinaric Alps. Average elevations of 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) mean that impassable snows blanket the high pastures for five or six months each year. During that time, herders vacate their katuns — small, seasonal alpine outposts — until the warmth of late spring returns.
At first glance, Sinjajevina appears boundless and quiet — even barren. In the military’s view, “It is empty,” said Petar Glomazić, a documentary filmmaker. Since 2019, Glomazić has co-led a coalition of international and local human rights groups, environmental NGOs and the European Union’s Green Party in a push to stop Montenegro’s military from commandeering the heart of Sinjajevina.
Those initial impressions of the region’s emptiness can be deceiving. Sinjajevina’s pastures are capable of fattening 10,000 cattle and 70,000 sheep each summer, according to estimates by agricultural scientists. But through the ages, these “semi-natural” grasslands — a designation given because the ecosystem’s persistence depends in part on human activities — have remained an oasis of ecological stability.
“That way of life, that very sustainable way of life, has been there for centuries,”
Glomazić said.
Beyond Sinjajevina, in the lands below, the people and the environment alike have been hammered by centuries of human-induced tumult in a politically turbulent region. The Balkans sit at the nexus of trade routes connecting Europe and Asia and along the borders between now-defunct empires and religious divisions.
That location has led to repeated conflicts amid shuffled power structures over many centuries.
Gara’s tribe, the Bjelopavlići, trace their legal claim to Sinjajevina back to the 1880s. After a war with the Ottoman Empire, King Nikola I gave the Bjelopavlići the legal right to graze their herds there in recognition of their efforts and sacrifice in holding off the Turks.
Gara and her six children descend from that line of pastoralists who have shepherded their flocks to the Mountain, first by foot, a journey that took three to four days, and now with trucks. They’ve endured two world wars, the formation and disintegration of nation-states, the rising and falling tide of Communism, and a vicious ethnic conflict that brutalized the Balkan Peninsula in the 1990s.
For their part, Gara’s children remain committed to preserving the way of life that their mother and others have kept alive, said her daughter, Persida Jovanović.
The eight tribes feel certain that stripping human influence from the grasslands would trigger an immediate change in the landscape, Gara said — one that could bankrupt the ecosystem and profoundly disrupt the balance that exists there today.
“Our ancestors, and us today, have unwritten laws how to keep the Mountain clean, especially the spring water,”
Gara said. This code governs how early in the season people can bring their livestock to the high pastures, the number of animals allowed, where they can drink to keep waters free of pollution, and other considerations to encourage the renewed production of grasses year after year.
These handed-down strategies have in turn helped preserve wild animal and plant life.
“It is really a beautiful example of symbiosis of humans and nature. That nature would be different without the humans,” Glomazić said, “and vice versa.”
Vanishing global grasslands
Maintaining this time-honored balance requires a delicate dance between traditional pastoral livelihoods and nature — a dance that’s dying out around the world, especially on grasslands as humanity converts them for industrial agribusiness and other modern uses.
In 2020, a team of researchers in Japan, led by Taiki Inoue of the University of Tsukuba in Nagano, looked at plant communities in the Sugadaira Highland grasslands. Japan’s Sugadaira, like Sinjajevina, has hosted herders for thousands of years. More recently, pastoralists have abandoned parts of these Asian grasslands, as they find it harder to make a living herding in today’s world.
The researchers compared the number of plant species living in the grasslands with those living in the forests that sprung up in the herders’ absence and in new grasslands created after loggers cleared some of those forests. They found that the old grasslands — at least 160, and in some cases thousands, of years old — had the widest plant variety by far. Younger grasslands, stemming from deforestation over the past 52 to 70 years, had fewer plant species, but still more than the forest itself.
The authors note that, globally, grasslands are diminishing.
About 13% of Japan’s land area was covered by grassland in the early 20th century, a figure that dropped to 1% by the early 2000s. Likewise, in recent decades, Brazil lost half of its vast Cerrado savanna biome, the largest grasslands now left on Earth. Given these precipitous declines, the authors suggest that conservation efforts should target the oldest “hotspot grasslands” where biodiversity is greatest — places like Sinjajevina.
Part of what makes the hotspots “hot” stems from their susceptibility to takeover by powerful institutions such as modern governments or corporations, which in turn derives from how grasslands are typically managed by traditional communities, Domínguez said. Grasslands are often communally shared, rather than being privately owned by a single individual, family or other legally deeded entity.
Domínguez noted that it doesn’t make much sense to divide up a grass-covered landscape among herders for individual exploitation. In expansive range systems like Sinjajevina, livestock need vast spaces so they do not overexploit the grasses available on a single plot. Sometimes, these commonly managed pastoral areas are even pejoratively referred to as “badlands.” He said this misnomer is due to the incorrect assumption that land is only good when it can be exploited intensively. In fact, he added, such so-called badlands often sustain many times more natural and cultural values than does intensive farming.
In contrast with conventional modern agriculture, the herders of Sinjajevina share the sprawling pastures, across which they move their animals from place to place, adhering to a strict code of self-imposed regulations to avoid overtaxing any one location. As a result, the pastures can offer people sustainable livelihoods almost indefinitely. Gara’s family is living proof that this approach to caring for the commons works, Domínguez said.
But the small population — 250 families in the case of Sinjajevina — leaves these herders in a position where they can “hardly oppose a central state or NATO in their land grabbing,” he said.
Humans and nature in concert
Though Sinjajevina has thrived in balance for centuries, it turns out that the “beautiful” symbiosis” found there — so rare, and becoming more so in the world’s grasslands, rainforests, and other landscapes — isn’t well understood by scientists. Ecologist Vladimir Pešić said that the dearth of data on Sinjajevina makes it “very difficult to talk [about] from a scientific point of view” what would happen if the military turns part of it into a training ground.
“We can only speculate,” said Pešić, a professor at the University of Montenegro. But, he added, “For sure there will be an impact on the Tara River canyon ecosystem.” Milan Sekulović, the secretary-general for the Montenegrin NGO Save Sinjajevina Association, still walks with his family’s herds to the Mountain every spring. He noted that the military incursion risks ruining “one big ecological resource because we still don’t know what we exactly have.”
In fact, the government’s Agency for Nature and Environmental Protection of Montenegro (EPA) probed the ecology of Sinjajevina before the military had — publicly, at least — shown interest in the Mountain. That research, released in 2018, was an initial step toward protecting the Sinjajevina Highlands as a regional nature park.
The study revealed a striking amalgam of plant and animal species, many found in few other places.
Researchers recorded 1,300 plant species, 56 of which live only on the Balkan Peninsula. The massif boasts dozens of bird and mammal species, as well as a handful of protected amphibian and reptile species, including the karst viper (Vipera ursinii macrops), a small, venomous snake that thrives in mountain grasslands but whose numbers have dwindled along with its favored habitat. The EPA study led to the promise of funding from the European Union to establish a park that would protect both the ecosystem and the herders’ way of life.
Other government documents attest to Sinjajevina’s ecological value. A 2015 report from the Montenegrin Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism notes that Sinjajevina is a bulwark for threatened mammals, of both the wild and domesticated sort, including the Piva sheep that local shepherds developed.
What’s more, scientists say Sinjajevina feeds Montenegro’s other regions. Every spring, alpine rivers swell with melting snow, gushing down from limestone peaks and providing a vital source of clean freshwater for Montenegro’s population. Pešić, the lead editor of a book called The Rivers of Montenegro, explained that the snowfall on the Mountain was a “very important” water source for the Balkan nation.
Zdravko Krivokapić, the country’s new prime minister, recently acknowledged this reliance, noting the urgent need to better understand how altering Sinjajevina will impact not just the immediate environment and the people who live there, but also the broader population of Montenegro.
“We have to be very careful about everything that we are doing,” Krivokapić told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a joint press conference on Dec. 15, 2020. “We have to find the best solution in order to meet the needs of NATO requirements and our [national] plans, and to preserve the essential value, which is, first and foremost, our environment.”
Gara was more forthright in her assessment.
“If they do the military exercises in Sinjajevina, they’re going to pollute our rivers and mountains,” she said. “The waters that come from Sinjajevina — I think they go to half of the country. If those waters are polluted, everything else is polluted.”
References
Inoue, T., Yaida, Y. A., Uehara, Y., Katsuhara, K. R., Kawai, J., Takashima, K., … Kenta, T. (2020). The effects of temporal continuities of grasslands on the diversity and species composition of plants. Ecological Research, 36(1), 24-31. doi:10.1111/1440-1703.12169
Are indigenous people backwards? Do they really need to be ‘rescued’ from their primitive way of life and introduced to this wonder of human civilization? Or is this a racist simplification?
In this piece Chris challenges the notion that civilization is the ultimate way of life — a notion that has been used to justify genocide against indigenous people for a long time.
By Chris Straquez
The Woe-nders of Civilization
Civilization: the pinnacle of human progress and ingenuity, a myriad of machines and buildings transforming landscapes as proof of MANkind superiority.
Do you need water, food, energy? We got it! For a price, a modest price, these are accessible for everyone (restrictions will apply). You know you want to be here with us—and who wouldn’t? Just ignore the trail of blood and corpses that lie behind of it all and you can reap the benefits of the civilized; everything will be fine and dandy.
We, the civilized humans, are being honest here, no exaggeration, just facts, alternative yet still facts: we are so great, even people from the countryside and indigenous reserves dream of living in our super modern skyscrapers, our theme parks, and especially our humongous and incredible malls.
Are you looking for sneakers with heel lights, fake dog vomit, or a hundred different flavors of whatever shit you want to inhale, inject, eat or consume in whatever fashion you feel like… Guess what? We’ve got it!
Are you lost? Do you feel lonely? An impending feeling of being misunderstood drowns your existence? Are you worried about your physical appearance? Does your skin color have a pesky pigmentation? Should I go on or do you know what we are talking about? You do not have to be particularly smart to understand; as the great poet Axl Rose said: “if you got the money, honey, we got your disease.”
Tell your local shaman or whoever prepares those funky herbs to stop using mumbo-jumbo whatchamacallits because civilized humans have the meds backed up by science done scientifically by scientists who do scientific and technological stuff. We can bring this to you, you can be civilized, just like us, and I do hate being repetitive but are we not great, unique, awesome?
Now, stand-up comedy aside (along with credits to the late, great George Carlin), let me ask you: how many times as a city-dweller have you seen or heard advertisements, politicians or even neighbors not only expressing but embodying such ideas? This is a long-standing, well-oiled propaganda machine to makes us constantly think that being civilized is the best of the best and any other lifestyle is a mistake that must and will be rectified right away. Using force if needed, no hesitation whatsoever.
Are Indigenous People Backwards?
Over generations, tribal peoples have developed complex systems to live well, together, on their land. They may be poor in monetary terms but tribal people living on their own lands are rich in other ways. They have good reason to be proud of their communities and their way of life. Such is the case of the Dongria Kondh tribe whose homeland is in the Niyamgiri hill range in Odisha state, India.
Niyamgiri is an area of densely forested hills, deep gorges and cascading streams. To be a Dongria Kondh is to farm the hill’s fertile slopes, harvest their produce, and worship the mountain god Niyam Raja and the hills he presides over, including the 4,000 metres Mountain of the Law, Niyam Dongar.
On 19 March 2003 Vedanta Alumina Limited applied for environmental clearance from the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to construct an alumina refinery project in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
Vedanta Resources is a London-listed, former FTSE 100 mining company founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who remains its Chairman and owns more than 50% of the shares. Had the mine gone ahead, the Dongria would have suffered immeasurable loss; their present good health, self-sufficiency and, identity as a people would have been damaged. The detailed knowledge of their environment would have been destroyed. A large proportion of the benefits would have gone to one man: Anil Agarwal.
For a decade, the 8,000-plus Dongria Kondh lived under the threat of mining by Vedanta Resources, which hoped to extract the estimated $2 billion-worth of bauxite that lies under the surface of the hills. The company planned to create an open-cast mine that would have violated Niyam Dongar, disrupted its rivers and spelt the end of the Dongria Kondh as a distinct people.
All the above in the name of ‘progress and evolution.’ However, whose progress and evolution is seldom directly addressed. I notice it is easy to understand that anything that deviates from this direction tends to be labeled as ‘backwards’ a word we tend to use to disqualify and minimize subjects and matters. One of the meanings of such words implies something ‘towards the direction that is opposite to the one in which you are facing or opposite to the usual direction.’ Do you oppose companies and governments that exploit your land? That is certainly not in the direction we are going so we might as well force our way through.
Another meaning goes like this: ‘returning to older and less effective ways.’ What calls my attention is not returning to older, say, traditional ways, but rather calling it ‘less effective.’ Effective at what? According to who? Looking through the lens of Industrial Civilization means that mountains cannot be exploited fast enough. This is what Civilization has done for most of its existence: perfecting exploitation for the benefit of an elite group of people.
Deviate and We Retaliate
The Dongria Kondh tribe inspired millions when they won a ‘David and Goliath’ battle against mining giant Vedanta Resources. The tribe vowed to save their Niyamgiri Hills and their self-sufficient way of life.
They believe that their right to cultivate Niyamgiri’s slopes has been conferred on them by Niyam Raja, and that they are his royal descendants. They have expert knowledge of their forests and the plants and wildlife they hold. From the forests they gather wild foods such as wild mango, pineapple, jackfruit, and honey. Rare medicinal herbs are also found in abundance, which the Dongria use to treat a range of ailments including arthritis, dysentery, bone fractures, malaria and snake bites.
These people have detailed knowledge of the land they are deeply connected to, like many other indigenous people, such as the Jarawa who have detailed knowledge of plants to eat and use for medicinal properties. However, Jarawa’s neighbors, the Great Andamanese, were brought into the ‘mainstream’ by the British and robbed of their land. They were decimated by disease and are now completely dependent on the government. Alcoholism and diseases such as tuberculosis are rife. These are illnesses that come from a civilized setting not from indigenous ways of life. Go figure!
Are these people “backwards”?
Now the Dongri Kondh lands and lives are under threat again. Their leaders are being harassed by police and imprisoned under false charges. The Dongria feel the government is trying to destroy their community in order to allow mining.
We don’t want to go to the city and we don’t want to buy food. We get it free here. – Malari Pusaka, Dongria Kondh
The Dongria Kondh grow over 100 crops and harvest almost 200 different wild foods, which provide them with year-round, rich nutrition even in times of drought. Life expectancy now is around 60 to 65 years.
Before it was 80 to 90 years. It’s because before [our access to our forest was restricted] we ate tubers, fruits, and other forest products, whereas now the Soliga diet is bad. –Madegowda, Soliga
The Soliga people are another ethnic group of India. Its members inhabit the Biligiriranga Hills and associated ranges in southern Karnataka, mostly in the Chamarajanagar and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. Many are also concentrated in and around the BR Hills in Yelandur and Kollegal Taluks of Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka.
The Soliga people are one among the few remaining forest-dwelling tribal people in and around the forests in southern India. The forests of BR Hills have held people for time immemorial. Burial sites excavated from several areas nearby date back to 3000 years ago to the Megalithic period. These sites characteristically consist of Dolmens, a circular arrangement of large stones with a central pit, walled off by granite slabs. Although, it is not known if these belong to the ancestors of the present Soliga tribe, having lived here for generations, the Soliga people have an intricate understanding of the flora and fauna.
“You keep talking about this primitive people but I see no development, progress or superiority whatsoever. They think an invisible being gave them the right to rule over land. Isn’t that just backwards?” I’m glad you ask yourself that. It is not like the civilized worship Gods… Well, we do, but it is usually the imported kind because we do love foreign products like that.
No techno? No bueno!
Tribal people’s lives are not static or ‘stuck in the past’ – they adopt new ideas and adapt to new situations just as we all do. It is prejudice to think some peoples are ‘modern’ whilst others are ‘backwards’. This prejudice is used to justify displacing indigenous peoples and push them into the ‘mainstream’ – on the assumption that ‘experts’ know what is best for them.
It’s crazy when these outsiders come and teach us development. Is development possible by destroying the environment that provides us food, water and dignity? You have to pay to take a bath, for food, and even to drink water. In our land, we don’t have to buy water like you, and we can eat anywhere for free. –Lodu Sikaka, Dongria Kondh
Different paths of “development”
One of the wonders of North-East India is an innovative technique developed by villagers to construct bridges and other useful structures out of living aerial roots of rubber (Ficus Elastica) trees. For dozens of years, they train and manipulate the growth of aerial roots, such that with time, they thicken and stiffen and become structural members. Most bridges and structures can be found in Meghalaya state, and lately root bridges were discovered in Nagaland state as well.
In summary, labelling people ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ is a propaganda strategy. A striking example of this was the argument that mining company Vedanta Resources used to defend the impact that their mine would have on the lives of the Dongria Kondh. The Dongria are united against the mine, they distrust and reject Vedanta’s claim that the company will bring development. Instead the Dongria choose to live their own way of life on their land.
A Vedanta spokesperson said:
‘As enlightened and privileged human beings, we should not try to keep the tribal and other backward people in a primitive, uncared-and-unprovided-for socio-economic environment.’
“In (theft) exchange of their resources we will install our marvelous industrialized food system that provides everyone products with (few) nutrients and (poor) ingredients our body does (not) need?” Sound market logic.
Indigenous peoples’ lands are still being stolen, their rights violated and their futures destroyed. Vital laws protecting their land rights are in constant threat under the flag of progress, the mark of Civilization. Only indigenous people should decide and control what, if any, changes they want in their lives. If living in harmony with the land is ‘backwards’ or ‘primitive’ then perhaps we should step back, listen and observe what is happening around us. We might be surprised what we will find when we look back on the destruction left behind by the “progress of civilization.”
Paul Feather calls us to reframe this time of crisis: “Shall we permit the storytellers to name what it is that we do? They would call this a lockdown, but we are going through the motions of a general strike. Our foe is down. Are there no holds barred? Strike now! Strike down their stories. Break their magic wand.”
I have been told that this is war.
That this virus makes frontlines of our hospitals and calls for measures untold of before.
That there will be victory gardens again.
Ford will make ventilators for the fight, and United We Stand.
Are there no holds barred then? Where is the enemy that we may strike? But wait! Is there time for a treaty?
Perhaps we may yet consolidate our allies—these gathering armies that bristle at each other may yet coalesce against a greater foe. This has happened before, has it not?
Lift your gaze.
When Pizarro landed in Peru, he met an empire quite as plagued by infighting and partisanship as our own. We should be wary of reducing the outcome of complex encounters to absurd things like causes, but the Incas were quite confident in the integrity of their empire. They were unconcerned about conquest by a few hundred smelly white men, and opposed factions within the Inca’s domain sought to wield these invaders against other factions. For this lack of unity, at least in part, they were killed. Por viruela. By a virus.
We will do this also. We will not unite in what they tell me is this war against the virus.
Our so-called leaders, the media, and other influencers also seek to wield this new invader as a weapon of their own. This is a form of domestication, for we cannot tolerate a wild thing. Eventually they will tame this virus with vaccines, but in the meantime those who would wield the power of this wild beast will keep it on a leash made of story. They will weave together narratives for their already docile people—for they are the storytellers, and we the captive audience. But, they will offer us a choice. Some semblance of freedom. We may choose which side we’re on.
Here is the choice we are given; the story we are told; the dichotomy we must never question. Shall we ask for protection from our government?—lockdown measures to protect the fragile among us—or do we argue for loosened restrictions (even if this means more deaths) to protect the economic system? This is your choice. It’s the Heartless and Practical Capitalists against the Naive and Compassionate Socialists—which side will you choose? In this war against the virus, sacrifices must be made. What will it be—protection or profit?
Lift. Your. Gaze.
I question this declaration of war. I will not fight a fight against so new an enemy when I have old enemies enough. Nor will I submit that my stories be told in the dichotomies of power and politics. I am at odds with this economy already, it’s true—I would love nothing more than to shut it down—but I am wary of these strenuous protections. These lockdown measures respond to the death of privileged people and nothing else. Where is the National Guard when indigenous lands are stolen? When is the global economy shut down to save those who die mining conflict minerals in the Congo? Where is the infrastructure mobilization that stops the deaths of malnourished children?
There is a war we are already fighting, and it is the same war that the Incans lost five hundred years ago. Where are our allies in this war?
The virus has struck. The economy reels and casts about for weapons against this new foe. It reaches for that magic wand that tells the stories, and in so doing it regains initiative and footing. Shall we permit the storytellers to name what it is that we do? They would call this a lockdown, but we are going through the motions of a general strike. Our foe is down. Are there no holds barred? Strike now! Strike down their stories. Break their magic wand.
Do not let them name what we do.
Do not let them tell us that they lock us down for our own protection—that we cower before this virus to protect the fragile among us. We will say what we are doing, and it is a strike. We will protect the aged and infirm, yes. But when they call us out again, we will not come. Or we will come with our demands. And if we are frustrated at so many who do not isolate themselves and so accelerate the spreading virus, let us draw them into solidarity with our effort by offering something to gain. Call it a strike. Offer the carrot and not the stick. Listen to their demands.
This is all a bit naïve of course. There are big wheels turning that do not stop so quickly. I know this, for I have pushed against them all my life. I do not believe the workforce will suddenly coalesce behind a story that the storytellers have not written for us, but I do believe we might leave behind a word. A piece of punctuation. A blot of ink upon the story which cannot be wiped out.
And also there is this: There are bigger wheels than those that turn in this machine, and lest we also succumb to our temptation to wield the wildness of the virus for our own ends—however noble they appear—let us remember that it is the virus who wields us. Let us not domesticate or leash this power. Let us seek to be the point of the sword and not the hand that holds it.
But let us strike.
Paul Feather is an animist farmer and writer living in Georgia, USA. He is the co-author of three books, and some of his work has been published in Dark Mountain. His writing may be found at www.paulandterra.com.
Editor’s note: The following is the complete text of Larry Engelmann’s “The Woman Who Remembered Paradise,” which first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, on July 10, 1988. The “Westerners,” whom the Spaniards called the “San Juan Indians,” are elsewhere identified as the Amah Mutsun people, who lived and hunted in what are today’s San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito Counties.
Anyone who finds this article as moving as we do is encouraged to visit the Amah Mutsun website. The tribe’s statements about themselves, their past and their future are equally educational and moving, and make it clear that while Ascención Solórsano may have been the last person fluent in the Mutsun language, the tribe itself is far from dead. Further reading has confirmed that Popeloutchom was NOT in Santa Clara Valley, but in the Pajaro River valley, around the present day town of San Juan Bautista, in San Benito County, just northeast of Monterey. At that time, the tribe’s range was roughly from there to Santa Cruz, and was the reason for the establishment of the missions at San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz.
This article does, in some ways, reflects the prejudices and simplistic understandings of anthropologists and of civilized attitudes towards the indigenous. However, it nonetheless gives valuable insight in the life of indigenous people of what is now central California. Thank you to Mark Behrend for providing this article, and for the above research.
The Last San Juan Indian in Silicon Valley
By Larry Engelmann
Long, long ago, before Silicon Valley was settled and suburbanized, before it was leveled and developed, subdivided and paved, tract-homed and condoed, malled and gridlocked, and long before the air was browned and seasoned, the streams and well waters shellacked with chemical solvents, before it was high-teched and silicon-chipped, mainframed and PC’ed, before it was airported, theme-parked and fast-fooded, before the rude snorting of the first automobile shattered the pristine silence on the narrow rutted trails that passed through miles and miles of gorgeous orchards, before Leland Stanford built his university, before the silver mines were chiseled out of the hills or the missions constructed, before Sir Francis Drake peered from the deck of the Golden Hinde at the Golden Gate, long before any European ever heard the word America, another race of people inhabited the place we call Silicon Valley. They believed they were living in an earthly paradise. They called it Popeloutchom.
The people of Popeloutchom were gentle. As gentle, it was said, as the climate and the cool breezes that slipped over the mountains to the west and whispered through the fruit trees and caressed all the living things in the valley each evening. They believed this valley was the most beautiful place in the world.
Because of that conviction they had no desire at all to travel far and look upon what must surely be lesser lands given by the gods to lesser men. In this garden of Popeloutchom, where the air was clear and the water pure and the Earth naturally fruitful and abundant, they were happy.
When the first Franciscan missionaries arrived and told the stories of their God and the Eden he had created for his first man and woman, the people of Popeloutchom were fascinated and flattered. Obviously, they felt, the God of the Franciscans had once seen this valley, and had tried to copy it for his people far away.
The important difference, of course, between his Eden and this place was that no one had ever been expelled from this paradise. Here there was no evil serpent and no fall from grace, no paradise lost. Popeloutchom was paradise preserved. In the English translation of their own language — a language long since lost — the people of Popeloutchom called themselves “the Westerners,” because they were the westernmost group of several loosely related tribes. Over the years, though, they had lost contact with their Eastern cousins, who had simply melted away, like snow before the summer sun. Yet the gods had preserved and sustained the Westerners in Popeloutchom.
The Westerners were an indigenous people, who knew neither treachery nor deceit nor war. They welcomed the befuddled strangers who sometimes stumbled upon their settlements. Such lost travelers were regarded as honored guests who would, when treated warmly, tell unusual stories about distant places and strange gods, before moving on.
And so the Westerners welcomed the first white men who “discovered” their valley. Unlike earlier travelers, however, these intruders came to stay. They constructed missions, put up walls and worshiped the God who created Eden. And they brought with them also their deadly trinity of cholera, smallpox and measles. The Westerners, with no immunity to the European diseases, began to die by the hundreds. Those few who survived were brought within the discipline of the missions. They lost their old faith and their old lands. They were given a new name by the missionairies. They became the San Juans.
And gradually, like their Eastern relatives, they melted away.
Early in the twentieth century, when historians and ethnologists tried to record the story of the Westerners, they found that those gentle people of Popeloutchom had become extinct. And they concluded, after careful research, that sometime around 1850, the last member of that kindly and tolerant race had vanished.
It came, then, as a substantial surprise when word was relayed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in late 1929, that all of the Westerners had not died. There remained, in fact, a single surviving full-blooded member of that tribe. And she wanted the story of her life and of her people recorded for posterity.
John Harrington, the Smithsonian’s leading ethnologist, rushed to California in order to transcribe that final testament of this rare survivor of a lost race, this last Westerner.
She called herself Ascención Solórsano, and for as long as anyone could remember, she had lived in Gilroy. There she was known, because of her curative powers, as a great and generous “doctora.” For several decades, the few remaining Indians of the region had known of the miracles performed by the doctora. Her wisdom, they believed, was the accumulation of learning of a hundred generations of Westerners.
Each day, the sick and the lame and the afflicted came to her from hundreds of miles away. They lined up in the doorway to her tiny house, and camped at night in her yard, transforming her property into a humble pastoral version of Lourdes. Inside, the doctora listened carefully to their tales of physical woe. Then she mixed tonics and ointments from local herbs and roots and dispensed them to the afflicted. It was rumored that the remedies of the doctora were always successful. She restored the health of anyone who sought her help. Those who could, paid for her miracles. Those who could not pay brought food or small articles of some value. And those who could pay with nothing material were reminded simply to remember the doctora in their prayers.
For many years the doctora tirelessly carried on her practice. The local press ignored her and the local authorities overlooked her. She practiced medicine without a license, to be sure. But those who were supposed to enforce laws forbidding such activities either never heard of her or never believed she existed. No complaints for malpractice were ever filed against the doctora.
Then, one night in the late summer of 1929, a light evening breeze whispered a prophetic message to the doctora. For all of her life, Ascención had read such portents and premonitory signs in the wind and rain, and in the lost language of the birds. She could read the messages from nature as easily as one today might read the headlines in a newspaper.
The wind told Ascención that she was going to die in three days. And so now at last the things that remained to be done must be done quickly.
She took out the black silk dress she had sewn years earlier to wear when she confronted death. She then said goodbye to her friends in Gilroy and went to the home of her daughter — who was half Indian — in Monterey. There, in her daughter’s tiny two-room frame house, she waited for death. A bed was set up in one room and several pillows were placed on it so that Ascención might sit up comfortably. Neighbors and friends were summoned to see her. And she shared with them all the stories and the collective memories of the Westerners. It was, she believed, the final gift of her lost race to the children of the despoilers of Popeloutchom.
Then, through her narrative, Ascención apparently assuaged the gods of the Westerners and aroused their compassion. As she spoke, day after day, her strength was restored and death was postponed.
When Harrington arrived from Washington, Ascención looked at him in silence for a long time. Then she pronounced her evaluation of the enthusiastic scholar. “You are a vehicle of God,” she said, “that comes to see me in the 11th hour to save my knowledge from being lost. I will teach you up to the last day that I can, and see if I can tell you all that I know.” This is what she told him.
“I have lived for 83 years. My mother, Barbara Sierra, lived for 84 years. And my father, Miguel Solórsano, lived for 82 years. One week after the death of Barbara Sierra, my father died of grief at the loss of his lifelong companion.”
Ascención, their only child, was taught the language and the legends of the Westerners by her parents. But with their deaths, the dialogue in the native tongue was relegated forever to the world of the spirits.
She said that the Westerners traced themselves back hundreds of generations to a time when men had descended from the gods and had been placed in Popeloutchom. This was followed by a great flood that caused the ocean waters to rise to the top of the Gabilan Mountains. Following the flood, the founder of the Westerners taught his children how to live on Earth, how to heal illnesses, how to prepare food, build homes and worship the gods. This father and teacher had then departed to the world of the afterlife in the west, beyond the mountains and the sea and the sunset. And there, after death, every Westerner would in his turn be welcomed by the father and teacher. Yet, after death, the Westerners might still visit their children and friends in Popeloutchom in dreams.
Among the Westerners, Ascención said, age was respected and venerated. It was not, as among the white people, considered simply a purgatory prior to death. With age, the Westerners realized, came wisdom and magical powers. Aged women, it was believed, had the power to control the growth of plants.
And death was not something that the Westerners feared. When death came, relatives of the deceased covered themselves with ashes and mourned openly. Some even removed themselves from other members of the tribe for several days and fasted and chanted songs of death.
In Popeloutchom, Ascención said, “nature provided such an abundance of food that the Westerners always had an oversupply of wild fruits, greens and seeds.” Consequently, they did not practice agriculture, nor did they ever cultivate the land. And except for the simple process of gathering food each day, work was completely unknown to the Westerners. They lived like Adam and Eve in Eden. Daily life was organized around leisure and play, and there was neither worry nor care about tomorrow.
The men and boys of the Westerners wore no clothing. And the women wore only a simple brief buckskin skirt. Yet, Ascención asserted, their skin did not burn in the summer sun, nor did they catch colds, even in the most severe winters.
The secret of their health, she believed, was the daily immersion in cold water. Each morning, as soon as they had risen from their sleep, every Westerner walked to the nearest river or stream. Even the tiniest infants were borne along. Then the Westerners jumped into the water and washed themselves. The practice was pursued every day of the year, regardless of the weather. When they left the water the Westerners returned to their dwellings for the morning meal.
The basic food of the Westerners was a gruel consisting of acorn kernels that were crushed and then bleached with water to remove the bitterness, then boiled with meat, fish or greens.
After breakfast each day, the Westerners began their daily activities. The gathering of food and fuel — the most important tasks — were considered an adventure and were carried out in both a communal and a leisurely way.
The men and boys hunted in small groups, leaving the camp each morning and returning late in the afternoon. They roamed the hillsides and the valley floor of Popeloutchom in search of game, especially deer. They were informal during the hunt, always making it more sport than work. When other local bands were sighted, the groups would stop to talk and exchange stories. If game had already been taken, part of it was cooked and eaten by both groups. Athletic competitions — running, wrestling and archery — were also common at these informal encounters.
The Western hunters had learned, through centuries of observation, the habits of their prey, Ascención recalled. They could, therefore, cover themselves with deerskin, walk on all fours like a deer, and approach their prey very closely. A small bird in flight could commonly be hit by most Western archers with a single arrow, so well did they understand the speed and flight patterns of the winged game of Popeloutchom.
In the rivers and streams of Popeloutchom, the men trapped fish in the shallows and then shot them with arrows. Sometimes, when hunting parties traveled as far as the western ocean, they took sea otter, seals and sea lions. And sometimes the hunting parties came upon a small whale that had been trapped in a tidepool or had washed ashore — a magnificent gift from the gods that might feed a single village for weeks.
While the men and boys hunted, the women and girls gathered acorns, roots, nuts, greens, fruits and other foods. In the quest for these, Ascención remembered, they blended conversation, laughter and singing. Like the men, they went out to their decidedly unstrenuous activity in small groups. Collecting firewood meant greater effort and travel, so there was seldom more than a single day’s supply of wood in any village in the valley — even when heavy rain clouds threatened.
The women also provided water for every household in a village. Water was carried from the streams in baskets woven by hand. The baskets were made from the roots of “cut grass,” and when they were filled with water they swelled and did not leak — not one drop, Ascención said.
The Westerners mastered countless crafts and passed the pride of workmanship on to each succeeding generation. The men made beautiful and powerful bows, reinforced with layers of sinew. They were master archers and could string and fire arrows with almost blinding speed. Their arrows, guided in flight by eagle feathers, slipped easily through the body of a deer or a bear.
The women were the weavers of baskets. They sat in a large circle out of doors and constructed baskets while they talked and sang. Each woman’s baskets carried a distinct design that reflected her individual creativity. The patterns were never repeated or copied. And at a woman’s death, her baskets were burned or given away to strangers.
More for sociability than protection, the Westerners lived in small villages. Each home resembled a beehive. They were constructed by driving willow poles into the ground in a circle, bending the tops together and then binding them. Horizontal poles were then laced through the verticals, and deer grass was applied as a cover. A few small holes were left as windows. The door was small and low and faced away from the prevailing winds. The ground served as the floor of the house. Sleeping mats were woven from bullrushes. Robes from deer and bear hides served as blankets.
Fifty years before Ascención was born, the first white men arrived in Popeloutchom, she said. They examined the countryside and named the land San Benito. They then built a mission and named it after a man who paid great deference to the practice of immersion in water — John the Baptist. They called the mission San Juan Bautista; the inhabitants of the 23 villages in the area near the mission were called simply San Juans, referring to their traditional practice of immersion in water. Then they taught the Westerners how to cultivate fields and work and how to pray and how to live. And how to die.
Not long after the first white men had arrived in the region, the gods of the Westerners had demonstrated their grave displeasure with the intruders. The gods, Ascención said, stamped their feet upon the valley floor and caused buildings to fall and great cracks to open in the ground. The white men, of course, were utterly terrified by the quaking of the Earth. They lived outside their homes for several days and nervously questioned the Westerners about the earthquake. But the white men remained. And in the years that followed, again and again the displeased gods of Popeloutchom pounded on the Earth in protest, but in vain. The white people poured in and disregarded the warnings.
John Harrington listened to Ascención’s tales of the Westerners and scribbled down page after page of notes. He was amazed at the comprehensiveness and vividness of her memory.
He was, however, only one of many witnesses to Ascención’s long narrative. Chairs were set up facing the bed in small, even rows, and dozens of local people came daily to sit silently for hours on end and hear this last Westerner sing and chant and whisper the ageless stories of her people one last time.
And as Ascención spoke of a world that was no more and that would never be again, she drew, day after day, untapped reserves of strength. Through October, November and December, she talked and Harrington wrote. Her audiences increased as word of the wise woman’s stories spread. And many of those she had cured traveled great distances to pay their last respects and to hear her last words.
But in January her strength suddenly started to slip away. And as the end neared, she began to hear and see the spirits of the Westerners in the room and outside the house, reminding her of stories she had not yet told and beckoning her to finish her work. As she spoke, more slowly now and almost in a whisper, she would suddenly point to someone sitting at her bedside and say, “The spirit of my father, Miguel, is sitting beside you!” Then she would speak to Miguel in a language no one in the room had ever heard before and would never hear again.
Finally, she heard the spirits of her race tapping at the door, summoning her. She had told John Harrington all she remembered of Paradise, a place once called “Popeloutchom.” Now she gazed at Harrington once more in silence for a long time. It was a sad, piteous look. But the sadness and the pity were not for herself, but for Harrington and for those of us who would read what she had whispered and he had written, and who would never ever look upon a place in this world as beautiful as her Eden, her Popeloutchom.
She closed her eyes and began very gently picking imaginary flowers from the blanket. Then, peacefully and without any struggle, she stopped breathing.
It was January 1930 when the last Westerner left Popeloutchom. The next morning some of the baskets she had woven were burned, and the others were given away to strangers.
An unprecedented wave of wildfires has swept through indigenous communities in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Three deaths have been reported, and up to 700 people have been listed in critical condition. In the aftermath of the fires, the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo Peoples have declared a state of emergency and turned to the international community for help.
Located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is one of the world’s highest coastal ranges. Its millenary guardians are the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo, the four indigenous descendant communities of the ancient Tayrona civilization.
The Indigenous peoples believe the Sierra Nevada is the Heart of the World, where they protect the balance of all life through pagamentos, or offerings. The Arhuaco and Kogi were one of the few indigenous communities that were never colonized and resisted being evangelized. They preserve their language, dress, and culture.
The Arhuaco and Kogi communities in particular were severely affected by the fires after an exceptionally dry and hot summer. The communities are currently asking for humanitarian help and donations because of the critical situation in the Sierra Nevada. More than 1,000 hectares and 4,000 people have been affected by the severe fires, damaging several important spiritual settlements. Some Kogi settlements have also been affected by the fires.
Many animals died in the fire as well, including mules, horses and the sheep that produce wool used to make traditional bags.
In a press release, the organizations representing the Kogui Indigenous People (OGT), the Arhuaco (CIT), the Wiwa (OWYBT) and the Kankuamo (OIK), represented by the Territorial Council of Cabildos (CTC SNG), explain the serious situation caused by the fires and the environmental crisis caused by an unusually hot summer.
The press release states the following:
“The four Indigenous Peoples of the Sierra Nevada make a statement the environmental crisis in the heart of the world
“The Indigenous Peoples and Organizations Kogui (OGT), Arhuaco (CIT), Wiwa (OWYBT) and Kankuamo (OIK), representing the Territorial Council of Cabildos (CTC SNG), speak about the serious situation caused by the fires and the environmental crisis caused by the strong summer in the Sierra Nevada de Gonawindua.
“We hereby communicate to the public, local, regional, national and international opinion, and the civil society the following:
“As caretakers of the Heart of the World, we express our uncertainty about the serious environmental situation and humanitarian crisis generated by the fires, which have been presented since last February 24, in more than ten (10) places in the Sierra Nevada, that increased because of the long summer, the heat wave and the strong winds that increase the risk of destroying other areas in this sacred territory, threatening our material and immaterial heritage, natural in cultural and environmental terms.
“The magnitude of the damages is incalculable, the fires have devastated more than 1000 Hectares (nearly 2,500 acres) of the mountainous ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada. To date the total destruction of houses in the settlements of Seynimin (Arhuaco), and Waneyaka (Kogi) is reported, fires still persist in the region of Nabusimake (Pueblo Bello), Sogrome, Donachwi, Jukwinchukwa, Suribaka, Shendukua, Zinka, (Valledupar) Piñoncito, Sabana Grande and Potrerito (San Juan), and other regions are at risk. In addition, spiritual and material damages have affected the following ancestral sites: Ezwamas, Kadukwa, Mamanua, Shentuan (Ceremonial Government Center) Kankurwas (traditional houses), farms, health centers, schools, and hundreds of families.
“Faced with this serious situation that puts at risk the balance and harmony of the territory as a source of life and the physical and cultural permanence of the communities that inhabit and take care of the Heart of the World; the mamos (spiritual authorities), indigenous authorities and peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, have taken the following steps:
TO DECLARE [a state of] cultural, social, environmental and economic emergency in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, traditional and ancestral territory of four indigenous communities.
TO REQUEST in an urgent manner the help of national, regional, and local authorities; relief, risk and disaster agencies, [Colombia’s] public prosecutor’s office and international organizations, [as well as] immediate intervention to address the declared [state of] emergency through coordination, accompaniment, and monitoring mechanisms.
TO ALERT the regional and local indigenous authorities along with the communities and families within the [four] communities to take the necessary measures of prevention and control in this situation according to our own mandates and regulations.
TO APPEAL for the solidarity of those who wish to provide humanitarian aid, donations of equipment, non-perishable food, mats, tents, hammocks, and other necessary elements that will be received in the offices of the indigenous houses in Valledupar, Santa Marta, and Riohacha.”
Direct donations can be sent to:
Asocit
Asociación de Autoridades Arhuacas de la Sierra Nevada
(Arhuaco Authorities Association of la Sierra Nevada)
Ana Barón is a collaborator of Mestizo Muisca origin, translator, and environmental activist involved in supporting indigenous communities in Colombia, South America.
This article is being published in collaboration with The Esperanza Project, a Green News Portal for the Americas.
