Natives in the Rainforest

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Natives in the Rainforest
Part One
Created by Kurt Hiatt October 28th,
2002 Natives in Biomes project
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Table of Contents

• Part One
• Introduction
• Life in general for natives
• Food
• Education
• Shelter

• Part Two
• Introduction
• The Pygmies
• The Huli
• The Yanomami

• Part Three
• Conclusion
• Works Consulted

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Introduction
Tropical Rainforests are bursting with life. Not
only millions of plant and animal species, but
also many people that call the rainforests their
homes. In fact, these people have been living
there for thousands of years. In this particular
part of the presentation, you will be learning
the general information about these people.
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How do these Native people live?
Surprisingly, many of these indigenous people
live lives much like ours. However, there are a
chunk of them that still live as their ancestors
did many years ago. Naturally, everything they
need to survive comes out of their only resource
the rainforests in which they live. In the next
few slides you will learn about how native people
get their food, their education, their shelter,
and how they live.
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Food
Of course, to be able to live, these cultures
need food. So, how do they get it? Well,
besides the basic hunting and gathering of wild
fruits, nuts, fishing, and animals, indigenous
people also plant gardens. Some use a
sustainable farming method called Shifting
Cultivation. First, they need to clear an area
of rainforest and burn it. Then, they plant many
different types of plants for both food and
medicine uses. But then, after a few years, the
soil becomes too poor to grow anything. It grows
back, of course, in 10-50 years. These people
wouldnt ever do anything to harm the
rainforests. So, after they use that land, they
move on, and keep going.
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Food (continued)
However, there is a problem. Shifting
Cultivation is still practiced today, for sure,
but only for those who have access to such a
large area of land. There is a growing number of
non-Indigenous farmer and a definite decrease in
rainforest amount. So, these Indigenous tribes
are now being forced to stay in one area, which
is becoming wasteland after overuse and cant be
grown back at all. So, slowly but surely,
someday our rainforest population will be so low,
these people will no longer have homes, at all.
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Education
Do children in these places go to school? The
answer yes. Their own special kind of school.
They do not wake up every morning at 630 so they
can be to school by 740. They dont race to
beat the bell, sit in desks, do homework, or any
of what we would normally expect. On the
contrary, they learn about the forests and things
around them from their parents. So, instead of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, they are taught
to survive in the rainforests. They learn
hunting and fishing and what plants to use for
medicine and what for food. These children,
after only a couple of months, know more about
rainforests than scientists who have been
studying them for years! Go figure.
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Shelter
Depending on the tribe, each shelter differs.
They differ, of course, because of difference in
tribes traditions, the environment in which they
live, the weather conditions, how much they move
around, and so on. Their shelter could simply be
huts around a central, small village. Often
times, for the tribes that move around, simple
tipis are constructed from whatever they find in
the rainforest. Then, when they move, they can
simply live and make another tipi where they go
next. But, for those planning on staying in a
play for a longer period of time, they construct
sturdier shelters. In most cases, these are
community houses in which men are on one side,
and women on the other, with living space in the
middle. For other tribes, they may have two
communal houses splitting men and women. And
sometimes families just live together in their
own personal houses around a central building
where rituals and such things take place.
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Natives in the Rainforest
Part Two
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Introduction
Now that youve heard so much about how people
live in the rainforest, you must be interested to
know who exactly does live in there. There are
three groups that Im going to focus on in this
last part of the presentation the Pygmies, the
Huli, and the Yanomami. You will be learning
about how each group lives, their traditions,
clothes, normal rituals, and basically how they
survive. Then, later in this section, Ill
compare and contrast the three tribes youve
learned about and sum everything up about them.
Then, after that, Ill talk about how they relate
to our lives.
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The Pygmies
An elderly pygmy man
A pygmy woman with her child strapped on her back
A Pygmy baby boy
Children playing in their natural surroundings
?Click again to learn more about the Pygmies.
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The Pygmies are the original inhabitants of
rainforests in central Africa. There are only
two remaining groups of Pygmies left today, which
are the Beni and Efe. This makes them the
oldest living pure ethnic group in the world.
Theyve maintained this by total isolation from
any civilization, with the exception of their
own, achieving total harmony with each other.
They have very few material possessions and are
satisfied only by hunting and gathering in the
very nearby rainforest in which they
live. Pygmies, Dr. Panagotacos found, are very
friendly and generous people. There is no crime
committed between the Pygmy people. They have
great respect for each other and their natural
environment they never waste anything. Sadly,
the Pygmies are close to extinction. In 1900,
there were around 70,000 Pygmies living. By
1930, their population had dropped to 35,000
people. Today, the Pygmy number is only about
4,000 people, with only around 2,000 still living
in the rainforests, as their people have for tens
of thousands of years.
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Since the Pygmy number has dropped so low, there
are hardly any communities left of them, and no
so much new information on them except the new
Pygmy fund that is helping the Pygmies
specifically by providing them better shelters,
and if they choose to stay in the rainforest,
reserving them land and things they need to
survive in there. Like all other tribes, during
their more populous time, they had many rituals
and customs. Unfortunately, there is not so much
information to find on these things. Quoted from
one of my resources, Pygmies are somewhat like
the Huli People in their rituals and customs.
And you will be learning about the Huli people
next in the presentation. One other thing I can
touch upon about the Pygmy people. Jean-Pierre
Hallet, a world-renown author, explorer,
anthropologist, naturalist, and humanitarian, of
Belgian ancestry, was raised among the Pygmies.
She is now working to raise awareness of the
important Pygmy issues and trying to bring their
population up once again.
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The Huli
Huli Man in traditional wear
Huli Man in traditional wear
Huli women dressed for dance
Huli man in casual wear
?Click again to learn more about the Huli.
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The Huli people live in the central mountains of
Papua New Guinea, at a latitude of 6 degrees
below the equator and at a mean altitude of about
1,500 meters above sea level. Their numbers are
in the 65,000s and they are grouped in clans and
subclans. They have been living where they are
for 600-1,000 years, or maybe even longer
considering the Papua highlands have been
inhabited for 25,000 years. The present day Huli
people employ a system of shifting cultivation
and clear land as they need it. Earlier, you saw
pictures of the Huli people. This is normally
how they do dress. Either casual or traditional,
thats exactly what they would wear each
day. Music is very important to the Huli people.
Music and dancing have been traditional rituals
since around 1,000 years ago. During these music
rituals, women dance, faces painted, grass skirts
on. In addition, they cover their body in tree
oil, which many Huli people do. The Huli also
survive by hunting and gathering, in addition to
trading, which is a big part of their daily
income.
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The Yanomami
Yanomami warriors, ready to battle
A Yanomami boy
Yanomami people sharing a meal
Yanomami boys
A Yanomami boy with traditional piercings.
?Click again to learn more about the Yanomami.
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The Yanomami are the last of the three native
groups Im going to talk about. They are made up
of four subdivisions, which include the Sanema,
the Ninam, the Yanomam, and the Yanomamo. Each
has its own language and lives in a different
part of the Yanomami land. If you combine all
four divisions, about 20,000 Yanomami are still
alive today. The Yanomami live in hundreds of
small villages, which are grouped by families in
one large communal place called a Shabono the
center of the village, where everything goes on.
Each village contains anywhere between 40-300
people. These are sparsely spread out differing
between a few hours walk, or a few days walk.
They live by hunting and fishing and share
whatever they catch. Although the Yanomami are
very friendly, they also have a very fierce,
warrior side. Sometimes, they fight for women,
the winner gaining the most reproductive success.
Other times, they will fight other males just
for competition. About 40 of adult males have
killed another person, and about 25 will die
from some form of violence.
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Violence can vary from chest pounding, in which
players take turns hitting each other on the
chest, to club fights, which are raids that may
involve the killing of individuals, abduction of
women, and all out warfare. Despite their
barbaric-ness, they are very spiritual. They
believe that the natural and spiritual world are
a unified force nature creates everything, and
is sacred. They also believe that their fate,
and the fate of the people, is inescapably
linked to the fate of the environment with its
destruction, humanity is committing suicide.
Their spiritual leader is the shaman. Trade is
a very important aspect of the Yanomami life.
They depend on trade as one of their foremost
incomes, including any type of food, or
manufactured goods. Marriage is also a very
important aspect of the Yanomami life. They
beileve everyone should be married at a young
age, prearranged, of course. And their preferred
marriage type is the bilateral cross-cousin
marriage which supposedly produces strong
relationships between families and villages.
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Natives in the Rainforest
Part Two
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Conclusion
So, youve learned about everything there is to
learn about indigenous people and the rainforests
in which they live. You learned general
information about how they live in the aspects of
food gathering, education, shelter, etc. And you
also learned about the three largest and most
well-known tribes that are still out in the
rainforests today. Hopefully youve learned a
lot from this presentation and will remember that
while were in our houses warm and cozy this
winter, there are still people out in the
rainforests, fighting for their lives because
non-indigenous farmers are trying to take over
their land and theyre forced to live even more
primitive than before. But, really, if you think
about it a little, they are a lot like us in many
ways. Theyre normal people, living day by day,
trying to survive in the world. Theyre awfully
brave to choose such a harsh lifestyle. However,
their children dont really have a choice.
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Works Consulted

• Author not given. Panagotacos Pygmies.
  Available http//www.hairdoc.com/pygm.htm
• Author not given. Yanomami Indians. WWW.
  Available http//www.crystalinks.com/yanomami.htm
  l
• Bremer, Jack. (1988). People of the Rainforest.
  WWW. Available http//www.srl.caltech.edu/per
  sonnel/krubal/rainforest.html
• Lolsen, Mary. (1999). Science in the
  Rainforest. WWW. Available
  http//www.pbs.org/tal/costa_rica/native.html
• Lomas, C.J. The Huli People of Papua New Guinea.
  Available http//www.accsoft.com.au/drgcjlom/h
  uli1.htm