When my association with the indigenous people began, I wanted to learn why they are being marginalized, disliked and accused by people who came to their lands centuries later.
Who can claim to be the indigenous people of this world? How long before you lose the memory of your indigenous origin? After all, most people who live in this planet now, were at one time or another were indigenous or descended from the indigenous people. When did the Germans become Germans? When did the Herrero in Namibia become Herrero knowing fully well that the land we call Southern Africa was once the territory of San people . The San often referred to as San of Kalahari as if the extent of their life was just the desert were the people of the southern part of the continent long before Bantu speaking people came from the North and much later the blond blue-eyed people of Europe.
Why the history of fatal contact repeated over and over again and now continues in the Amazon region ?
Being with American Indians I realized their nature as Man-Child , an innocence they never loose. I was at that time living in Kingston, Jamaica and once a week I used to come up to Miami to teach a class at the Medical School and one of the students gave me a book : A story like the Wind. About the San, written by the most sympathetic interpreter of the Indigenous thoughts, Laurens van der Post of South Africa.
The title A Story like the wind is attributed to Kabbo, a San around 1810 who was taken away prisoner from his lands.
Such innocence. But how do we, steeped in such constructions of the various societies we have grown up in , connect ourselves to it ?
I visited the San at Tjum!kui in Namibia, while I was studying Anthropology in London. I was lucky to visit them four times, thus acquiring a kinship connection to Jhu/!Hoansi (pronounced thus but written differently)
While I enjoyed my time there very much, I was also introduced to the intrigues of the Anthropological investigations. I enjoyed briefly the friendships across the globe of anthropologists connected to Nyae-Nyae region of Namibia .
Many of the non-anthropologists decry the romantic notion of the past presented in the descriptions of Laurens van der Post. I found his writings to be extremely useful in understanding the Native people I work with. While I am also an anthropologist, I concentrate on prevention of diseases among the native peoples that I work with. And reading van der post at the beginning of my career had been immensely helpful.
Why do they dislike us ?
Have you heard the question before?
If you are Jewish, you would have been made aware of this. Young Jacobo Timerman (Argentine writer) asked his mother this question and she answered
They dislike us because they do not understand us.
Why do the incoming hordes of people dislike the Indigenous people all over the world?
USA Australia Aotearoa Canada … but also India (attitude towards Adivasi) , Malaysia (towards Orang Asli)
After spending so much of my professional life with the Indigenous people, I would say
Taking some imagery from Taussig’s description of the murders of the Indians in Putamayo
They were jealous of the indigenous people, these “pious” people from other continents thought of themselves to be “holy” or “spiritual” saw that the Indigenous people were closer to the original creation. And that the invaders were jealous of what they had lost and the Indigenous people had retained.
I was describing a beautiful sunset over the Amazon river to a good friend of mine in the Lakota country in South Dakota. I felt so good, I told her, I really felt the presence of the Great Spirit
she said: that is not where the Great Spirit lives
I know where he lives
where ?
He lives in my back yard, she said with that mischievous smile of the Lakota Indians .
