The Hadza (Hunter-Gatherers in Tanzania) NatGeo Article

[Broomstick]

Stark, this may shock you, but I actually give a damn about people I don't even like. Why do I care? Because I find avoidable human suffering distasteful. If you don't care you don't care, but I do. Of course, I also realize that there may be no good answer. The Hadza could very well be doomed.

[Stark]

The point is that attempts to save the individuals while preserving the 'culture' will be difficult (or impossible) and articles like this demonstrate that people in the west enjoy the curiosity of their bizarre lifestyle. So the people who 'care' are people who want to preserve a ludicriously primitive manner of living, to the point of relocating them with 21st century technology so they can continue their merry way.

In the face of the scale and complexity of social issues within the nations these armchair NatGeo readers live, this is amusing as hell to me. I can empathise with individuals (although not in a chest-beating internet tryhard way I guess) but I simply don't give a shit about their stoneage lifestyle and if they like it - and the result of that is their deaths - I just don't give a fuck. Saving the lives (ie the valuable part) would require extremely careful and complex solutions, and frankly I think most people just want to maintain the zoo display of 'look ma cavemen'.

Put simply, if they're so primitive that they can't see the benefits of civilisation (or those benefits are meaningless to their mindset), why should anyone cunningly trick them into growing up to save their lives, and could this be done without destroying their 'culture'? If they were going to starve to death and they were moved to a camp and looked after, how stupid would it be to put them right back again?

[Broomstick]

The point is that attempts to save the individuals while preserving the 'culture' will be difficult (or impossible) and articles like this demonstrate that people in the west enjoy the curiosity of their bizarre lifestyle. So the people who 'care' are people who want to preserve a ludicriously primitive manner of living, to the point of relocating them with 21st century technology so they can continue their merry way.

The fallacy of that, of course, is that people are not museum exhibits. Nor is any culture static, nor is it ethical to make primitive people into a zoo exhibit.

Put simply, if they're so primitive that they can't see the benefits of civilisation (or those benefits are meaningless to their mindset), why should anyone cunningly trick them into growing up to save their lives, and could this be done without destroying their 'culture'?

The point of one my posts above is that even when people want to change making that large a leap is difficult, even traumatic. Past histories of forced change have all too frequently ended badly.

I think about the only real option is to offer assimilation, but realize that most of the Hadza will no more opt for that than most of us would opt to become one of them. Thus, a few, very few, will join the modern world but otherwise this may be their last generation. I'm sorry, but a few sympathetic folks in the west will not halt what seems to be an inevitable progression when agriculturalists want the land of nomads.

[Simon_Jester]

The point is that attempts to save the individuals while preserving the 'culture' will be difficult (or impossible) and articles like this demonstrate that people in the west enjoy the curiosity of their bizarre lifestyle.

I think that saving the individuals is way more important than saving the lifestyle, as I gather you do; I just think it's kind of a shame in an abstract way that we can't save the lifestyle, that we cannot spare 0.1% of the planet or whatever for the hutmen*. It would be nice if we could do that, even though by all appearances we can't.

*caves are optional.

[Stark]

But isn't that the kick? Their culture - which people like - means when things change they all die. If we wanted to be culture-worshipping idiots we'd say that this is actually the most respectful thing to have happen because their untouched, pure culture will reach it's inevitable conclusions. This is, of course, disgusting because actual people will be suffering and dying and we could prevent it. But would anyone support saving them if their cute little stoneage nonsense was gone? Would anyone do a story on three generations of struggling-to-adjust state wards that were 'saved' to a barren and unpleasant existence?

I just don't think this situation is as simple as others.

[Stark]

I think about the only real option is to offer assimilation, but realize that most of the Hadza will no more opt for that than most of us would opt to become one of them. Thus, a few, very few, will join the modern world but otherwise this may be their last generation. I'm sorry, but a few sympathetic folks in the west will not halt what seems to be an inevitable progression when agriculturalists want the land of nomads.

That is really the problem - if they can't understand or don't want to change, then is it right to force them? Do they have the right to doom themselves, and if they as a culture don't care, is it wrong?

[Broomstick]

No, it's not right to force them. It's also not right to exterminate them. Fact is, the world is a harsh, cruel, and sometimes unfair place. Sometimes you can't save everyone and sometimes you can't fix things. The best we can do is find a way that causes the least damage to the fewest people, and try to remedy things for those who are damaged.

We will not always be successful.

[Stark]

Who the fuck is talking about exterminating them? It's unfortunate they're so primitive (and not at all exciting or quaint as NatGeo would like us to believe) but a part of that is they can't adjust to change as well as more advanced people. This is why being a nomad sucks shit, and why 'wonderful savage' shit is ridiculous.

[Broomstick]

Who the fuck is talking about exterminating them?

While it is not always the fate of primitive hunter-gatherers it is often their fate to be wiped out by more advanced neighbors. North America has numerous instances. There are the native Tasmanians - some of their genes survive in mixed-blood descendants but they were wiped out.

I would not like to see that happen to the Hadza, but it also would not surprise me if they became the victims of a massacre or were systematically eliminated over a span of time. It's deplorable, but it has happened in the past.

I think their culture is interesting. I also think the time of the hunter-gatherer is over, as is flintknapping and buggy whip making.

[wolveraptor]

No, it's not right to force them.

Suppose I was a religious nut and used the same argument to deny modern medical care to myself and my children. The usual response would be that while I am free to deny care to myself, however irrational my reasoning, I am not allowed to do so to my children, even if I have brainwashed them into believing that modern pharmaceuticals are the devil's candy. Why shouldn't the same argument apply to Hadza children?

[Stark]

And there we end up with the stolen generation. This is why simple solutions are often wrong. If it were possible, I'd suggest giving them a century of controlled cultural development, but even that probably wouldn't work.

[Broomstick]

That argument has in fact been used - see Australia's "lost generations". The US also forcibly separated native families and sent the children to boarding schools for education and assimilation. The results have been mixed at best, and all too often ugly. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but past history does not make me optimistic.

It's not that primitive nomads are incapable of adapting to modern life - Waris Dirie, for example, was born into a family of illiterate Somali nomads following a relatively primitive lifestyle and is now a wealthy Austrian citizen and crusader for social reform. Wikipedia has a list of prominent Hmong-Americans, some of whom have gone from primitive conditions to advanced education or elected government officials in the US. I wish I had examples from the Lost Boys of Sudan - strictly speaking not primitives, but in many cases very young boys who fled on foot from Sudan to other countries, journeys taking years and depriving them of all formal education and family support - but most of them are still growing up. I expect, though, that we will have some very accomplished young men in their ranks in a few more years. John Dau is a former Lost Boy settled in Syracuse, New York in 2001 who has since earned an Associate's degree while working three jobs, located his mother and sister in Sudan and brought them to the US, is working on another degree, has founded three non-profit organizations to assist Sudanese immigrants to the US as well as people back in Sudan. That's a fuck of a lot to do in just 8 years, don't you think?

Bottom line - it's not that these primitives can't adapt, it's that they don't feel motivated to adapt. Once they have a personal motivation to accomplish something they are every bit as capable as everyone else, and sometimes more so than average. They aren't all success stories, of course, but the situation isn't hopeless, either. The problem is, in the case of the Hadza, that they don't see/comprehend how time is running out for them.

The San of Africa (Part of the Khoisan group, sometimes referred to as Bushmen, and natives of the Kalahari) have probably fared better than most hunter-gatherers. In the 1950's their condition was comparable to what the Hadza are today, largely stone-age with used of poisoned nails for arrowheads and the like. Most if not all were forcibly removed from the Kalahari and forced to practice agriculture all in the name of saving them. They have won some court cases opening the legal way for some of them to return to the Kalahari and resume their ancient way of life, but practical obstacles remain, not the least of which is a deterioration of hunter-gatherer survival skills. They also won a court case giving them royalties from the hoodia plant, part of their traditional pharmacopoeia and an appetite suppressant although they are having difficulty collecting said royalties from South Africa. Most of them still live in poverty. None live as full time hunter-gatherers, and for the most part not even as part-time hunter-gatherers. Quite a few have adopted western/modern African clothing, homes, vehicles, and send their children to formal schools when they can. They have managed to hang onto their identity and some aspects of the their language and culture. This was due in part to a man named John Marshall who married into the San as a young man (a VERY unusual circumstance!) and became part of their society and kinship networks. As he was an American by birth and educated as a westerner he was able to both convince the San that massive change was coming, understand them well enough to have some idea how to communicate the future problems and try to find ways to bring them into the modern world, and the language and cultural savy to deal with modern outsiders.

But really, lamenting that the Hadza and the San don't live as their ancestors did is rather like lamenting that the people of Britain no longer paint themselves blue with woad and run into battle naked (or nearly so). Cultures change. We might wax nostalgic about steam engines but no one seriously proposes that we toss out the diesel-electric train engine and turn back the clock. I used to live in a Chicago apartment that predated electrical lights. The piping for gas lightning still remained, but it was filled with electrical wiring. Likewise, modern cultures - including those of "primitives" - retains traces of the past but they are not the cultures of the past. In the future our cultures will retain traces of today, but will be different.

[PeZook]

But really, lamenting that the Hadza and the San don't live as their ancestors did is rather like lamenting that the people of Britain no longer paint themselves blue with woad and run into battle naked (or nearly so).

I don't think anybody in this thread said that, actually. It's pretty much obvious that they will have to adapt, the main questions are "How to help them?", "Will they even want our help?" and of course "Should we force them to accept help even if they don't want it?"

What is hopeful is that they don't really reject technology: The NatGeo reporter was even asked if he could give them guns to make hunting easier. Personally, I think that the biggest problems for such people are the laws, governance, rules and comparatively rigid structure modern society imposes upon its members. A Hadza sleeps as long as he wants, goes where he pleases and does whatever is on his mind right now: even something as simple as scheduling a doctor's appointment is probably going to be totally shocking. What do you mean the doctor won't wait two days for me to show up? Why should I appear on time when I have more interesting stuff to do?

Learning to use technology is comparatively simpler than changing your entire paradigm in this way.

[Sarevok]

I think biggest problem is very simple. These Hadza people are very poor and uneducated. They also live in Africa. If they gave up hunting what would they do ? Uneducated people doing menial labor in third world conditions are little more than slaves. So there is not much incentive to join glorious civilization where you dont have a place to live and nothing to eat. Hunter gatherer lifestyle may be harsh but life as a modern day paid serf working toiling in an African village also sucks.

[Winston Blake]

I think part of any solution would be an anthropological research project. This project would study and document their culture as thoroughly as possible. Notable features of language, rituals, routines, technology, with audio and video. A census perhaps. Capture all the scientific and historical value that you can. Then even if they die out it's not a total loss. If I was in charge of handling the issue, I'd get that out of the way first.

[Zixinus]

I think part of any solution would be an anthropological research project. This project would study and document their culture as thoroughly as possible. Notable features of language, rituals, routines, technology, with audio and video. A census perhaps. Capture all the scientific and historical value that you can. Then even if they die out it's not a total loss. If I was in charge of handling the issue, I'd get that out of the way first.

While a good point, it doesn't resolve any of the ethical issues, now does it? You only have preserved a culture, you haven't saved one or more importantly, not saved its people.

EDIT: Unless you can get the researchers to do more, like have them talk about the "outside" world and why it is important to be schooled.

[Sarevok]

I think part of any solution would be an anthropological research project. This project would study and document their culture as thoroughly as possible. Notable features of language, rituals, routines, technology, with audio and video. A census perhaps. Capture all the scientific and historical value that you can. Then even if they die out it's not a total loss. If I was in charge of handling the issue, I'd get that out of the way first.

The biggest problem would be writing down any of the cultural relics like myths, songs, stories etc in an accurate form. They may not have an alphabet like many small ethnic groups so first you need a team of linguists to devise one.

[Duckie]

Hardly. You just write the language in the IPA, like it's always been done, and get the person who knows their language to write down the myths. Or you use a tape recorder. It won't be that hard, the only problem is that there's always thousands of languages dying so there's not enough linguists to preserve them all*.

This is done tons of times in linguistics. One notable time was with Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker of Ubykh (Tuaqhe, really, in his own language, but everyone calls them Ubykh after a french misspelling of Webekh, the name for the people in Adyghe ) speaker. A few linguists recorded a significant amount of his language's (horrifically complex) phonology and grammar and structure and his culture's myths and stories in audio.

*Globalisation and Englishization or Mandarinisation of languages, while regrettable since they're neat, is not historically unheard of (how many people today speak Etruscan?) and is not and will not result in a single world language, nor the destruction of all other languages. But that's a topic for another day.

[Broomstick]

I think part of any solution would be an anthropological research project. This project would study and document their culture as thoroughly as possible. Notable features of language, rituals, routines, technology, with audio and video. A census perhaps. Capture all the scientific and historical value that you can. Then even if they die out it's not a total loss. If I was in charge of handling the issue, I'd get that out of the way first.

While a good point, it doesn't resolve any of the ethical issues, now does it? You only have preserved a culture, you haven't saved one or more importantly, not saved its people.

EDIT: Unless you can get the researchers to do more, like have them talk about the "outside" world and why it is important to be schooled.

While I was in the waiting room during my Other Half's recent surgery I ran across the Nat Geo in question. The pictures were very informative, and some notable items in them were never mentioned.

The only way you're going to get the Hadza to modernize is to convince them there is something in it for them. Now in the pictures I noted that the Hadza all seem to utilize certain items that they couldn't possibly have made themselves. Specifically, these people are all wearing beads, and they're all wearing clothes of some sort. Admittedly, these are minimal in nature, but between that and their nails for arrows and no doubt one or two other items it is clear they ARE willing to adopt the fruits of higher technology.

Somehow, you have to convince them that it is to their benefit to make changes.

It's a tall order, I don't know how you'd go about it, and there is no guarantee of success.

[Lusankya]

Part of the difficulty with that is that the benefits of modernisation seem so obvious to us that it would be difficult for us to explain it to them. Imagine someone going up to the Hazda and saying, "Well, if you modernise then you can get a house with a television and a nice car and your kids can take ballet lessons." Or to use a different example: it is not always possible to convince people of the benefit they'll receive from having a needle full of a weakened form of a disease poked in to their skin, even though they are currently experiencing the benefit of just such an act. What guarantee is there that we can convince the Hazda?

The best way to convince them, I would think, would be to enlist some of the Hazda with some education (the article mentioned there were a few - not many, but some, at least) so that they can do the convincing. Not only would they be more likely to be accepted, due to not being outsiders, but they'd also have a better idea of what would be appealing about modernisation from a Hazda perspective.

[Broomstick]

You can't assume that the formally educated Hadza are not considered outsiders - they may or may not be.

I suppose you could offer them a trip outside their lands. Or perhaps medical care for injuries would be a good start.

I think the approach is also important - not with the "you're dirty savages and your culture is useless" approach all too often used in the past, but the people going to learn about them might also introduce them to modern ideas. The trick is to figure out what the Hadza would value from our culture.

[Sarevok]

Part of the difficulty with that is that the benefits of modernisation seem so obvious to us that it would be difficult for us to explain it to them. Imagine someone going up to the Hazda and saying, "Well, if you modernise then you can get a house with a television and a nice car and your kids can take ballet lessons." Or to use a different example: it is not always possible to convince people of the benefit they'll receive from having a needle full of a weakened form of a disease poked in to their skin, even though they are currently experiencing the benefit of just such an act. What guarantee is there that we can convince the Hazda?

Well as I said before what can a group virtually illiterate, penniless, landless people do but beg on the streets or work in horrible conditions ? It's hard to convince anyone after showing pictures of planes, cars, air conditioned houses and then admitting they can't have it because they have no money.

[Broomstick]

You're assuming they'd want any of that. For all you know, what the Hadza would most want are more beads, Gucci handbags (to carry stuff, ya know?), rifles and night vision goggles for hunting. What do people who live outside all their lives want with airplanes and air conditioning?

[Lusankya]

I think Saverok expresses the point I tried to express (poorly) in my last post: we take the fact that these things are "good" for granted. I think people often forget the massive amounts of social conditioning that we undergo. The fact that we consider 500m tall huts to be... well, not "normal", but more of a feat along the lines of "nicest spear" than "crazy unnatural thing" should give some indication that our environment is not natural.

If I were a hunter-gatherer, I'd have to be persuaded pretty strongly of the benefits of living in a society where I was tied to one place all the time, had to pay attention to time to the minute and had to follow nonsensical rules like "don't pick your nose where people can see you", "put your rubbish in that box" and "shuffle these papers around and make marks on them before we believe that you'll keep your promise".

I know that in Australia, some of the more successful (relatively speaking) aborigines were ones who assisted in cattle droving. Since the cattle needed a large area to be herded in, the aborigines' skills of living off the land made them useful in that respect, and their tracking skills were utilised to find lost people, etc. I recall that a few of the communities that have gotten better in recent years have also done so through founding cattle stations. One prospect that we need to consider is that we don't have to convince them to adopt our culture - we just need to convince them to adopt a lifestyle that capable of coexistence with ours, and if we could encourage them to stop being nomadic hunter-gatherers and become nomadic herders instead, then it would a far less drastic change to their lifestyle, which (theoretically) would be easier for them to adapt to. Of course, they might not be able to remain nomadic herders indefinitely either, but such a lifestyle would give them animal husbandry skills which would actually be useful if their tribe ever became sedentary.

You can't assume that the formally educated Hadza are not considered outsiders - they may or may not be.

Well, I wasn't necessarily assuming they wouldn't be considered outsiders - hell, I feel like an outsider in Australian society half the time, because I'm more emotionally suited to China, so I know that being born in a culture doesn't necessarily make you part of the in-group. They're probably less likely to be considered outsiders than non-Hazda, though, and they could shed some light on what attracted them to our culture (which may or may not be useful for the general population).

[Shroom Man 777]

Basically, to change them we've got to go with an "anthropological approach" rather than by plucking them into the 21st century? Makes sense. That approach would use "how did hunter-gatherers historically settle down and form civilized societies" as the blueprint of "uplifting" these cultures and societies, and having them transition to herding societies or agricultural societies certainly makes sense and makes the change more gradual and less shocking and whacked.