EuropaWorld 16/2/2001 To Let Them Be Or Not To Let Them Be

As New Research Warns of the Threat to Many of the World's Ancient Indigenous Cultures and their Associated Cultural, Lingual and Bio-Diversity, EuropaWorld asks 'Can they be Preserved?'

We Europeans no longer attack ethnic civilisations at the point of a sword, practising massacre and genocide in the name of Christianity or colonisation. We no longer plunder or destroy art treasures belonging to so-called 'uncivilised' people, practising a form of artistic vandalism simply because we cannot be bothered to appreciate or to understand.

Nevertheless we continue to oppress divergence. Through majority languages such as English or Spanish, through the ubiquitous power of radio and television, air travel, the invasion of habitat, through global culture we are in the process of destroying ancient ways of life as efficienly and perhaps even more effectively than our more brutal ancestors.The question arises are we right to do so?

A report recently published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights the extent of this destruction by analysing the fate of the world's minority languages. According to UNEP, there are between 5,000 and 7,000 languages spoken in the world today - the vast majority indigenous tongues. Approximately 2,500, they believe, are on the brink of extinction.
Each language represents a different cultural group with a specific way of life and a unique identity. Diversity of language in Europe pales into insignificance compared to other continents - for example, Asia and Africa between them account for approximately 60% of the world's languages. Nearly 700 tongues are spoken in Indonesia alone. But many are under threat, with fewer than 1,000 native speakers remaining.

Often these are tribal communities; the mother tongue may only be spoken by the older members and increasingly shunned by the young who want to break out into the wider world. Prospects for preserving such tongues are bleak. Over the next 100 years, 90 per cent of the world's languages will have become extinct or virtually extinct, say some researchers.

If all that were being lost were language, this perhaps would not matter. There are no native speakers of Latin today, or ancient Greek - and yet our knowledge about these languages is better than many modern ones. Language can always be recorded in one form or another. What is really being lost when a language dies out is what that language represents - a unique lifestyle and culture adapted to a way of life in a particular corner of the world. Thus an indigenous group - defined by its language - may hold unique knowledge about natural habitats and the plant and animal life within them. Integral to many indigenous cultures are also secrets of how to manage these habitats in environmentally friendly, sustainable ways.

For example, tribes in Tanzania, lacking artificial fertilizers and modern irrigation systems, find and encourage termite mounds to boost the fertility and moisture content of the soil. The Turkana tribe of Kenya plan their crop planting around an intimate knowledge of the behaviour of frogs and some bird species, identified as 'prophets of rain'. Native farmers of the Andean mountains, using an ancient system of terraces, canals and raised fields have found a way to produce crops like potatoes and quinoa at an altitude of 4,000 metres and in the face of floods, droughts and severe frosts.

Such knowledge, handed down from generation to generation, has managed to support such tribes for decades. It is the result of an intimate relationship with nature borne out of years of observation and study. It is often as reliable - and frequently less destructive - than much of today's modern technology. By actively encouraging bio-diversity many of these communities are managing to sustain rich agricultural and medicinal resources.

That is the good news. On the other hand some indigenous peoples engage in practices which are at best dubious and at worst positively harmful either to themselves or to the natural environment. Child sacrifice, mercifully, has probably ceased though without external influence it might still be practised in the high Andes, but female genital mutilation is still widely practised. Other indigenous peoples cruelly trap rare animals for their fur or engage in other practices abhorrent to Europeans.

Even when the intention of the practice is benign the results may not be. UNEP itself quotes the example of the Aka pygmies of the Central African Republic who treat illnesses and ailments by making incisions on the patient's body which they fill with a mixture of palm butter and the charred, powdered, scales of the pangolin and Gabonese grey parrot. The incisions may boost the uptake of the medicine into the blood stream but the wounds can become infected. Would we risk such treatment for our children? To say nothing about the conservation of parrots. Should we be trying to preserve this practice or discourage it?

Indeed is it really feasible in the modern age to contemplate preserving tribes of indigenous peoples? The concept of the 'noble savage' may be romantic, but the savage is not so noble in a half-way house, living on government hand-outs in a shanty town on some species of 'reservation.' Unfortunately, it is not possible to 'pick and mix' preserving those aspects of indigenous culture that we like and dispensing with those we don't. The influence of modern technology, modern medicine, world communications is so strong as to make any concoction with an indigenous culture distinctly unviable.

That is not the same as saying that we do not have a lot to learn from certain ancient customs and practices. As Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's Executive Director, warns, losing a language and its cultural context is like burning a unique reference book of the natural world. It is a resource we can ill-afford to lose. Of course these languages and their associated customs and practices should be recorded before it is too late - but that is different from trying to preserve the culture in its entirety which could only be done by isolating it - something that is becoming virtually impossible in the modern world even if it were morally justifiable.