#native peoples
“To claim that hunter-gatherers perceive their environment as a “wilderness”—in contrast to a domesticity that one would be hard put to define—is to deny that they are aware that, in the course of time, they modify the local ecology by their techniques of subsistence. Over recent years, for example, Aboriginals have been protesting to the Australian government against its use of the term “wilderness” to qualify the territories that they occupy and by so doing frequently justifying the creation of natural reserves that they do not want. The notion of a “wilderness,” with all its connotations of terra nullius, of an original and preserved naturalness, an ecosystem to be protected against the degradations liable to be introduced by human beings, certainly runs contrary to the Aboriginals’ own concept of the environment and the multiple relations that they have established with it, and above all it ignores the subtle transformations that they have produced in it. As a leader of the Jawoyn of the Northern Territory said, when part of their land was converted into a natural reserve, “Nitmiluk national park is not a wilderness…, it is a human artefact. It is a land constructed by us over tens of thousands of years through our ceremonies and ties of kinship, through fire and through hunting.” Clearly, for the Aboriginals, as for other hunting peoples, the opposition between wild and domesticated is not very meaningful, not only because of their lack of domesticated animals but above all because they inhabit the entire environment as a spacious and familiar dwelling place, rearranged to suit successive generations with such discretion that the touch of its inhabitants becomes almost imperceptible.”— Philippe Descola - Beyond Nature and Culture
In many ‘Spaghetti Western’ films, a broad sub-genre of American Western films that emerged during the 1960s in the midst of Sergio Leone’s film-making success, many of the vuglar roles Native Americans were hired to act in forced them into offensive portrayals with little attention paid to authenticity, with emphasis only placed on painting them as “simple savages.” As a result, many American filmmakers paid little attention to actually translating the indigenous languages for what they were saying on screen. As a result, many actors were able to say what they really felt.
Reel Injun, Documentary (2009)
it’s on netflix right now for anyone that wants to catch it
This is such a good documentary, guys. I try and convince all my students to watch it. It was made by Neil Diamond, a Cree filmmaker, and it’s an utterly fascinating look at portrayals of indigenous peoples in North American cinema.
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Archaeologists discover ancient Maya city at Mexico construction site | Mexico | The Guardian
Researchers estimate the city, which features the Maya Puuc style of architecture, to have been occupied from 600 to 900 CE
Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient Maya city filled with palaces, pyramids and plazas on a construction site of what will become an industrial park near Mérida, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.
The site, called Xiol, has features of the Maya Puuc style of architecture, archaeologists said, which is common in the southern Yucatán peninsula but rare near Mérida.
“We think more than 4,000 people lived around here,” said Carlos Peraza, one of the archaeologists who led the excavation of the city, estimated to have been occupied from 600 to 900 CE.
“There were people from different social classes … priests, scribes, who lived in these great palaces, and there were also the common people who lived in small buildings,” Peraza said.
Researchers also located nearby burial grounds of adults and children, who were interred with obsidian and flint tools, offerings and other belongings. …
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For more information: http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/u-s-army-corps-says-no-plans-for-forcibly-removing-standing-rock-water-protectors/
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