WUNRN
Women's Feature Service - http://www.wfsnews.org/
TRIBAL WOMEN FROM AROUND THE WORLD -
GLOBAL SURVIVAL SNAPSHOTS
This special photographic essay put together by Survival International (www.survivalinternational.org), a human rights organisation that campaigns for the rights of indigenous tribal peoples, reflects not only on the many tragedies that tribal women have endured, but also profiles some of the courageous and inspiring women who are fighting for their lands to be returned to them and for their fundamental human rights. Text by Joanna Eede.
Photo credit: GMB
Akash / www.gmb-akash.com
Since
Today, they are also
one of the most persecuted tribal peoples. They are almost outnumbered by
settlers and brutalised by the military. In one single act of genocide,
hundreds of men, women and children were burned alive in their bamboo homes.
Sexual brutality
against Jumma women and young girls is also alarmingly high: since August 2012,
at least 12 Jumma women and girls have been subjected to sexual violence,
although the number may well be higher; rape often goes unreported due to its
social stigma. According to Sophie Grig of Survival International, little has
been done to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. This leaves Jumma
women and girls increasingly vulnerable, as their attackers act with impunity.
“LET THEM CALL US
PRIMITIVE”
Photo credit:
Survival International
The Bushmen are the
original people of southern
In the 1980s, it was
discovered that the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) lies in the middle of
the richest diamond fields in the world. Between 1997 and 2002 almost all
Bushmen were taken from their homes in the CKGR and driven to eviction camps
outside the reserve, where they were not only deprived of their ways of life,
but humiliated by endemic racist attitudes. How can you have a Stone Age
creature continue to live in the age of computers? asked
Some Bushman women
and their families have now returned to the reserve, but harassment and
intimidation continue. In January 2013, reports emerged that some of their
children had been arrested for possessing antelope meat.
“Let them call us
primitive. Let them call us Stone Age people. Our way of life suits us. We have
seen their development, and we don’t like it,” said a Bushman woman.
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‘
Photo credit: Alok
Das
Boa Senior from the
Andaman Islands in the
Boa Senior died in
2010. Nearly 55,000 years of thoughts and ideas – the collective history of an
entire people – died with her.
“They don’t
understand me. What can I do?” Boa Senior asked before she died. “If they don’t
speak to me now, what will they do once I’ve passed away? Don’t forget our language,
grab hold of it.”
The Jarawa face a
similar fate to Boa Senior unless a trunk road that cuts through their forest
land is closed permanently to settlers, poachers, loggers and tourists. Before
the Indian Supreme Court passed an interim order in January 2013 banning
tourists from using the Andaman Trunk Road, hundreds travelled along that road
every day in the hope of seeing the isolated Jarawa tribe.
Since 1993, Survival
International has been campaigning to ensure that the road is closed and the
policy of minimum intervention adhered to. In a major blow to the campaign,
however, the Supreme Court reversed the order in March 2013, opening the door
for the exploitative ‘human safaris’ to start again.
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THIS ADIVASI TEACHER
WANTS JUSTICE
Photo credit: Tehelka
2011
Soni Sori is an
adivasi (tribal) school teacher and mother of three young children from
Chhattisgarh state in
Soni has now been
imprisoned for 17 months, with little hope of bail – accused of a crime for
which there is little evidence. “Giving me electric shocks, stripping me naked,
shoving stones inside me – is this going to solve the Naxal (Maoist) problem?”
wrote Soni in a letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Dr Jo Woodman of Survival
International, said, Soni Sori has suffered horrific abuse at the hands of the
police and remains in their custody. But what is this really about? The state
of Chhattisgarh’s desperation to silence those who speak out, while atrocities
continue in the hidden war in
“I want to go back
and help my people,” said Soni Sori. “I want to use my education to empower
them. If we don’t learn to speak for ourselves, tribal people will be wiped
out.”