Time to ditch the harmful myth of the 'noble' hunter-gatherer

[Judi Lynn]

Alice Rudge
Instead of fetishising them, we should be listening to how environmental destruction is acutely damaging their lives

Mon 2 Dec 2019 01.30 EST Last modified on Mon 2 Dec 2019 12.41 EST

A boatload of tourists arrives at the homes of Batek hunter-gatherers in Malaysia. At the request of the non-Batek tour guides, Batek people hurriedly hide their televisions, radios and mobile phones. “Tourists don’t like to see these,” they explain.

As an anthropologist who has conducted field research with Batek people for many years, I have become familiar with these common expectations placed on hunter-gatherers.

It’s difficult to say exactly how many hunter-gatherers there are in the world. There is a general lack of demographic data, and the boundary between who is and isn’t considered a hunter-gatherer isn’t always neat.

They are also diverse, for example from the Batek of Malaysia to the Mbendjele of Congo-Brazzaville, and the Agta of the Philippines. Their practices may vary, yet popular expectations of what they should be like are fixed.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/02/ditch-harmful-myth-noble-hunter-gatherer

[wnylib]

1. True. The "noble savage" notion is just as

bigoted as the "just plain savage" view of these people.

Bottom line - they are people, with a range of behaviors similar to our own that we see more easily in others than in ourselves.