Saving the Earth

Cultural Survival of Indigenous Peoples

Globalization, population growth and the triumph of capitalism are threatening almost every indigenous, non-industrial culture with extinction. Of the six to seven thousand languages spoken on the Earth today, almost half are spoken by fewer than three thousand native speakers. Some tongues are known by only one or two living persons.

The books listed below are passionate and articulate descriptions of the crisis facing indigenous peoples today, and describe particular examples of cultures struggling for survival. They tell of kinship systems, worldviews, art and craft and custom, languages and writing systems that add to the amazing diversity of human culture.

Recommended Books on Cultural Survival of Indigenous Peoples

In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
Jerry Mander

Mander's book is an angry protest against the uncritical adoption of technology, the expansion of capitalism, and the centralization of political power. He warns that these trends will lead to the devastation of the earth's natural environment and native cultures. To avoid imminent environmental catastrophe, he contends that we must adopt the values of Native American cultures that regard the earth as sacred.
1992, Sierra Club Books

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh
Helena Norberg-Hodge

Author Norberg-Hodge first went to Ladakh in 1975 and found that these people of Northern India were genuinely and joyfully happy using their sustainable traditional economy based on trade and cooperation - not money. Then the world beat a path to their door and everything changed in less than two decades. Now there is poverty, unemployment, stress-related disease, women are devalued and people are ashamed of their "backward culture." This book is a must-read for every person concerned about the preservation of our planet and our species.
1992, Sierra Club Books

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Paul Hawken

Environmentalist Paul Hawken believes that we are in the midst of a world-changing rise of activist groups, all "working toward ecological sustainability and social justice." Neither ideological nor centralized, this coalescence of activism is a spontaneous and organic response to the recognition that environmental problems are social-justice problems. Hawken compares this gathering of forces to the human immune system as people are joining together to defend life on earth. Hopeful and inspiring. 
2007, Viking

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers
Richard B. Lee

Hunting and gathering peoples, including Kalahari Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, Eskimos, and Pygmies are extensively covered in this essential reference volume that is both accessible to the non-specialist and written by leading scholars. The book includes case studies of over fifty of the world's hunter-gathers, including their archaeological background, religion and world view, music and art, gender issues, health and nutrition, and contemporary rights.  
2004, Cambridge University Press

Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Rick Bass

This bittersweet account conveys Bass' profound appreciation for the immense, unblemished majesty of one of the few almost untouched landscapes on earth; an eye-opening understanding of the intimate spiritual and physical connection, stretching back 10,000 years between the scattered tribes and the migrant caribou; and an unexpected respect for how tribal elders and a young generation of activists in Arctic Village (pop. 150) have developed a media-savvy offense against predatory Alaskan politicians desperate to drill for a few month's worth of petroleum.  
2004, Sierra Club Books

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond

Pulitizer Prize-winning Diamond examines the geographic and environmental reasons why some societies, including the ancient Anasazi of the American Southwest and the early Viking colonies of Greenland as well as modern Rwanda, have fallen apart. An eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. 
2005, Penguin

Conservation Through Cultural Survival: Indigenous Peoples And Protected Areas
Stanley Stevens

For more than a century the establishment of natural parks and protected areas was a major threat to the survival of indigenous people. Today such tragic conflicts are being superceded by new alliances for conservation. This book assesses cutting-edge efforts to establish new kinds of protected areas which are based on partnerships with indigenous peoples. 
1997, Island Press

Cultural Ecology
Robert M. Netting

Anthropologist Netting, in this short, versatle book clearly and concisely illustrates the central concepts of cultural ecology. He presents illustrative ethnographic case studies of hunter-gather, pastoralist, and agricultural societies. Included is rich information on human-environment intervention, as illustrated by east African pastoralism and peasant cultivation in Switzerland.  
1986, Waveland Press

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler

This ambitious and accessible book is concerned with the growth, development and collapse of language communities and their cultures. Professor Ostler stresses the role of culture, commerce, and conquest in the rise and fall of languages. The rise of English to global status, Ostler argues, owes much to the economic prestige of the industrial revolution, but its future as a lingua franca may falter on demographic trends, such as booming birth rates in China. This stimulating book is a history of the world as seen through the spread and demise of languages.  
2006, Harper Perennial

Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th Edition
Raymond G. Gordon, Editor

Since its first edition in 1951, the editors of Ethnologue have been recording the existence, locales, users, growth and demise of languages around the globe. Part II consists of more than 200 pages of subtly colored maps showing language distribution and locations within countries.In our ever-flattening and connected world this fascinating and authoritative work provides an important overview of the challenges of cultural survival, with estimated numbers of surviving speakers of indigenous languages noted.  
2005, SIL International

First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and Their Futures
Jeffrey Sissons

Professor Sissons analyses first peoples from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. He addresses the painful colonial process of assimilation, which was from the indigenous perspective a violent separation of people from their culture and children from their families. He describes the ongoing challenge for urban indigenous people to maintain and strengthen ties with the older, rural communities from whence they came. He maintains that indigenous cultures worldwide are in the process of recovering what was lost in the process of colonization - their children, land, and sovereignty.  
2005, Reaktion Books

Forest Dwellers, Forest Protectors: Indigenous Models for International Development
Richard Reed

Focusing on a key issue affecting indigenous and ethnic groups worldwide, this book discusses the Guarani of Parguay and their role in ecosystem protection and global trade.  
1996, Allyn & Bacon

The Forest People
Colin Turnbull

This anthropology classic describes the life of the Embuti Pygmies of Africa's Ituri Forest with color, exuberance, detail and humor. It is a refreshing look at a threatened people who have suffered from exploitation, and views life and the world through the eyes of individual tribal members.
1987, Touchstone

A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival
Ken S. Coates

This book spans the period from the pivotal migrations which saw the peopling of the world to the present, and examines the processes by which tribal peoples established themselves as separate from surplus-based and more material societies. It considers the impact of the policies of domination and colonization which brought dramatic change to indigenous cultures.  
2004, Palgrave Macmillan

Handbook of Language & Ethnic Identity
Joshua A. Fishman

This comprehensive introduction explores the connection between language and ethnicity, and is a useful contribution toward understanding the diverse ways in which these issues interact. For scholarly reference as well as a resource for the lay reader. 
2001, Oxford University Press

The Harmless People
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

This account of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, nomadic hunter-gathers whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. In this updated edition we are shown what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization - with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alchol - swept over them. A powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as provocative criitique of our own.  
1989, Vintage

Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Catherine Panter-Brick

Analyses of the ecology, biology and society of past and present-day hunter-gatherers are at the core of this interdisciplinary volume. The evolution and history, demography, technology, social organization, art, and language of many diverse groups are described.
2001, Cambridge University Press

Linguistic Imperialism
Robert Phillipson

This book explores the contemporary phenomenon of English as an international language, and sets out to analyze how and why the language has become so dominant. It examines the historical spread of English, the role it plays in Third World countries, and the ideologies transmitted through the English language.
1992, Oxford University Press

The Old Way: A Story of the First People
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Anthropologist Thomas has lived among the !Kung San of Africa and sees them as noble people. Her narration is as intimate as if she were sharing with friends her intricate knowledge of the plants and animals of the Kalahari. Looking back over a lifetime of contact with this indigenous group, Thomas concludes with the disheartening truth that these people now struggle to coexist in a world rocked and ravaged by homogeneous modernity, poverty, alcoholism and AIDS. A touching and compelling book.  
2007, Picador

Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Globalization
Jerry Mander

This book documents the momentous collision of worldviews that pits the forces of economic globalization against the Earth's surviving indigenous peoples. Since many of the planet's dwindling resources are located on lands inhabited by native communities, they are now the direct target of giant global corporations who desperately need them to fuel their own unsustainable growth. In first-hand reports Paradigm Wars details the devastating impacts of extractive industries and bioprospecting, the degrading of cultural artifacts and languages, and even the damage done by some well-meaning conservation groups. The book highlights how indigenous communities are strongly resisting this onslaught, often with amazing success.
2006, Sierra Club Books

What Place for Hunter-Gatherers in Millennium Three?
T. Headland and D. Blood

This book takes a hard look at the traumatic cultural changes that our planet's remaining hunter-gatherer societies experienced in the twentieth century, and the precarious future that is about to engulf them in the twenty-first century. Case studies presented here include the central African pygmies, the San Bushmen, and the Agta Negritos. This book helps greatly to focus our attention on the issues that matter, insisting on the preservation of the human rights of proud former foraging peoples.
2002, SIL International

The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels

This massive volume brings together an encyclopedic collection of fascinating information. General articles on the relationship of writing to language, linquistics, and decipherment accompany page after page devoted to every script extant from Egyptian and Chinese scripts to Ogham, Cree, and Mandarin. A beautiful and useful reference work.
1996, Oxford University Press

Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms
Akira Nakanishi

A compact catalog of the major writing systems in the world. For inclusion in this book the languages must be in current use on newspapers, stamps or currency. This excellent reference work organizes the writing systems geographically with comprehensive maps to illustrate where they are used.  
1990, Charles E. Tuttle