Harriet,

Every case needs to be considered in its context and sweeping
generalizations avoided. However, are you familiar with Ralph N. H.
Bulmer's ethnozoological reports on the Kalam of the Papua New Guinea
highlands or Chris Healey's analyses of the bird feather trade. In these
cases, as I recall the local people have developed a highly elaborated
indigenous knowledge of their resource base and have not seriously
degraded their local environments. It is true that large areas of the
highlands have been deforested, but elsewhere tracks of forest have been
preserved along with the valued resources sought there. Do you know of
any systematic comparative analysis of these patterns? To what extent
might radical deforestation (as opposed to the essential opening of
gardens and village sites without which there would be no human
occupation) be a consequence of the positive feedback cycles fueled by
sweet potato-pig-competitive feasting described for the Tsembaga by
Rappaport (with sweetpotatoes and manioc as primary pig fodder, both
introduced from America post 1500)?

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, Harriet Whitehead wrote:

> Another anthropologist tuning in here. I have acquired a certain
> scepticism about the line that small-scale indigenous people typically
> live in harmony with their environment since my experience in Papua New
> Guinea, but am willing to concede there may be a lot of cultural variance
> on this issue. The native North Americans are always most touted in this
> regard, and I am inclined to give them some credit, though I wonder if
> the agricultural societies were as ecologically correct as the hunter
> gatherers. Meanwhile in the part of Papua New Guinea where I lived -
> among very small scale horticulturalist-hunters, I could detect no
> ecological savvy whatsoever. People were eager to import any form of more
> effective hunting technology - even highly wasteful forms - as long as it
> increased their hunting score. They laughed at all counter-arguments, and
> attributed the virtual disappearance of two species of tree kangaroo and
> the decline of game mammals more generally (which they noticed) to the
> alternations in their (human) burial practices. They were unwilling to
> believe that if a timber company came and cut down their "bush" it
> wouldn't just grow back the same way it was in a few years. I could go
> on, but summing it up, they showed exactly the same naievete as peoples
> of the industrialized world until very recently. Now admittedly, in their
> aboriginal state - before there were shotguns and slingshots to be had,
> before there were timber companies available to buy up the forest, and
> before there was western medicine to abet the population explosion -
> their impact on their environment was less. They had no choice in that.
> And less doesn't mean non-existent. No matter where you trek in the
> Central Mountain Ranges, homeland of these tiny groups, you will find for
> the most part advanced secondary regrowth forest, not primary forest: no
> people for miles around, just their trace. Villages have cycled through
> in the hallowed aboriginal past, bush has been cut down (for gardens and
> firewood), then people have moved on.
> Mind you, I love these people very dearly, and take every chance
> I can to get back and visit them. It saddens me too that without their
> 'ecological mystique' people of the developed world lose interest in them
> or their rights. But I can't participate in perpetuating the great myth
> of ecological correctness in simple tribal peoples. It just ain't true
> everywhere.
>
> Harriet Whitehead
> Anthropology WSU
>