A man walks through the desert with nothing but the shirt on his back in search of water so he and his family do not die from dehydration. As he’s walking with the sun beating down on him relentlessly, he spots a clearing with bushes and moist ground. Digging through the sand with nothing but his hands, he finally finds water. He is extremely thirsty and he is not surprised that his tribe is going through another drought. With no modern tools to use, he is forced to use a straw and an ostrich egg to transport the water back to his tiny hut. The most efficient way of transporting the water quickly from the sand to ostrich egg is to suck in the water with one straw, put it in his mouth, and then spit it out in another straw that leads to the ostrich egg. This is just one of the everyday problems that the Bushmen of Kalahari are faced with. These people are located in South Africa and most of them are located in Botswana.
Originally from Botswana, the Bushmen are scattered over most many parts of South Africa and are believed to be descendants from early Stone Age ancestors. There are many tribes that have dissipated over many decades but not the San. Compared to other cultures around the world, they are one of the oldest indigenous tribes still alive and trying to maintain their lifestyle (San 2). Many of their earliest records of evidence of survival are songs and rock paintings on the wall of caves. Unfortunately, over the years the San have been forced to live in the desert of Kalahari by farmers looking for lush land and the Bantu tribes. Farmers are now putting up fences on, what used to be where the San occupied, but is now private property. Their indigenous culture has been around for many decades which means that some San ...
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Showered by myths and mystery, not knowing the correct spelling of Sacagawea’s name or her correct date of birth. Her story still has been told many times throughout history. Not learning to read or write, she was well known for assisting the explorers Lewis and Clark on their expedition, in survey of the Louisiana Purchase land. She became a valuable guide to the expedition, interpreting between tribes in her region. Without the help of Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark might not have been as successful, but because of her efforts, it made claiming the newfound land for the United States impossible for other countries.
In his book “Cattle Brings Us to Our Enemies”, McCabe does a 16-year stint in East Africa, specifically in Northern Kenya, doing research on the Turkana. He does this through STEP, the South Turkana Ecosystem Project. In “Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies”, McCabe follows four families through his years in Kenya and notes how they live in a very demanding environment. He uses ecological data to analyze how and why the Turkana people make decisions about their everyday life. McCabe focuses on four main areas of study: how the Turkana survive and adapt to a stressful environment by nomadic pastoralism, how the techniques used to extract resources and manage livestock modify the environment, the effects of the environmental and cultural practices have on
In the Maasai society, genital cutting is a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, and both men and women go through the process of circumcision. As society ages, opinions on cultural norms change. This is true for the Maasai society, where the views on female circumcision have and are changing. Female circumcision is classified into three categories, and defined by the World Health Organization, Type I is the removal of the foreskin on the vagina, Type II is the removal of the clitoris, and Type III is the removal of all external genitalia with the stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening (“New Study”). Traditionally in the Maasai society, women underwent Type II or Type III circumcision. Written in 1988, “The Initiation of a Maasai Warrior,” by Tepilit Ole Saitoi, and is an autobiographical story of Saitoti’s circumcision in his initiation to a warrior. Though his story mainly focuses on the male circumcision part of the Maasai society, women’s circumcision and other basic traditions are discussed. Throughout the short story, the topic of circumcision and the rite of passage, both long- standing traditions in the Maasai society, are central themes.
Marjorie Shostak, an anthropologist who had written this book had studies the !Kung tribe for two years. Shostak had spent the two years interviewing the women in the society. The !Kung tribe resided n the Dobe area of Northwest Botswana, that’s infused with a series of clicks, represented on paper by exclamation points and slashes. Shostak had studied that the people of the tribe relied mostly on nuts of the mongongo, which is from an indigenous tree that’s part of their diet.
Although the !Kung San of southern Africa differ greatly from the people in the west African nation of Mali, both areas share similar problems. Both suffer from diseases, illnesses, malnutrition, and having to adapt to the ever changing and advancing cultures around them. What I found to be the most significant problem that is shared between both areas is that the people suffered from a lack of education. In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine A. Dettwyler, there is a lack of education in proper nutritional practices, taking care of children and newborns, and basic medical knowledge and practices. The Dobe Ju/’hoansi have recently started putting in schools to help children receive an education to help them have better success with the surrounding peoples and culture, but there is a lack of attendance in these schools. There are also many education issues in proper sexual practices that would help stop the spread of HIV and AIDS, in a place in the world were theses illnesses are at surprisingly high levels.
These tribes were extremely smart people. They did not build out in the middle of nowhere by themselves. Many villages were created. This offered many properties to the cultural lifestyle of these tribes. The village offered significantly more protection from outsiders as well as almost forcing people of the community to band together and become a close knit unit. These villages consisted of multiple longhouses built in the middle with a palisade wall around the outside such that people could not get in from the outside without coming through the doors. This w...
Wade Davis’ article, Among the Waorani, provides much of the content brought to light in Nomads of the Rainforest. His article delves deeper into their culture and motivations allowing one to more fully understand their beliefs, relationships, and savagery. Both the documentary and article attempt to create a picture of their close-knit relationships and their desire f...
So now you have met the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. You’ve learned about their lives, seen their journeys, and traveled with them from the past to the present. In all I hope this paper gives a greater understanding of the history and a look into another culture to broaden minds.
The translation of the Quapaw name means “downstream people”. The tribe got the name after splitting from the Dehgiha tribe and moving down the Mississippi river. There were two tribal divisions within the tribe. The two divisions were named Han-ka or the Earth People and the ti-zho or the Shy People. The total number of clans with in the Quapaw tribe is 21, some of the tribal clan names include; Elk, Eagle, Small Bird, Turtle, and Fish. For my five words I chose; Bitter- ppahi, chicken- sikka, gray fox- to-ka xo-te, jay bird- ti-ta ni-ka, star- mi-ka- x’e. Before I listened to the audio file of the pronunciation I tried to pronounce it on my own; many of my pronunciations
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They are outcasts…Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance…We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. (Kipling 30)
Several kinds of baboons live in Africa and southwestern Arabia. These include the hamadryas baboon, which lives on plains and rocky hills of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and eastern Africa near the Red Sea, and the chacma baboon, which inhabits rocky regions and open woodlands in southern Africa. Olive baboons inhabit the Kekopey cattle ranch located near the town of Gilgil, Kenya. “The central part of the ranch consists of open grassland studded with occasional patches of bushy shrub, scattered thornbush, and small groves of giant fever trees” (Smuts 17). They eat a wide variety of foods including insects, flowers, leaves, fruits of bushes and herbs, and most significant of all, the grass itself. “Baboons eat the green blades of grass during the rainy seasons and dig for corms-the underground storage organ of sedge grasses-when the ranch is dry” (Smuts 17-18). They can carry food in pouches inside their cheeks.
On the second documentary on the Kingdoms of Africa, historian Gus Cacely-Hayford makes his way to the southern part of Africa to learn about the fierce kingdom of the Zulu Nation. He starts by saying that on January 22nd, 1879, 200 British troops were defeated by the Zulus as he was expressing how influential the Zulu nation was as they were one of the most powerful kingdoms in Africa. In the 1700’s, there was once a cattle farmer that had a vision on how to unite the neighboring chiefdoms and transformed it into a great empire, and his name was Shaka.