Adapting to change

One thing that has become abundantly clear from my previous posts is that change can’t be avoided in the Amazon. It looks as though the dreaded climate change will change the indigenous tribe’s spiritual homes, but more pressingly they will have to co-exist more and more with the outside world.

Before their lands were disturbed, the vast majority of Amazonian tribes pursued a ‘mixed subsistence economy with gardening complemented by gathering and hunting and/or fishing’ – (Sponsel, 1986) and exhibited relatively good nutrition and health, with Bergman (1980) going as far to call their diet ‘affluent’ due to the detailed knowledge of the ecosystem the tribes possess, allowing them to extract more from a land with a relatively low abundance of accessible food. This comment really struck me, as I have done so much research around this topic and I am so used to hearing such sad stories that this seems like an alien concept to me.

Sponsel’s article is detailed in their nutritional methods, and I urge you to read it in order to gain a better understanding of how the tribes live their lives, but also to comprehend the changes that they have already and will continue to face. One thing that stood out to me with the “Western World’s” impact on their lives, with nutrition and health seen to be declining with increasing acculturation. Whether this is down to space for agriculture, pollution of water sources (leading to declining fish populations) or new diseases, the impact of expansion into South America has had a catastrophic effect on its indigenous people.

Change is not new in the Amazon, and we can look to the past once again to see this. The indigenous Amazonians are understood to be living in the ‘inferior’ forest after competition pushed them out of the surrounding flood plains, yet they survived and even flourished. Yet as Sponsel argues, this change was unparalleled with the speed and magnitude of the change associated with Western culture.

After mulling this over I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the changes will still march forward, and that unless we can leave areas of the Amazon truly undisturbed then these people will have to adapt. They will adapt, and survive. Yet it is the culture that dies and although their ancestry will be one of indigenous people, they will be a completely different concept to those that have come before.

Just another quick thing before I sign off for tonight. A recent blog entry of Joanna Bold seemed oddly familiar to me. Take a look as the parallels of a society collapsing under the pressures of climate change and human impacts, albeit in a vastly different setting.

Bergman, R. W. (1980). Amazon economics: the simplicity of Shipibo indian wealth. University Microfilms.

Sponsel, L. E. (1986). Amazon ecology and adaptation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 67-97.