About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more]
Weekly Newsletter
Mongabay will never distribute your email address or send spam.
Share
Oscar Mishaja, rainforest guide in the Tambopata region. (Photo by R. Butler)
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Tropical forests have been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years, and human activities on a traditional
scale may actually help promote forest diversity. Indigenous peoples rarely over-exploit the resource that provides
them with their livelihood, and they carefully practice rotational farming and sustainably harvest forest products and
game. Yet these indigenous peoples often take the brunt of the blame for the destruction of the rainforests. Creating
reserves has sometimes evicted these traditional peoples from their lands and in some places national park rangers
unfairly restrict their activities. Less so today, but frequently in the past, tribal peoples were disregarded
when national government granted concessions to foreign oil, mining, and logging firms on their traditional lands.
Indigenous people have missed out on most of the benefits garnered by forest developers.
Indigenous people have intimate knowledge of the forest ecosystem around them. Instead of looking as them with
condescension, scientists and agronomists must come to view indigenous people as an asset to forest use and conservation.
"Responsible" palm oil producers pledge not to develop endangered Sumatra rainforest
(11/13/2009) Members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an initiative developing criteria to improve the environmental performance of palm oil, agreed to declare the Bukit Tigapuluh Ecosystem in Sumatra a 'high conservation value area'. The decision, voted on by RSPO General Assembly members at the group's annual meeting earlier this month in Kuala Lumpur, effectively bans oil palm development of the endangered forest ecosystem by RSPO members.
How rainforest shamans treat disease
(11/10/2009) Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long documented the extensive use of medicinal plants by indigenous shamans in places around the world, including the Amazon. But few have reported on the actual process by which traditional healers diagnose and treat disease. A new paper, published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, moves beyond the cataloging of plant use to examine the diseases and conditions treated in two indigenous villages deep in the rainforests of Suriname. The research, which based on data on more than 20,000 patient visits to traditional clinics over a four-year period, finds that shamans in the Trio tribe have a complex understanding of disease concepts, one that is comparable to Western medical science. Trio medicine men recognize at least 75 distinct disease conditions—ranging from common ailments like fever [këike] to specific and rare medical conditions like Bell's palsy [ehpijanejan] and distinguish between old (endemic) and new (introduced since contact with the outside world) illnesses. In an interview with mongabay.com, Lead author Christopher Herndon, currently a reproductive medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco, says the findings are a testament to the under-appreciated healing prowess of indigenous shaman.
Google partners with Amazon tribe
(10/29/2009) The story of an indigenous Amazon tribe that has embraced technology in its fight to protect its homeland and culture is now highlighted as a layer in Google Earth.
Crisis averted for now, Peruvian natives will meet with Hunt Oil
(10/28/2009) Indigenous groups in a dispute with Hunt Oil, over the company performing seismic tests their land, have scheduled a meeting with the Texas based oil corporation, according to Reuters.
Will Ecuador's plan to raise money for not drilling oil in the Amazon succeed?
(10/27/2009) Ecuador's Yasuni National Park is full of wealth: it is one of the richest places on earth in terms of biodiversity; it is home to the indigenous Waorani people, as well as several uncontacted tribes; and the park's forest and soil provides a massive carbon sink. However, Yasuni National Park also sits on wealth of a different kind: one billion barrels of oil remain locked under the pristine rainforest.
