Sunday 2 June 2013

Forest People Occupation

Source google.com.pk
Forest People Occupation
although virtually all have been affected by the outside world. Instead of wearing traditional garb of loin cloths, most Amerindians wear western clothes, and many use metal pots, pans, and utensils for every day life. Some groups make handicrafts to sell to tourists, while others make routine trips to the city to bring foods and wares to market. Almost no native group obtains the majority of its food by traditional nomadic hunting and gathering. Nearly all cultivate crops, with hunting, gathering, and fishing serving as a secondary or supplementary food source. Usually a family has two gardens: a small house garden with a variety of plants, and a larger plantation which may be one hectare in area planted with bananas, manioc, or rice. These plantations are created through the traditional practice of slash and burn, a method of forest clearing that is not all that damaging to the forest if practice in the traditional manner where forest is used on a rotational basis and allowed to regenerate prior to re-clearing.
The far-flung Yanomani Indian tribe inhabits a France-sized area of forest in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. The Yanomani lived in virtual isolation after they were first documented by anthropologists in the 1920s until the 1970s when large numbers of gold miners invaded their territory. The miners introduced diseases, like measles, tuberculosis, the flu, and malaria to the resistant-deficient Yanomani, resulting in a serious decline in their population. Whereas an estimated 20,000 Yanomani lived in Brazil in the late 1970s, fewer than 9,000 existed in 1997. Violence between the Yanomani and the armed garimpeiros has also taken its toll resulting in many fatalities. Further, the garimpeiros disrupt the traditional Yanomani way of life by using mercury which pollutes local rivers, wildlife, and the Yanomani themselves. The miners' planes scare away the wildlife the Yanomani depend upon for food. The garimpeiros have also brought guns to the Yanomani meaning that inter-village disputes today are more likely to end in shootings.
Brazil struggled protecting the rights of the Yanomani, initiating several campaigns to oust the garimpeiros. In November 1997, the government began "Operation: Yanomani" to flush hundreds of gold miners off Yanomani lands. Instead of resorting the old tactics of simply deporting or arresting garimpeiros for a few days, the government used a new approach which it hopes will keep miners permanently off Yanomani lands. The plan established controls on aviation fuel and tightens the monitoring of airspace to limit air traffic
Forest People Occupation




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