To Luisa Maffi

Luisa:
This is all very well noted. 
It takes but a match.
I think that in the future, the major nation races will find out that it takes more than say 2 or 300 races to maintain the genetic flexibility and resiliency of their own races, that without larger numbers of variations they will fall prey to disease and ultimately death of their own race as well. 
    It appears quite apparently that in many fashions the Akha Hill Tribe is meeting its death. Not to be overly pessimistic, but the whole formula is here for the end of the race, forced migration, taking away food growing land, moving whole villages, numerous divisive programs that fail to address what the other hand is very busy doing. 
    Currently the Thai government, backed by the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, is taking up every square inch of land it can from the Akha (since they are migrants over the last 100 years remember, aliens, foreigners, non Thais, non beings, Ekaw!) and leaving them with no land to grow rice. I am verifying this in village after village, the process radically intensifying this year, whole villages being reduced to economic ashes. With it comes immediate poverty and immediate village failure, youngsters must go and be low land labor and prostitutes in order for their younger siblings to stay alive. 
    And now the role of wealthy missions, long waiting, the damaged apple, finally shaken from the tree to fall in their bag. In village after village DAPA, the American Baptist Development and Agricultural Project for Akha, set up and started by the famous Paul W. Lewis, the longtime cultural friend of the Akha people, they post signs telling the Akha, in Akha language to not take from the forest, to not take their year old dead bamboo wood from the forest, to just sort of leave the forest alone, that every one needs the forest except them, that all the rest has been cut down and now the Akha need to learn to sacrifice a little and the mission is more than willing to help them move and make this sacrifice. 
    This is what I would like to know, we can talk all day about what is going on, but I would like to know what action can be taken against the Thai government and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand to stop these massive alien specie tree planting schemes in the North of Thailand that are taking all the Akha rice land. This is an economic emergency, that will certainly wipe out language if it wipes out villages.  Remember that little part about our broad spectrum literacy program and our embarrassingly bad Akha script? Yeah, related. 
    So if anyone has any ideas on the genocide, the eco-cide of the Akha people in Northern Thailand, please speak up now, there isn't a lot of time left. 

Matthew McDaniel 
 
 

Luisa Maffi wrote: 
Dear Listers: 

I'm enclosing below a news item I received from Nick Ostler (President 
of  the Foundation for Endangered Languages, FEL) titled "Environmental destruction a threat to languages: UN Environment Programme", in which UNEP officials are reported to be making the case for integrated protection of biocultural (and specifically linguistic) diversity. (This piece appeared in the FEL newsletter Ogmios # 12, 1999.) I was doubly pleased to read the piece "Environmental destruction a threat to languages: UN Environment Programme"--doubly because: 

1) It's obviously great to find out that the foremost international environmental organization is taking the view that protection of the environment should go hand in hand with protection of cultural and linguistic diversity--a view which, as you may know, I have been working hard to promote for the past several years, in my own writings and through the the activities of my NGO, Terralingua: Partnerships for Linguistic and 

Biological Diversity; 

2) I have pretty good reasons to believe I'm the ultimate source of the UNEP statement (reported in the mentioned news piece) that "There is remarkable overlap between the mappings of the world's areas of biological megadiversity and areas of high cultural and linguistic diversity". 
Here's how. UNEP has just published the book _Cultural and Spiritual Values 
of Biodiversity_ ed. by Darrell Posey (see below). In that book, I am coordinator and coauthor of the chapter "Linguistic Diversity" (the other authors being Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Jonah Andrianarivo), which extensively propounds that very argument. Furthermore, in one of my sections in that chapter, referring to Dave Harmon's cross-mappings of biological and linguistic diversity, I say: "Harmon (1996a)* has shown remarkable overlaps between the world's biological and linguistic diversity..." 

*Harmon, David 1996. Losing species, losing languages: Connections between biological and linguistic diversity. _Southwest Journal of Linguistics_ 15: 89-108. 

I noted with total amazement that Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP, makes special mention of this chapter in his foreword to the book, stressing the importance of cultural diversity and the consequences of language loss. So the likelihood that the UNEP statements below were prompted by this book and by the linguistic diversity chapter in particular seems rather high... The book's foreword is extremely supportive overall--which, along with the news piece below, does suggest that the case for biocultural diversity may indeed begin to be heard in high places... 
     The true test, of course, is mobilization of money and other resources, pressure on member states to conform, etc. etc.... A long way still, but this is an incredible step forward. It is both rewarding and humbling to see this happen, after several years that my Terralingua colleagues and myself have been making this argument extensively, both in writing and in all possible public fora we could get ourselves to--and above all, I hope this may spell greater action aimed at the joint conservation of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. 

Following the news item, you'll find the info on Darrell's book. 
All the best, 
Luisa Maffi 

******************** 
From Ogmios # 12, 1999: 
Environmental destruction a threat to languages: UN Environment 
Programme 
7 Sep 1999 

((c) 1999 The Nation.) Distributed via Africa News Online by Africa News Service. 
Nairobi - The diversity of languages is being eroded by the unabating destruction of the environment, the United Nations Environment Programme has said. UNEP says the loss of linguistic diversity represents a huge loss in intellectual resources, necessary for solving the world's abounding problems such as poverty. 

"Each culture and language is a unique tool for analysing and synthesising the world," Dr. Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of Unep says. 

"To lose such a tool is to forget a way of constructing reality, to blot out the perspective evolved over many generations," he said. 
According to UNEP's biodiversity programme manager, Mr. Bai-Mass Taal, 
there are close to 7,000 documented languages worldwide. 
Of these, up to 5,000 belong to indigenous people who represent the most culturally and linguistically diverse peoples of the world. 

And of all the languages presently spoken, 2,500 are in danger of extinction, a threat now recognised as a worldwide crisis, Mr. Taal said in commemoration of the fifth International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples on August 9. 
The International Day for the World's Indigenous Day was launched in 1994 by the United Nations to raise awareness on the plight of this marginalised group of people, and their untapped traditional wisdom. 

The UN also inaugurated the international decade for indigenous peoples 
which runs to 2004. 

According to Mr. Taal, these two initiatives were intended to give indigenous peoples, such as the Ogiek, a voice in national socio-economic and political affairs, and therefore give them choices and greater opportunities in life. 

Mr. Taal told journalists there were 300 million indigenous peoples scattered in more than 70 countries worldwide who live in the environmental hotspots of the world. 
These areas, their homes, are threatened by over-exploitation of their 
great biological diversity, and habitat destruction. 

"There is remarkable overlap between the mappings of the world's areas of biological megadiversity and areas of high cultural and linguistic diversity," Unep says. 

"Unfortunately, these are the areas where biodiversity loss has been the most dramatic," he said. 
He says the destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems has ejected indigenous peoples from their homes, forcing them to migrate to urban areas and other places where they could eke a living. Their dispersal this way breaks down community structures and cultures which promote the use of indigenous languages. 

The decimation of indigenous languages breaks down a vital channel for 
passing on indigenous knowledge and wisdom, an under-developed repository for traditional, herbal remedies, for example. 
As global socio-economic factors disrupt traditional ways of life, 
indigenous peoples are abandoning traditional behaviours, indigenous 
knowledge and their languages which are the repositories and means of 
transmission of knowledge on preserving biodiversity and promoting sustainability," Unep says. 

The loss of language and culture destroys self-worth limiting the potential of the affected peoples and complicating efforts aimed at addressing vices such as the breakdown of family structures, substance abuse and school failures and dropouts. 

******************** 

Darrell Posey's edited book, Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, is finally out. The book is published for the United Nations Environment Programme, as a complement to UNEP's 1995 Global Biodiversity Assessment. 

It is almost as massive, and certainly no less impressive! Over 730 large-size pp., some 300 [yes!] contributors if I counted right--beside everything else that it represents, the book is most certainly a monument to Darrell's commitment and perseverance! 
The full reference is: 
Posey, Darrell (ed.) 1999. Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. 
London/Nairobi: Intermediate Technology Publications/UNEP. 

The table of contents is as follows (note that for each chapter only the chapter coordinator is mentioned, but each chapter has a number of contributors): 

Ch. 1 - Introduction: Culture and nature-The inextricable link (Darrell Posey) 
Ch. 2 - Linguistic diversity (Luisa Maffi) 
Ch. 3 - Indigenous peoples, their environments and territories (Andrew Gray) 
Ch. 4 - Voices of the Earth (Ranil Senenayake) 
Ch. 5 - Ethnoscience, TEK, and its applications to conservation (L. Jan Slikkerveer) 
Ch. 6 - Valuing biodiversity for human health and well-being: Traditional health systems (Gerard Bodeker) 
Ch. 7 - Traditional agriculture and soil management (Kristina Plenderleith) 
Ch. 8 - Mountains: The heights of biodiversity (Edwin Bernbaum) 
Ch. 9 - Forests, culture, and conservation (Sarah Laird) 
Ch. 10 - Aquatic and marine biodiversity (Paul Chambers) 
Ch. 11 - Ethical, moral, and religious concerns (Jeff Golliher) 
Ch. 12 - Rights, resources, and responses (Graham Dutfield) 
Conclusion - Maintaining the mosaic (Darrell Posey) 

This is preceded by various perfatory matters and followed by several appendices, including indigenous declarations and faith statements on religion and ecology. 

To order the book, contact ITP at 103/105 Southampton Row, London WC1B 4HH, UK. 

******************************************************************** 
Luisa Maffi (Dr.) - Northwestern University - Program in Cognitive 
Studies of the Environment - Dept. of Psychology - 102 Swift Hall - 
2029 Sheridan Road - Evanston, IL 60208-2710 - USA 
Phone: +1.847.4676513 - Fax: +1.847.4917859 - Email: maffi at nwu.edu