3 posts tagged “asia”

The South Central Gond indigenous people live in the forests and hills of India in Maharashatra and Andhra Pradesh, north of the Godavari River. They are essentially concentrated in the Chandrapur, Adilabad, and Garhichiroli districts. The Southeast Gond indigenous people live in the forests and hills of southern India. They are primarily concentrated in the state of Andhra Pradesh, south of the Godavari River and in bordering districts north of the river.

The South Central Gond speak a Central Dravidian language called Adilabad Gondi. Today, The Southeast Gond are bilingual, speaking both their native language, Koi Gondi, and the Telugu language. The Telugu, their bygone rulers and present neighbors, immovably influenced both the South Central and Southeast Gond indigenous peoples.

Read more about the Gond indigenous peoples and deforestation in south India here.

Barbara Bower and Barbara Rose Johnston, eds.

2007

On May 2, 2008 the cyclone Nargis crashed into Myanmar, killing an estimated 78,000 people and inundating countless acres of land. A week later, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck Wenchuan County in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. These two events brought the world’s attention to South and Central Asia for a brief moment, shinning for an instant the world’s attention on the plight of the indigenous peoples of this area. Although the media’s focus on the conditions and issues of these peoples was brief, their plights continue. In fact, the condition of many of these indigenous peoples existed long before these two traumatic events. As the book Disappearing Peoples? Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asiaclearly points out, most of the current issues impacting indigenous peoples in South and Central Asia stem not from natural disasters, but from processes associated with globalization and its sister processes of imperialism and capitalism.

Today, no place is beneath the radar or beyond the reach of the sweeping force of globalization. No part of the planet can escape the impact of the way one set of peoples – typically characterized as being in the “developed” world – use the planet, its resources, and its people to fulfill a cultural mandate of endless growth, using their power and influence to conquer, redeem, and transform the world and its people. The formerly isolated regions of the world are now part of the global mainstream, as illustrated by a quick glance at the headlines in our daily newspapers featuring the issues, problems, and conditions in once-distant lands: Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Kashmir, and Tibet. (p. 9)

Read more about Disappearing Peoples: Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asia here.

The Qinghai-Tibet plateau, home to approximately six million indigenous Tibetans, was historically divided into three provinces: U-tsang, Kham, and Amdo. Today, after the invasion by China, U-stang has been designated the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Encompassing the central part of the plateau, in which the Tibetan capital of Lhasa is located, the province is also called Xizang (XAR) by the Chinese. Both Kham and Amdo are considered separate jurisdictional units encompassed within four contemporary Chinese provinces: Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan.

According to archaeologists, indigenous Tibetans have been living in their homeland for at least 3,000 years. Folklore traces many cultural origins back to the same time, if not further. Historically composed of numerous tribal groups known as the Ch'iang, the indigenous Tibetans slowly expanded, primarily along the broad Tsangpo River Valley - particularly the Yarlung Valley branch known as the "Valley of the Kings."

Read more about the indigenous peoples of Tibet and organizations working to help them here.