Ten still surviving tribes
All over the world there is another undiscovered humankind. What can we learn from them?
They call them the isolated communities, you can see them inside anthropologist books or at least on the glossy pages of National Geographic or maybe into a guided journey to their main living areas.
Whatever the tool is, what struck the attention “meeting” these people is about their habits these communities are still preserving in the era of I-am-everything-device-I-own.
And still the world flourishes from knowing how tribes can survive preserving their immemorial habits and traditions or keep going on with tasks apparently useless.
Scrolling the list, you will know particular features of particular communities distributed on earth that make a kind of deal with the so called civilized and progressed humankind. As for geographic area of living or “opening-to-stranger” mood, those communities can be considered under a different range of isolation or mixing. However they still maintain their ancestral way of living as witnesses of another linkage with Nature and the world outside them.
Nenets or reindeer shepherds, Siberia
Lesson: do what you can…and dress well up.
Nenets are a nomad population basically living in northern Russia. Nenets life and economy turn around reindeer: as a matter of the fact they are devoted to those animals.
As the Russian archaeologist Andrei Golovnev told National Geographic: “The Nenets believe they are the best reindeer herders in the world. Such absolute certainty on their superiority, the belief they are special people, allows them to survive”.
These people are practising a very special type of transhumance, leading a massive herds of reindeer, according to nature rhythm, into the most challenging ever environment: the one of the Arctic circle. This means dealing with its “non-human” temperatures.
The way they dress is the emblem of how Nenets response to their environment. Just one word needed: malitsa, a four reindeer skins coat.
If you ask how do they can sleep with the herd outside, you need another word: gus. This is a coat acting like an inverse canon with the malitsa: leather on the inside and fur on the outside.
Even among nomads, a woman belongs to weaker sex category. So, Nenets women coat is the yagushaka, composed by a double layer of around 8 reindeer skins.
Chum is Nenet’s name for home. Or if you prefer, chum is the name of tent for Nenets people.
In there, everything follows a rigid pattern called “separation” between female and male zone, because every part of the “society” is born with a rigid duties to accomplish.
As for religion, Nenets are a kind of little “Maximus” directly from Gladiator because they worship their ancestors under the shape of little dolls. As practising shamanism, a good Nenet needs to enter a trance-like state. What tool they will use? Drums.
Huli, “I pay my bride in pigs”, Hela province and Southern Islands of Papua New Guinea
Lesson: Happy with what I have … and with my hair.
In this surviving community, pigs are bargaining chip to pay a bride.
The path to adulthood is very tough for Huli men. They are separated from their mother at 18 months old in observance to the rigid rule of preserving male essence. No sexual contacts allowed until marriage, whose clearly distinction point is based on the plenty of pigs possession.
The administration of law in Huli society is based on the right of vengeance after an injury.
If you want to be chief be prepared to be very good at mediating disputes, counting the pigs and the shells you posses.
Another remarkable fact belongs to the Huli community living Hela Provence. This is the land of the Huli Wingmen, the ultimate follower of Samson, catching out their strength from hair. A boy becoming a man, is undergoing a diet to make his hair strong and very long. To do that they use two particular psychoactive plants: the Pueraria Phaseoloides and the Cannabis Sativa.
Eventually, the outcome will be the one to provide the head with a kind of helmet covered with hair wrapping a bamboo circular band.
The Karen Hill Tribe, where women are like giraffe and elephants are pets, Thailand
Lesson: impossible is possible.
“The Karen have come from the country of Burma, but not by choice….The political stance of the Karen stance will vary…but still it is much better to refer to people by their ethnic group”(The Karen Connection, 2007).
The most ever divided into communities, whose most famous one, the so called Red Karen, includes the “giraffe women”.
One of Karen people distinctive point is their affection to animism, leading them to be a very superstitious people. Another distinctive Karen people feature is that the are the only tribe in Thailand to own and work with elephants.
As to preserve their marked sing of ethnic group, Karen are deeply connected to their tradition: in one word, respect. They display respect towards the eldest for instance by walking behind who is elder than you.
The importance of rice in their economy is stressed in greetings, in their way they say “How are you?” sounding like this “Have you eaten rice?”.
Maasai, Let’s spit on each other, Southern Kenya and Northen Tanzania
Lesson: would you like to be healthy? Walk.
“A Maasai warrior is a fine sight. Those young men have that particular form of intelligence which we call chic: daring and wildly fantastical as they seen, they are still unswervingly true to their own nature and to immanent ideal”. Karen Blixen
Maasai’s wealth is based on how many cattle they own and how many children they have.
The quite particular fact about Maasai relays on their diet, based on cow’s blood and milk: a fatty diet. And still, they are not suffering from typal western world fatty diet diseases. Do you know why? Because they walk a great deal.
Being warrior and noble they are concerned about their women fertility. There’s a ritual that show the linkage between women fertility and cattle. If a girl is not able to be pregnant, she has got to pass under a just-mother cow, to be infused with the animal positive vibrations.
Mundari tribe, “May I introduce you my cow?”, Sud Sudan
Lesson: the healthy affection to your pets.
Labelled as one of the remotest world community, Mundari people are still a piece of the great human race. A piece of human race strictly committed to cows, not only for substantial reasons but for the meaning they ascribe to those animals: love, commitment, tradition, life.
“Every Mundari man I met has is favourite cow” — said photographer Tariq Zaidi, who spent ten years photographing this tribe — they literally sleep two feet away from their favourites”.
If you want to indicate a family, composed by husband, wife and children, you have to be familiar with the word hon-hopon. A good assonance for the beginning of a lullaby.
A Mundari would-be mother is supposed to sing this song while delivering her baby:
Oh, dear sarajom flower, you are full to the brin
Oh dear tender leaf, you are at now and then
the day is approaching dear, so I am full to the brin
the time is approaching dear, so I am becoming now and then
fasten a cock I must come
get loan I must arrive
Borrow rice-beer, I must slip down
Dani Tribe, Let’s chop another piece of finger, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Lesson: pain cannot stop me from living
This is one of the most isolated tribe, discovered in 1938 by Richard Archbold, an American philanthropist. Dani tribe men and women are unique. Men are used to dress their penis with a koteka, a kind of ornamental armour. Women losing a relative are cutting the last part of their finger to express their grief. This is what Freud would have been called a concrete sublimation of loss. The government of Indonesia has forbidden this ancestral ritual in time or it would have been come to an end itself due to the fact women have got just ten fingers!
Also this tribe is deeply connected to an animal: the pig. One of the most popular feast is the pig cooking ceremony or stone-burning ceremony to welcome guests or to celebrate Indonesia Independence Day.
This ritual consist of cooking a pork with heated stones, taken from the river.
When August comes is quite impossible missing one of the most attractive Dani tribe ritual: mock battles against Lani and Yali people aiming at celebrate fertility and tradition.
Tsimihety people, The Malagasy rebels, Madagascar
Lesson: conviction is all you need
This people live in North Central Madagascar and belong to one of the Malagasy tribe: they are known as “those who never cut their hair”. The nickname arose as a consequence of an act of protest against Ramada I, the first king of Madagascar.
A part from their “rebel” nature, Tsimihety tribe is known for other particular habits they still preserve, as described below.
The first one is referred to death. After three months of a member of this people death outside home-town, the corpse is resumed and brought back home. Along the ceremony of corps showing up nobody can cry. To avoid tears, people can drink a lot of alcohol.
The second habit is focused on the ceremony of engagement. A man can propose to a woman only on Mondays. The woman will stay at her man’s place, eating with her mother-in-law and her father- in-law for three days. At the beginning of the fourth one, she can start cooking at her man’s place because she is part of the “family”.
