“Men hunt, women gather” — for a long time that was the conventional academic wisdom about foraging
“Men hunt, women gather” — for a long time that was the conventional academic wisdom about foraging societies. But in the 1970s anthropologists Kirk and Karen Endicott were living with the Batek indigenous people of mainland Malaysia’s rainforest. They observed a young woman named Chinloy heading into the deep forest to hunt with her top-of-the-line blowpipe. Paradigms shifted, and the Endicotts’ documentation led to realizations that in small band foraging societies, gender roles are often very fluid. Among the Bateks and other hunter-gatherers of Asia, men frequently take care of children, women can hunt and anyone might search for forest products. Of course this is all made more difficult in the 21st Century by the decimation of the forest and seacoast environments that support that way of life and by the lack of land rights protection for the indigenous people who have long survived that way. In my book “The Wind in the Bamboo: A Journey in Search of Asia’s ’Negrito’ Indigenous Peoples” www.windinthebamboo.com I describe how I found Chinloy in 2008 (2nd from left, with her family in this photo.) Her daughters still hunted sometimes on the edge of Malaysia’s Taman Negara (National Park) but oil palm plantations have replaced forest, marginalizing and endangering the Bateks and other Orang Asli people.Edith Mirante -- source link
#southeast asia#malaysia#gender roles#anthropology#indigenous#rainforests#land rights#orang asli#taman negara