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  • The Homelands Blog

    On Planet Money, looking for a Square Deal

    If you happen to visit Johnson City, NY, just outside Binghamton, you’re likely to pass under a stone arch inscribed with the words, “Home of the Square Deal.” The arch (there are actually two, one …

  • Lorne Matalon

    Worlds of Difference

    The Reindeer People

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    Lorne Matalon

    Worlds of Difference

    The Reindeer People

    About 40 percent of all Mongolians are nomads, but officials there say they want most of them to settle down. With their reindeer herds dwindling and government support disappearing, the Tsachin people have to decide whether to abandon their ancient way of life.

    For thousands of years, reindeer herders have roamed the taiga of northern Mongolia, a hauntingly beautiful wilderness of mountains, forest, rock and ice which straddles the country’s border with Siberia. The herders, known as the Tsaschin, or Dukha, rely on their animals for transportation, and for the staples of their diet: milk, cheese, yogurt, and dried milk curds.

    But disease and inbreeding have reduced the Tsachin’s herds from more than 2,000 in the 1970s to less than one-third of that today. And that, in turn, has threatened the Tsachin’s way of life.

    “Reindeer are more than simply the animal which provides a livelihood in the taiga,” says Daniel Plumley of the Totem Peoples Project, an NGO based in New York state. “They represent the culture here. Without the reindeer, the culture would cease to exist.”

    Through his NGO, Plumley has been raising funds for veterinary research. He has also been lobbying the Mongolian government to recognize the Tsachin – with just 44 families, Mongolia’s smallest nomadic group – as a unique society deserving of official support. State financial and veterinary assistance for the herders was withdrawn with the fall of communism in the early 1990s.

    Never more endangered

    Plumley says it’s in everyone’s best interest that the Tsachin survive in their native habitat. They are responsible stewards of the land, he says, with a deep knowledge of plants, weather and animals that they’ve accumulated over the centuries. “It is a culture which we in the West can learn from,” he says.

    But the future of the Tsachin has never been more endangered. The government is urging them to settle down. The herds are dwindling. And the world around them is changing. Many Tsachin children go to school in towns, where they are exposed to television and consumer goods. They know that the nomadic life provides little in the way of cash, or opportunity for social advancement.

    “One of my fears is that the young people may decide to leave the taiga, and that old people like me will end up alone,” says Sanjim, a Tsachin elder.

    Breaking the cycle

    Myagmar Nansalmaa, a veterinarian with the Mongolian State Veterinary Laboratory in Ulaanbaatar, hopes that strengthening the herds will help prevent that from happening. She is one of several researchers who are currently investigating the health problems of the reindeer. Since the government ceased providing support for the Tsachin, Nansalmaa has been traveling to the taiga during her own vacation time.

    There she has teamed up with Plumley, Jerry Haigh of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and Morgan Keay, a wildlife biologist based in Boulder, Colorado.

    The researchers have found that a significant portion of the reindeer population is plagued by Brucella suis, bacteria that cause a serious form of brucellosis. The infectious disease attacks the reindeer’s reproductive system, causing stillbirths or abnormally small offspring. The bacteria also trigger bursitis, a swelling of the joints that is particularly debilitating for nomadic animals. Nansalmaa believes the blood parasite anaplasma has also infected the herd.

    The poor health of the herd sets a vicious cycle in motion. As the animals’ health declines, life in the taiga becomes more difficult. Herders are tempted to settle in towns, or to move to lower altitudes. Some have brought their reindeer to a lake where, for a fee, they pose with their reindeer for tourists.

    “Remaining in one place is unsuitable for animals used to constant movement,” Nansalmaa says. “And hotter temperatures in the summer leave the animals vulnerable to insects, and to the parasites the insects carry, making them weak just as winter arrives.”

    Strengthening the stock

    Inbreeding may be the greatest concern, Nansalmaa says. Inbreeding causes bone deformities, vulnerability to disease, and lameness, a frequently fatal affliction. Wolves can easily kill weak or slow reindeer when they fall behind the herd.

    “In 1962 and again in the late 1980s, the government of Mongolia brought in reindeer from a Siberian herd to replenish the genetic stock of the reindeer in the taiga,” Nansalmaa says. “But with state support for herders ending, inbreeding began, and its negative consequences were soon apparent.”

    The herder Bayandalai owns 97 reindeer – the largest herd in the taiga. “The reindeer our ancestors used to herd were healthy,” he says wistfully. “Today I have only one wish, and that is for the government to bring in reindeer from Siberia, Scandinavia, or Canada. If not reindeer, then reindeer semen.”

    “Artificial insemination is a key to regenerating the size and genetic quality of the herd,” says Haigh, the Saskatchewan veterinarian. Haigh and his colleagues have identified donor bulls in Canada, and hope to begin an insemination program in the coming months.

    “Herders here represent one of the last truly nomadic cultures on Earth,” says Myagmar Nansalmaa. “We want to help the taiga people live a full life, just as their ancestors did.”

     – Lorne Matalon

    Thanks to the herders of the East and West Taiga of Mongolia and their families; to translators Ganhuyag Demid, Gerelt Od Dash, Bayar Lhavgasuren, Binderiya Dondov, and Badamtsetseg Tsedennya; to Peter Marsh (American Center for Mongolian Studies), Stevan Buxt (PACT), Morgan Keay (Itgel Foundation), Daniel Plumley (Totem Peoples Project), Myagmar Nansalmaa (Mongolian State Veterinary Laboratory), Anna Sirena (Russian Academy of Sciences); and special thanks to Allan Coukell for his companionship and collaboration.

    Date

    November 26, 2004

    Other Contributor(s)

    Allan Coukell

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    Themes: Economy, Culture
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Tags: Mongolia, nomads, reindeer, veterinarian

  • Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    The Face of the Shaman

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    Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    The Face of the Shaman

    For thousands of years, the Mongolian shaman has been the intermediary between the human and spirit worlds. Shamanism was suppressed for 70 years under communism. Now it’s back in the open, competing for customers in a market that’s crowded with alternatives.

    Talk to Ghoste. That’s what everyone says. There are three shamans here among the nomadic reindeer herders of northern Mongolia. Or maybe six, depending whom you believe. But Ghoste is the real deal, the most powerful. They say you should talk to Ghoste, and then in the same breath, they say “but Ghoste doesn’t like to talk.”

    Soyun is the oldest shaman, at 100. She’s a tiny woman, ancient, with bad knees. She struggles in her oortz, or teepee, to move between her sleeping platform and the kettle of salty milk-tea on the stove. When she steps outside, which isn’t often, she walks with the aid of two crooked sticks.

    But they say that when Soyun performs her full shamanic ritual, those long nights, when she pounds the drum until the trance begins and the spirits – the ongots – enter her body, they say then she leaps and dances like a child.

    Her drum is kept behind a curtain, in the place of honor opposite the door of the tent. She will not show it to a visitor. In fact, she is tired of all the questions. Talk to Ghoste, she says, talk to Ghoste.

    Soyun was born across the border in Tuva, which is part of Siberia, and though the children now all speak Mongolian, Soyun still prefers the Tuvan language. During Mongolia’s communist period, her own daughter, Tsend, briefly made a living in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, as a singer of Tuvan folk songs.

    Tsend is about seventy now, and nearly blind. She has long returned to the taiga, high in the mountains where the reindeer herders live. Tsend, like her mother and her grandmother before that, is a shaman.

    One bright and frigid morning, Tsend came out of her oortz, in her long green tunic and bare feet, to welcome some visitors. It had snowed the night before, and the visitors, having just ridden over a high mountain saddle, were swathed in gloves and wool hats and layers of synthetics. Tsend laughed about the cold. Her face is permanently etched with a squint and a smile. Bare feet, she said, are good for your health.

    A shaman is a conduit to the spirit world. Shamanism is among humanity’s oldest religions. Not everyone can become a shaman, and Tsend’s story is typical. She was seven years old, when she became ill, falling to the ground with seizures. Her grandmother performed a shaman ceremony for her, dressing Tsend in her own costume. After that, Tsend developed the ability. Now her grandmother, Urel, is Tsend’s most important spirit.

    To go to the spirits, the shaman needs some kind of transportation. Tsend sometimes travels by playing the mouth harp, but that, she says, can take her only so far. The most powerful transportation is the drum. A drum is like a horse. It can take you anywhere.

    She does her ritual only once each season, or when someone comes to her with an illness or some other problem. When that happens, a shaman cannot refuse. Tsend agrees to play her mouth harp, but says it is not the right phase of the moon to show the drum.

    Only about 200 nomadic reindeer herders remain in northern Mongolia. Geographically, they are divided into two distinct groups, known as the East and West Taiga. Tsend lives in the East; her mother and Ghoste in the West. She is happy to hear that her mother is well. Of Ghoste, she says, “he’s very strong.”

    Ghoste is a striking man, about 50, with a broad face and high cheekbones. His eyes contain a glint of mischief, but also something a little frightening. He lives a little apart, higher up the mountain than the other reindeer herders. “Probably people think, because I live all alone in the wilderness,” he says, “that I am a wild man.” But he explains that this way is better for the reindeer. Later, he will say privately that it also helps him avoid the curiosity of outsiders. For several days, he avoids visitors. Eventually, though, he agrees to talk.

    His tent is barer than most of the others. Reindeer skins and old pieces of canvas cover the floor. Tea is poured and a bowl of reindeer cheese offered around. A basin of bones and meat bubbles on the stove. Ghoste smokes constantly, rolling his cigarettes in pieces of torn newspaper.

    “It is not easy being a shaman,” he says. A shaman receives many people who are struggling with sickness. “I cannot refuse. If I do, the spirits get weaker.” Ghoste says he has a responsibility for the people in the community, people who come and ask for help and believe with their hearts. If they believe, it will work for them.

    He says the shaman’s job is to help people who have lost their hemur, or good fortune. The shaman can call it back for them. “I can’t cheat anyone or it would harm my family,” he says. “That is what happened in my life.” Ghoste is divorced. His son is dead.

    “Once someone who was becoming unconscious came to me for help. I helped them, but they didn’t give me any offerings. That was bad for me, being the mediator in between. That’s why my son died.”

    There are things Ghoste will not talk about: the ritual, his spirits. And, of course, he cannot show the drum. “This is not play,” he says. “Some people treat it like theater.”

    It is customary and polite to give a gift to a person who has shown hospitality. So, the interview concluded, a few small things are produced, including a bottle of vodka. The translator leaves. The visitor goes outside to stretch, and then, a few minutes later, ducks back from the bright day into the dim tent, to say goodbye.

    But instead, Ghoste motions him to return. Ghoste pats the ground in front of the green curtain. The visitor sits. In silence, the drum is produced. The shaman costume is unpacked: bundle after bundle of cloth strips, a feathered headdress, solid iron bells or clappers that hang across his shoulder blades. The skin drum is round, large, open on one side. Ghoste grins, and plays it ever so softly, like a heartbeat: thump thump, thump thump.

    – Allan Coukell

    Thanks to translators Binderiya Dondov, Badamtsetseg Tsedennyam, and Hosbayar Enkhtaivan (translators); Professor Gurbadar Purvee (Mongol Business Institute), Daniel Plumley (Totem Peoples Project), Judith Hangartner (Institute for Ethnology, University of Berne), and Nansalmaa Myagmar (Mongolian State Veterinary Laboratory).

    Date

    November 25, 2004

    Other Contributor(s)

    Lorne Matalon

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Health, Culture
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Tags: Mongolia, shamanism

  • Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Competing for Souls

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    Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Competing for Souls

    Korea’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse has been accompanied by an equally dramatic spiritual shift. With Christians now dominant in political and economic life, Buddhists wonder whether they have a role to play in the country’s future.

    It shouldn’t have been that disconcerting to hear an evangelical Protestant minister extol God’s goodness for guiding the Pilgrims safely to America, where they could establish a Christian ethic that would one day shape the moral values of a nation. Granted, the church was stadium-sized, the 100-person choir was accompanied by a 32-piece orchestra and the service was being televised to millions, but we Americans are used to television ministries that have somehow managed to hybridize Puritan-inspired religion and Hollywood spectaculars. Except this wasn’t America: it was Korea, known in theology circles as home to the purest Buddhism in Asia.

    The pre-Thanksgiving Sunday service that I and 25,000 other attendees were witnessing took place in the Yoido Full Gospel Church of Seoul, South Korea, which, at 800,000 members (many of whom were watching via simultaneous transmission in satellite churches around the country) calls itself the biggest church in the world. Evangelical Christianity took hold here following the Korean War, when many Koreans studied in the United States, sometimes on church scholarships, and returned influenced by Western ideas. In recent decades, as South Korea’s social philosophy segued from the ancestor worship of Confucianism to free market capitalism, the country has undergone a spiritual conversion, and is now nearly fifty percent Christian. Christians and Buddhists alike told me, with pride and concern respectively, that to get elected these days, South Korean politicians have to be Christian. Although Korean Protestant churches maintain strong ties with their American evangelical counterparts, in this now-prosperous country they aren’t dependent on them. In fact Yoido Full Gospel actually sends missionaries to the United States, and maintains its own Bible college in Orange County, California.

    Korea’s religious transformation hasn’t been painless. In the 1990s, temples were burned and Buddha statues were beheaded as a Christian president openly equated Buddhist and Satanic images. The conflict is no longer so open. But Korean Buddhists today worry about being overwhelmed in a society where commercialism and religion grow increasingly indistinguishable. Downtown Seoul’s Jogye-sa Temple, center of the largest sect of Korean Buddhism, has recently been surrounded by 25-story buildings that in the past would never have been permitted. The glass from one of the highest skyscrapers reflects light so intensely into an adjacent temple that monks can’t meditate, even with their eyes closed. The building’s Swedish architect was horrified to learn this – in his country, reflective angles are carefully controlled to avoid violating a church’s holy sanctum. But here, a Buddhist monk told me, no one even bothered to consult them. “It’s like we no longer exist.”

    – Alan Weisman

    Date

    October 12, 2004

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    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: Buddhism, korea, Evangelical Christianity

  • Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    The Free Monks

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    Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    The Free Monks

    In Greece, the Orthodox Church has always presented itself as the guardian of national identity. But some think it’s not doing enough to protect the country from western domination. We meet a rock band made up of black-robed monks whose music rails against globalization and the “New World Order.”

    In Greece, national identity has been a hot topic since long before the country declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, and the Greek Orthodox Church has always been at the center of the discussion. The Church took a leading role in the war of independence, and has considered itself the guardian of Greek identity ever since. Until recently, few Greeks challenged that.

    In the last few years, things have gotten a little more complicated. Greece is now part of the European Union (EU); immigration is gradually increasing; Greeks travel abroad and use the Internet; tourism and mass media have exposed almost everyone to foreigners and their ways. For a country that takes great pride in its ethnos (the word means “nation”), the outside world is both a temptation and a threat. Not surprisingly, Greeks are divided on how to move forward.

    The Orthodox Church has always been resistant to change – especially change that comes from outside. That resistance has hardened under the leadership of Archbishop Christodoulos, who has been highly vocal in his opposition to the forces of western-led globalization.

    The archbishop was particularly visible during a recent controversy over national identity cards. The previous government, which was socialist, wanted to replace the old cards with new ones that would comply with EU standards. That meant, among other things, eliminating any mention of religious affiliation.

    Archbishop Christodoulos led the battle against the proposal, ultimately collecting three million signatures out of a total population of just under 11 million. The government prevailed, but the popular view was that the prime minister had caved in to foreign pressure and foreign ideas.

    Fr. Nektarios Moulatsiotis, founder of the Free Monks music group (and of the monastery of Saints Augustine and Seraphim Sarof), has made it his mission to keep young Greeks from caving in. He turned to popular culture after working for years in youth recreation programs and summer camps and seeing the power that the media had over teenagers. He hosts regular call-in shows on TV and radio, and publishes two magazines (one for youth, one for adults). Each of these efforts is part of a larger campaign to reach out to the nation’s youth through the mass media.

    Christian media (and Christian Rock) may be old news in the US, but in Greece the idea is revolutionary. For generations, the Church has been seen as benign and dignified, appreciated for its stability, its historic importance, and its role in celebrating rituals like baptisms, weddings and funerals. Because nearly all Greeks are born Orthodox (more than 95% of the population is baptized), the Church has seen little need to reach out to youth. The belief has been that if teens need help, they will come and seek it.

    Citing new threats to the Greek ethnos, Fr. Nektarios blasts priests for their complacency, accusing them of being more interested in collecting their paychecks (priests and bishops are state employees) than in defending the Church and the nation.

    But his message to youth is even stronger. The Free Monks’ songs are not just about the redeeming power of God’s love or the importance of Christian values. Lyrics speak of Satan disguised as western culture, of the brainwashing of Greeks by multinational corporations, of the dangers of electronic surveillance, of a global conspiracy to steal away souls. Whether young people are internalizing the message or not, they are buying the albums. Although the media frenzy has died down since Free Monks’ debut in 2000, the group has remained a fixture on the Greek pop scene.

    – Jonathan Miller

    Thanks to: Lina Molokotos Liederman, Effie Fokas, Maria Paravantes, Fr. Athinagoras, Matthew Brunwasser, Faidra Papavasiliou.

    Date

    August 16, 2004

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    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Contributors: Jonathan Miller
    Other Tags: nationalism, Elefthiri, Greece, Greek Orthodox, anti-globalization, New World Order

  • Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    Return of the Hellenes

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    Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    Return of the Hellenes

    More than 95% of all Greeks are Orthodox. But recently there’s been a revival of interest in the pre-Christian past. For some, that means taking another look at ancient Greek ideals like reason and democratic debate. For others, it means worshiping the Olympian gods. All say their eyes are on the future.

    Modern Greeks tend to be proud of their past, and with good reason. Ancient Greece produced an astonishing array of philosophers, scientists, architects, planners, poets, and dramatists. It also produced a memorable cast of celestial beings, whose exploits have entertained and enlightened countless generations around the world.

    It’s an oddly double-sided legacy. While the great thinkers engaged in rational debate about the nature of things, the gods used trickery and force to get what they wanted. While Plato and Aristotle tried to determine how humans should behave, the gods often acted like, well, humans: petty, jealous, capricious, and cruel.

    Eastern Orthodoxy, which became Greece’s official religion in the 4th century, drew from both these traditions. It incorporated aspects of paganism (allowing cults of the Virgin Mary and of many saints, along with the veneration of religious icons); it also claimed some concepts of classical philosophy as central to its dogma. For the Church, Orthodoxy (it means “right belief”) is therefore the ultimate expression of Greek civilization. And indeed, for more than 1,500 years, most Greeks have viewed their legacy through an Orthodox prism.

    In the last few years, though, some have come to distrust that prism, and to say so in public. While Church membership is still extremely high (more than 95% of all Greeks are at least nominally Orthodox) and the leadership is still deeply involved in state affairs, there has been a resurgence of popular interest in the pre-Christian past. With it has come a small explosion of pagan groups, philosophical societies, Spartan schools, “Hellenist” magazines, and performances of classical theater.

    Zissis Papadimitriou, a sociologist at the University of Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, says foreign travel, international integration, and economic pressure have ironically fueled the renewed interest in antiquity. “Because of globalization, because of the European Union, the Greek people are in a period of transformation,” he says. “So they are seeking a new identity – a Greek identity.”

    Papadimitriou says national identity has long been a political football in Greece, and the Orthodox Church has always been right in the middle of the game. The Church played a crucial role in the battle for Greek independence in the 19th century, and still works hard to connect itself in people’s minds with the very concept of “Greekness,” based on what it calls “Helleno-Christianity.” The political right has often called on Greece’s glorious past to rally public opinion against foreign influence.

    But Papadimitriou says the new Hellenism is different. Although the revivalists are diverse – some are New Agers, others atheists, others humanists – the overall impulse isn’t nationalist, he says, but cosmopolitan. “As a country, as a people, we are too small to be important economically. We have to play a cultural role in the world, and to play this role we have to have a very strong identity.”

    Like many of those propelling the revival, Tryphon Olympios became fascinated with classical Greece – and with his own Greek identity – when he moved overseas. Olympios, founder of the “Return of the Hellenes Movement” (an umbrella group for revivalists of many stripes), fled to Sweden under Greece’s military junta and taught philosophy at university in Stockholm for 18 years. Although he presides over neo-pagan rituals, he says he is not religious. His philosophical work deals with the future, not the past. He says ancient Greece provides a model of a world where freedom of thought – and freedom of religion – is paramount.

    “We want to develop a free individual, free from superstitions and free from dogmas. No one tries to impose on you how to worship your god or practice your faith.”

    One of the most visible facets of the revivalist movement has been the campaign for recognition for the Dodecatheon, or “Religion of the Twelve Gods.” The campaign has hardly been successful: polytheists have twice applied to the Greek religion ministry for official status, and twice they have been ignored. Coverage of the movement in the popular press has not been flattering. (The word many Greeks use when asked about the pagans is “funny.”) But the movement has been attracting attention.

    Not everyone who practices the old religion is a true believer. Many Hellenes see pagan-inspired ritual not as an expression of religious conviction, but as a way to bring people together – and to provide a platform for their complaints about the Church.

    “If people want to believe in the gods they can, but we don’t believe that,” says Marina Tontis, a computer programmer who attends the “Return of the Hellenes” gathering on Mount Olympus each year. “The difference between philosophy and religion is that philosophy is open to all ideas, and religion is based on dogma.”

    Tontis, who spent eight years in Chicago, helped found a philosophical club in Thessaloniki. The Apollonian Society meets twice a week in a former storefront. It has no sign, but the door is open during meetings and anyone is free to join. Apollo is their favored deity, and the group can talk for hours about cosmology and mythology, but they are not believers. “We support the investigation of our cultural background,” Tontis says. “To find messages, good messages, to bring to today’s world.”

    – Jonathan Miller

    Thanks to: Matthew Brunwasser, Jamil Said, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Barry Strauss, Aristoteles Mentzos, Faidra Papavasiliou.

    Date

    August 5, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

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    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Contributors: Jonathan Miller
    Other Tags: Orthodox Church, Greece, pagan

  • Dmae Roberts

    Worlds of Difference

    Tell Me Wai

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    Dmae Roberts

    Worlds of Difference

    Tell Me Wai

    Musicians Mina Ripia and Maaka McGregor learned to speak Maori in college, after the New Zealand government made it an official national language. Now they’re part of a new generation of Maoris who have decided to move their culture forward rather than leave it behind.

    I’ve been interested in Maori culture since I saw my first Tiki jade pendant and wondered about the story behind the symbolic carving. The movie “Whale Rider” further sharpened my desire to visit New Zealand and learn more about the Maoris.

    In 2003, I spent a month in beautiful Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand means “land of the long white cloud”). I toured Maori towns and went to traditional performances and concerts. What stood out was the palpable sense of pride felt by both performers and audiences. It seemed a new pride, fresh and hopeful. And in fact I learned that it was new, having emerged largely after the Maori language became “official” in 1987.

    I was especially impressed by how the revival of the language and the resurgence of interest in Maori traditions had not just boosted the morale of the Maoris, but of white New Zealanders as well. Everywhere in New Zealand, Maori is present alongside English in street signs, in advertising and on television. Every New Zealander I met used the Maori phrase kia ora – an all-purpose greeting, goodbye, and exclamation.

    It is against that backdrop that I discovered WAI. The name means “water” in Maori. Many contemporary New Zealand groups sing in Maori, but WAI does it expressly with the mission of passing on the language on to the young. I heard their CD and knew I had to contact them.

    Mina Ripia and Maaka McGregor welcomed me into their home on Titahi Bay near Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. They told me that they’d only learned to speak Maori in college. They had been part of the English-language music scene before they decided to sing strictly in the language of their ancestors. When I asked Mina to identify herself she launched into a long recitation of the names of those ancestors, ending with her own name as the latest descendant.

    Maaka took a 200-year-old conch shell that had been soaking in the bathtub and played it like a trumpet. As I was to learn when I saw WAI perform in Seattle, they use the shell to begin their shows. Then comes the electronica, which seems to grow organically from beats of the poi – balls on strings that they swing so they hit each other in rhythmic patterns.

    Whenever I heard traditional Maori singing in New Zealand, the music reached deep inside me – the plaintive calls to ancestors, the retelling of old stories that seemed somehow to insist on their continued relevance, even their urgency. WAI’s music has that sense of urgency to me. It seems to say, “Here I am. Remember me. I’m alive.”

     – Dmae Roberts

    Date

    July 26, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Tags: Maori, New Zealand, music, language revitalization

  • Vera Frankl

    Worlds of Difference

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 2

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    Vera Frankl

    Worlds of Difference

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 2

    Scotland’s Outer Hebrides are home to some of the purest Gaelic culture on earth – but they’re a tough place to make a living. That may be changing. In the second part of a two-part series, Vera Frankl looks at how the Internet is transforming the economy and helping keep the culture alive.

    Scotland’s Outer Hebrides are home to some of the purest Gaelic culture on earth – but they’re a tough place to make a living. That may be changing. In the second part of a two-part series, Vera Frankl looks at how the Internet is transforming the economy and keeping the culture alive.

    Vera’s reporter’s notebook accompanies Connecting the Hebrides, Part 1.

    Date

    July 6, 2004

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    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Economy
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: Hebrides, Internet

  • Vera Frankl

    Worlds of Difference

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 1

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    Vera Frankl

    Worlds of Difference

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 1

    In the first part of a two-part series about change in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Vera Frankl visits “crofters” (small-scale farmers) who are finally taking control of their land after centuries of working for absentee landlords.

    Driving down the two-lane road that links north and south Lewis, I panicked. It looked and felt like driving through a moonscape – flat, featureless moorland and peat bog, with not a human being nor a house in sight. The road signs, written in Gaelic, with English translations in much smaller characters, just added to my sense of dislocation. It made me want to drive very, very fast – if only in the hope of seeing a tree. I could have saved myself the effort. On this island, I was to find out, there are none.

    The monotony of the landscape was broken by an occasional cluster of small grey houses, dominated by churches so large they looked completely out of place. Their appearance spoke volumes: this island, like most in the Outer Hebrides, is a stronghold of Presbyterianism. The Sabbath is so strictly observed that no one, I was told, would risk hanging out their washing on a Sunday. It’s only a few years since planes from the Scottish mainland, forty miles away, were granted permission to land here on the Sabbath. Ferry companies are still fighting for the same privilege.

    I live in London, but being on the Isle of Lewis felt very much like being in a foreign land, and in a way it was. A foreign land battered for much of the year by lashing gales and driving rain. Only in summer, when the days are long and (sometimes) the sun shines, can a visitor truly appreciate its stark beauty: vast skies, endless white beaches and silence, pierced only by the sound of wheeling seagulls. But as one person put it, it takes a certain intestinal fortitude to live here. Even in company, the sense of solitude and isolation can be overwhelming.

    This string of islands some 150 miles long, forty miles off the Scottish coast in the North Atlantic, is of course part of Great Britain. But the islands’ remoteness – and until recently, their inaccessibility – has ensured that they retain a character all their own. The Gaelic and Norse history of the communities here is ancient and unique; many still grow up with Gaelic as their first language. The music that they make also celebrates this uniqueness – tunes hundreds of years old, played on the bagpipes, the accordion, the tin whistle, the fiddle and a small harp known as the clarsach. Not to mention the utterly haunting sound of unaccompanied Gaelic singing.

    But decades of depopulation and unemployment have taken their toll on these islands, undermining the viability of both the economy and the culture. The challenge they face now is to open up to the world outside and embrace the future. Not all the islanders are ready for that. But it may be the only way of conserving what they value most about their way of life.

    – Vera Frankl

    Date

    July 5, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Economy, Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Text, Audio
    Other Tags: land rights, Hebrides, crofters

  • Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    North End Neighborhood

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    Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    North End Neighborhood

    Boston’s North End is bursting with Old World charm. But a proposed commercial development has newcomers and old-timers at odds over the type of neighborhood they want to live in. Their positions aren’t what you might expect.

    When the Molinari brothers agreed to show a visitor around their historic neighborhood, they could have chosen to meet at Caffe Vittoria, with its marble countertops and towering Pavoni espresso machine. Or at Maria’s, a bare-bones bakery with marzipan in the window and the best sfogliatelle in Boston. They could have chosen any of more than 100 Italian cafés, pastry shops and restaurants within a five-block radius. But they didn’t. They picked Starbucks.

    The Molinaris (Richard, 56, and Ben, 58) have lived most of their lives in Boston’s North End, and as they walk through the neighborhood they point to some of its invisible history. The condominium where they live today was an abandoned warehouse where they played as boys. Up the street is a wine store owned by an aunt. At the Sacred Heart Church, they stop to greet Father Vincenzo Rosato. “The church was like just another room in our house,” says Ben. “And it still is!”

    They remember the stoop where their grandfather used to sit in the evenings, singing and playing the mandolin. (He was a successful silversmith, as was the North End’s most famous resident, Paul Revere.) They point to the house where their mother was born, across the street from the birthplace of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose grandparents came from Ireland long before the Italians started arriving. For more than 200 years, the North End of Boston was the classic American immigrant ghetto. Its narrow streets and brick tenements were home to wave upon wave of working class immigrants – English, African, Irish, Jewish and, beginning the late 1800s, Italian. When Richard and Ben Molinari were boys, the North End was known to outsiders as “Little Italy.” But to residents, a street wasn’t simply “Italian”, but Genovese, Sicilian, Milanese, or Neopolitan.

    Most of the Italians are gone now, driven out by gentrification and soaring real estate values. And while their legacy is visible everywhere – in colorful pastry shops, noisy restaurants and boutique grocery stores – it’s a prettified version of the way things used to be. An “Italian stage set,” Richard says.

    Newer residents talk about the North End’s distinctive character, its Old World charm. Older residents shrug when they hear that. Back when it was their neighborhood, there were only a handful of restaurants. But for them, the North End has never been about restaurants or shops, let alone about authenticity or character. It’s about the connections between people. The shared history, the church, the thousand kindnesses and petty grudges that bind neighbors together. Today the North End may look something like it looked 50 years ago, but it’s a different place.

    The Molinaris don’t blame anyone for that. They say the changes started long ago, part of a natural process for an immigrant neighborhood. “People come searching for a better life,” Ben says, “and they move in the direction of acquiring more things, bigger houses and so on.” Sitting in Starbucks, talking about the old days, the brothers’ conversation begins to sound less like a lament for a vanishing neighborhood, and more like a tribute to the way things are supposed to work in America. But then Ben pauses. “A lot of the good was jettisoned in the move toward wealth. It’s hard to hold onto your values. You have to look back as well as forward.”

    – Allan Coukell

    Date

    April 13, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: Boston, Italian-American

  • Frank Browning

    Worlds of Difference

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 2

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    Frank Browning

    Worlds of Difference

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 2

    Exploring the rapidly changing worlds of France’s Muslims and Jews. In the second part of a two-part series, we meet the Chefegs, a Muslim family from the suburbs of Paris.

    In France, the notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity apply to individuals, not groups. And indeed for more than 200 years, members of ethnic and religious minorities have tried to integrate as completely as possible.

    But today, French Muslims and Jews are under tremendous pressure to declare their differences.

    In the second part of a two-part series, Frank Browning takes us into the world of the Chefegs, Muslims from the suburbs of Paris. For a fuller description, see Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 1. 

     

    Date

    February 19, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: muslim, France, republicanism, islam

  • Frank Browning

    Worlds of Difference

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 1

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    Frank Browning

    Worlds of Difference

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 1

    Exploring the rapidly changing worlds of France’s Muslims and Jews. In the first part of a two-part series, we meet the Alters, a Jewish family from Toulouse.

    In France, the notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity do not extend to ethnic or religious groups. The legal system does not recognize minority rights, and there is little patience for concepts such as affirmative action or identity politics. And indeed for more than 200 years, immigrants and ethnic minorities have tried to integrate as quickly and completely as possible.

    Today, though, Muslims and Jews are under tremendous pressure to declare their differences. The sources of this pressure are myriad, from the Israel-Palestine crisis and the global “war on terrorism” to simmering domestic issues of poverty and race. Religious fundamentalists (Muslim and Jewish, French and foreign) are urging young people to renounce the secular, assimilationist ways of their parents. Intellectuals are challenging one another to proclaim their Jewishness or Muslimness—to stop hiding behind their Frenchness, to take sides.

    The “Republican Deal”

    In the late 18th century, the “Republican deal” (recognition of individual rights, no recognition of the rights of communities) offered French Jews something they had never had before—the full benefits and protections of citizenship. For the French government, which had fought for centuries to suppress religious and regional identity movements, it was a way of settling once and for all the question of divided loyalty among its people, whether Bretons or Basques or Roman Catholics. Indeed, the period just after the revolution saw the seizing of church lands, and the beheading of priests and bishops.

    By the early 20th century, France had removed the Church from running the public schools, and banned school prayer and crucifixes from school property. Meanwhile, French Jews (more commonly known as “Israelites”) enjoyed the most secure position they had ever known in Europe. Although Jewish identity did not disappear, it became private, nearly invisible. The ideals of the Republic melded easily with the universalist creed of the Ashkenazi Jews (i.e., Jews of central or eastern European origin) under the rubric of laicite : a commitment to secularism in all elements of public life.

    The New French

    Then came the Sixties. France, enjoying possibly the greatest boom in its history, needed workers. They came by the boatload, from the readiest source on hand—the old French colonies and protectorates of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Most assumed they would return home after a few years. But their attitude changed when they began having children – children who, little by little, were becoming French. By 1980, huge, austere housing complexes had sprouted in the outskirts of Paris, Marseilles and Lyon, filled largely with North Africans. Meanwhile, large numbers of Sephardic Jews (i.e., Jews of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern origin) moved from North Africa to France, bringing with them a much more public form of Judaism than that practiced by the Ashkenazis.

    The economic boom subsided, jobs declined, and disaffection grew among the recent immigrants. A generation of North Africans grew up being told that they were French citizens, but finding few opportunities after their schooling was finished. The government had few answers. To the republicanists, American notions of “affirmative action” smacked of the sort of divisive group rights that the laic principle had sought to eliminate.

    The current unrest was spurred by two seminal events: the second Palestinian Intifada , launched in 2000, protesting Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank; and the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Angry over their worsening situation in France, frustrated by the prospect of becoming (as their parents had been) day laborers and street sweepers, many young French North Africans took the Intifada as a symbol of pride and self-determination. Fanned by sermons from extreme Islamist leaders, some came to see the “House of Israel” as a prime symbolic target.

    The Pressure Mounts

    Anti-Semitic incidents rose sharply from 2000 to 2002. Graffiti appeared, some children wearing yarmulkes were attacked, and a few Jewish schools and synagogues were burned. Ironically, these attacks became campaign fodder for the extreme rightist and one-time neo-Nazi leader Jean-Marie LePen. Not only an anti-Semite, LePen campaigned to send the Muslims back to Africa. In the presidential race of 2002, he won 20 percent of the vote.

    Meanwhile, the global resurgence of Islamic identity began to resonate among middle class immigrants who, for the most part, had kept their religion quiet. More adult women began to don the headscarf, or foulard . Some of their husbands refused to let them be treated by male gynecologists and surgeons. And some of their daughters decided to wear the foulard to school. The “Republican deal” was of little interest to young men and women who felt they were being treated as second class citizens anyway.

    President Jacques Chirac responded by appointing a commission to examine the question of Muslim integration. It produced 26 recommendations, from special job training to safer housing to more aggressive social support programs in predominantly Muslim schools. The commission also recommended two new school holidays, one Jewish and one Muslim, as counterweights to the many holidays of Christian origin. And it recommended an absolute ban on “ostensible” religious symbols (including headscarves, large crosses and yarmulkes ) in the public schools. So far only the headscarf ban has received serious attention by the Chirac administration.

    – Frank Browning

    Date

    February 18, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Tags: republicanism, judaism, multiculturalism, laicité, religion, France

  • Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    Bringing Home the Bones

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    Allan Coukell

    Worlds of Difference

    Bringing Home the Bones

    Members of the Haida nation retrieve ancestral remains from a museum in Chicago and carry them home for proper burial in the Queen Charlotte Islands, off Canada’s Pacific coast. It’s a journey full of pain and healing – and part of a worldwide movement among native groups to reclaim what is theirs.

    The remains of 48 people sit in cedar boxes at the front of the Anglican Church in the village of Massett, at the northern end of Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands. “Maybe we don’t know who these people are,” says the Reverend Lily Bell, “but we know they are our people.”

    “Yes,” nods 83-year-old Ethel Jones, seated where she can see the boxes. Nonny (grandmother) Ethel’s life spans perhaps the most dramatic period of cultural change in the thousands of years since the Haida settled on this rainy archipelago.

    Nonny Ethel was born during a period of decline. She grew up speaking only Haida, but by the middle of the 20th century, she had seen the language and many traditions all but abandoned. Now, seated among the bones of her ancestors, she wonders if she may be witnessing the return of what was lost.

    Until the late 1800s, at least 10,000 Haida lived in large settlements scattered throughout these islands. An abundance of salmon, halibut and shellfish provided the material support for a culture that produced massive cedar houses, intricately carved and painted artifacts, and monumental totem poles that recorded family history and legend. Then smallpox came, killing nine out of ten Haida in the space of a few years. All but two of the villages were emptied. Museum collectors arrived to buy or steal artifacts and pillage graves.

    The remains that will be reburied today were returned by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, where they spent more than one hundred years in boxes and drawers. Another 84 bodies will be interred tomorrow. Other museums have also returned remains, more than 400 so far. More are yet to come. To describe the repatriations, the Haida use the word Yaghudangang, “to pay respect”. It is an important concept in a culture where respect for one’s elders and ancestors is inseparable from self-respect.

    For the Haida, the repatriations are part of a much larger cultural and political resurgence. Driven by education, a renaissance in carving and other arts (and a new appreciation for Haida art on the part of outsiders), the movement has been gathering speed since the 1970s.Protests and negotiations in the 1980s led to protected status for much of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Haida, who never signed a treaty with England or Canada, are still pursuing a legal case against the government, seeking the recognition of full aboriginal title over the archipelago.

    And Nonny Ethel, along with other elders, now spends much of her time in the schools, teaching the language to a new generation. “In the old days, we snuck to speak it,” she says. “That’s why I’m in school trying to teach to the younger people. I think it will survive.”

    Note that this story aired in two separate parts on NPR’s Day to Day.

    Date

    January 15 & 16, 2004

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: Haida, Queen Charlotte Islands, repatriation

  • Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    Welsh Renaissance

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    Jonathan Miller

    Worlds of Difference

    Welsh Renaissance

    Languages around the world are disappearing at an unprecedented rate. But Welsh is making a comeback, and children are leading the way. Now the challenge is to move Welsh from the classroom to the living room. Meet the Steel family of Clydach.

    Along the border between England and Wales stand some of Great Britain’s most imposing castles. They are testimony to centuries of conflict between the two countries. The cannons have long been silent, and motorists cross the frontier today without encountering so much as a sign of welcome or good-bye. But in Wales, pride of place and pride of culture are still very much alive.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the effort to promote the Welsh language. In the 1890s, at least 70% of the people of Wales spoke Welsh. By the middle of the 20th century, the national language (known as Cymraeg, related to Cornish and Breton) appeared to be dying. It was still dominant in some areas (mainly to the west and north), but virtually everyone in Wales spoke English, and everything from road signs to traffic tickets were written in the imperial language. Students were punished for speaking Welsh in school, and the mass media flooded the country with English pop culture.

    Linguists assumed that Welsh would go the way of Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland – the focus of much nationalist rhetoric, but spoken on a daily basis only in the poorest and most isolated areas.

    Today the revival of Welsh is shaping up to be one of the world’s most impressive linguistic success stories. The census of 2001 showed, for the first time, an increase in Welsh speakers both in real numbers and as a percentage of the population. The rise was especially marked among the young, and in traditionally English-speaking areas in the south and east.

    “We can now say, hand on heart, that the language is in the ownership of people throughout Wales,” says John Walter Jones of the Welsh Language Board. “It is not something that is being ghettoized and left in a corner. It is there throughout society.”

    Language activist Heini Gruffudd credits a century of grassroots campaigning for the resurgence of Welsh. As a young man, Gruffudd would dismantle English road signs in the dead of night. Other activists would ride their bicycles down the wrong side of the street, then refuse to pay their fines until the tickets were translated into Cymraeg.

    Over time, the tactics became less symbolic and more practical. In 1971, parents founded the Nursery School Movement (Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin), and began setting up Welsh pre-schools and childcare centers. Today Welsh-medium education is solidly mainstream. About 25% of all primary-age children are enrolled in Welsh immersion schools. Studies show that these schools don’t just provide students with a strong foundation in the national language – graduates also do better in English.

    Government has played its part. Laws enacted by Britain in 1967 gave Welsh official status in the courts. In 1993, parliament passed a much stronger Welsh Language Act, creating the language board and erasing the remaining legal inequities. Today the board supports innovative programs like “Twf” – a word that means “growth” in Welsh, and also stands for “Taking Welsh to Families.” In Twf (pronounced “toove”), parents are encouraged to speak Welsh with their children. That’s a challenge in a country where the great majority of young adults are native English speakers.

    The Language Board claims that in homes in which both parents speak Welsh, there is a 92% chance that the children will also speak the language. Where only one parent speaks Welsh, the rate for the children drops to about 50%. Jones says English-speaking parents must come to believe that raising bilingual children makes educational and – especially – economic sense. Marketing materials produced by the language board tout the intellectual advantages of multilingualism, and point out that more and more companies require Welsh proficiency of their employees. But learning a new language is a serious commitment, and not everyone is sure it’s worth the effort.

    No one in Wales expects Welsh to replace English. Nor does anyone claim that an ability to speak or understand a second language necessarily means that people will use it in everyday life. There may be Welsh classes and plays and poetry readings and road signs, but walk down the street in Cardiff or Swansea and you will rarely hear anything other than English.

    “It’s a gradual thing,” says Jones. “You don’t invest in a language today and see the results tomorrow. Language does take time. We lost it over two or three generations. We’re going to regain it in two or three generations.”

    – Jonathan Miller

    Date

    December 25, 2003

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: Europe
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Contributors: Jonathan Miller
    Other Tags: Welsh, Swansea, language revitalization, Wales, bilingualism

  • Cecilia Vaisman

    Vanishing Homelands

    Sustainable Colonization

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    Cecilia Vaisman

    Vanishing Homelands

    Sustainable Colonization

    In Brazil, a peasant cooperative has planted native crops using methods designed to preserve the delicate forest soils. But the farmers have little formal education, and even less experience managing a business.

    Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants have streamed into the Brazilian Amazon in a desperate search for farmland.

    Many of them arrive only to find that rainforest soils cannot sustain the kinds of crops they knew back home. So they end up in a vicious cycle – slashing and burning new areas of forest year after year.

    Now, a small group of farmers living in the most devastated region of the Amazon is trying an alternative. Some say it may become a model to stop the destruction of the jungle.

    Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.

    Date

    July 1992

    Outlets

    NPR

    Tags

    Themes: Environment, Economy
    Regions: South America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman
    Other Tags: Brazil, cooperatives, rainforest, soil degradation

  • Katie Davis

    Vanishing Homelands

    Escaping the Tourist Trap

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    Katie Davis

    Vanishing Homelands

    Escaping the Tourist Trap

    In the Mexican state of Chiapas, Chamula Indian artisans are trying to create a tourist economy on their own terms.

    More than almost any country in the Americas, Mexico has turned to tourism to help its economy. Entertaining tourists is touted as a clean industry that creates jobs, attracts dollars, and promotes friendly international relations.

    But critics say that tourism reinforces an image of Mexicans as servile to rich Americans, and that villages and seacoasts are being defiled by developers.

    Katie Davis visits the Chamula region, where some say that colorful traditions will only survive if a way can be found to market them.

    Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.

    Date

    1992

    Outlets

    NPR, All Things Considered

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Economy
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: Mexico, tourism, Mayan, ecotourism, Chamula