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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Human Safari

Posted by on Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 7:59 AM

Mail Online:

One of the world's most primitive tribes is being humiliated on a daily basis - by tourists who pay to go on human safaris and treat them like animals in a zoo.
Hundreds of visitors to the remote Andaman Islands, north of the Equator in the Indian Ocean, queue up each day at dawn to drive through a jungle reserve set aside for the Jarawa tribe.
They then toss scraps of food to the half-naked natives, who only started making contact with the outside world in the late 1990s, and command them to dance.

One would think this kind of thing got old a long time ago, but apparently it's not old at all. There's no break between the feelings expressed in this passage, which Charles Darwin wrote 170 years ago, and this form of 21st century tourism:

Of individual objects, perhaps nothing is more certain to create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a barbarian — of man in his lowest and most savage state. One's mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, could our progenitors have been men like these? — men, whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men, who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason. I do not believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference between savage and civilized man. It is the difference between a wild and tame animal: and part of the interest in beholding a savage, is the same which would lead every one to desire to see the lion in his desert, the tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, or the rhinoceros wandering over the wild plains of Africa.

 

Comments (11) RSS

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Fifty-Two-Eighty 1
Wow, thanks for the great idea. I'm gonna set up safaris to the CD. Only instead of food, the tourists will toss bindles and syringes.
Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty http://www.nra.org on January 11, 2012 at 8:47 AM
biffp 2
Seems analogous to your role at the Stranger Charles. You pretend to be some oddball from Harare. It got old quite a while ago, despite what some rigged poll on the Stranger reported.
Posted by biffp on January 11, 2012 at 8:55 AM
lark 3
Good Morning Charles,
Agree, that is most repellent on the part of the companies/tourists to conduct/undertake "human safaris'".

But, it is a fine line. Under most circumstances observing "extraordinarily different" (I really loathe the term "exotic" as it can be so misconstrued) humans from oneself isn't too unusual. I was stared at in Cameroon when I first arrived in Africa 20+ years ago by locals, mostly children. It didn't bother me. I didn't even mind photos (of yours truly) as long as I consented. The reverse would be true as well. What's particularly jarring in this instance is that the "tour" condones the "throwing of food" and "commands to dance". The fact that it is just for that purpose is horrifying.

My point is that there are benign ways of human on human observation. Curiosity of the extremely different is quite common (read any National Geographic journal today although granted it didn't always used to be that way).

However, this "tour" is disgusting and must be stopped. I can't believe it exists in the 21st century. It reminds me of the "Hottentot" woman, Sarah Baartman from the early 19th century who was "displayed" in Europe. I believe you wrote a review of a film regarding this true story a few years ago?
Posted by lark on January 11, 2012 at 9:07 AM
Vince 4
Human beings are peculiar creatures. They have no concept of time in relation to their own existence.
Posted by Vince on January 11, 2012 at 9:31 AM
5
Humans are still barbaric, no matter how fancy the trappings.
Posted by betsio on January 11, 2012 at 9:52 AM
Fnarf 6
@3, and for more than a hundred years later. Ota Bentu, a Mbuti (pygmy) from Congo, was displayed in the Bronx Zoo in 1906, and I remember seeing ads for pygmies in cages being toured across the western US in the teens in old Montana newspapers I was reading for genealogy.
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on January 11, 2012 at 10:07 AM
lark 7
@6Fnarf,
Indeed, I recall reading about him recently. I believe he became alcoholic and committed suicide. Most tragic.
Posted by lark on January 11, 2012 at 10:17 AM
8
I want to give those tribes-people Uzis.
Posted by keshmeshi on January 11, 2012 at 12:25 PM
9
@8 Will you make them dance for guns?

While it isn't something I would probably participate in, what is the harm here? Tourists get entertained. Dancers get paid in food. It doesn't look like they are being forced with violence.
Posted by ishf on January 11, 2012 at 1:55 PM
10
Whenever I want to go on "human safari", I just go to Zimbabwe and watch them try to farm their land. HAHAHAHAAHAHA!
Posted by BetarayBilly2 on January 12, 2012 at 7:17 AM
11
I disagree that tourists are interested in seeing man in his "lowest and most savage state". Personally, I am curious about the way others live, and I do not value their lifestyle more or less than my own.

Anyway there is no official human safari business on the Andamans that I am aware of- people happen to drive through territory of the Jarawan tribes on their way to other sites.
Posted by ankles on January 13, 2012 at 2:10 PM

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