Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous people are any group of persons that have been granted a specific set of rights and protection based on their territorial, cultural, and historical distinctions and ties, to prevent their exploitation.

The indigenous group of people I'm going to be focusing on are the San/Saan people of South Africa (derogatorily known as the Bushmen). A roaming tribe of hunter-gatherers, the San number around 90,000. The San live a substantially primitive lifestyle, residing primarily in crude rain shelters around the year, when they're not engaging in long, drawn-out hunts for meat. Known for their tremendous resilience (such as being able to live on a few drops of water obtained through dew) and their extremely varied genetic pool, the San have a vivid and long-established history and culture. They believe in the importance of leisure and generosity, and have a close knit community where they frequently trade jokes, folk stories, and riddles, while trading primarily thorough a system of "gifting". They do not barter or use a currency.

To What Extent Do I Believe A Dying Indigenous Culture Should Be Saved?

It's hard to reconcile ourselves with the horrific stories we hear of barbarous tribes that genetically mutilate their women or have very destructive rituals and practices. Many indigenous people have adopted strange traditions due to their needs in the past (such as intentional facial disfiguration to prevent the kidnapping and rape of their women), and it is easy to support movements to abolish these practices and cultures. From our perspective, these people are living a degrading and detrimental lifestyle, but this viewpoint holds the arrogant presumption that we "know better". To an outside, the San diet of 10% insects and a few drops of water seems like a living hell, but our few interactions with them tell a different story; they seem to be for the most part a loving, forgiving, and tremendously happy group of people with a beautiful culture and a rich culture that has spanned many years. To demand unequivocally that all indigenous groups should be eliminated or absorbed into modern society would thus be a horrific crime comparable to genocide. I am severely against the extreme and oppressive practices such as foot-binding, genital mutilation, neck-binding, etc. that are characteristic to some of these groups of people, but still believe that we should preserve other cultures. It's hard to say who could have the authority to decide which group should stay and which should go (and how would we end centuries of a repeated practice without completely killing the group of people who employ it), but my solution would be to establish some kind of overseeing committee or organization (similar to UNESCO who determine what locations and structures should be preserved as World Heritage sites) to determine the nature of an indigenous group of people and decide whether we should save them or let their culture die out.