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aAfter three years of intense research, Western conservation scientists established a relationship with Daasanaha, a nomadic community in northern Kenya. Mar Cabeza and Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares were regular visitors from Helsinki, working with tribes to improve wildlife conservation in their area.
In 2018, Dasanaha trusted scientists and invited them to observe a traditional coming-of-age ritual called dhimmi. The ceremony lasts several weeks and takes place in a makeshift village in a remote area, with two rings of makeshift huts. It is a time of singing, dancing, feasting, and ritual slaughter of livestock.
As the ceremony progressed, Fernández Lamasares, who works at the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Sciences (HELSUS), and Cabeza felt fear. Dasanaha wore the skins of cheetahs, leopards, civets, and genets, the very animals conservation scientists were trying to protect. One day, Fernandez-Llamazares and Cabeza counted 85 skins worn by members of the ceremony.
“I have built my entire career as a researcher to show that communities support wildlife,” Fernández-Llamazares said. “But what do we do when faced with traditions that damage nature? I’m so confused.”
Fernández-Llamazares asks a heartbreaking question: shepherds of the eartha notable 2022 documentary that has yet to find a distributor in the U.S. What makes the film notable is that Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza unusually candidly share their conflicting feelings about their research in Kenya. Because it is.
“I still get sick to my stomach thinking about it,” Cabeza told me recently. “What shocked us was the size and brutality of it. Suddenly, we saw so many endangered animals, complete with wings, tails and everything.” Álvaro and I was shaking. I asked him to stop filming because I needed to digest this.”
“What do we do when faced with traditions that harm nature?”
The scientist’s dilemma is one often faced by conservationists around the world. How to reconcile the preservation of local indigenous cultures and wildlife conservation values, which are being lost in a rapidly globalizing world, especially when they appear to be in direct conflict. The question is whether to let it happen.
The Dasanah people are spread across South Sudan, southern Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. HELSUS scientists focused on Kenya’s Daasanaha, locally known as . Gar Meles, or people from the south, their number is about 17,000. The Daasanahas live in a land hailed as the “cradle of humanity”. Within their nomadic range is Lake Turkana, where at least three early hominid fossils have been found.homo erectus, habilisand Boisei– This proves that this region is the place of origin of humankind. Sibiroi National Park was established in 1973 with the dual purpose of protecting the world-famous paleontological sites around Lake Turkana and its wildlife, but over time the former designation took priority. It has surpassed the latter designation in terms of.
Tribes other than the Daasanaha also inhabit this territory, have fought wars over it, and all of whom have been repeatedly evacuated to make way for the creation and management of Sibiroi National Park, but historians of the environmental movement This act has been derided as “fortress preservation.” Cabeza said he was originally asked to visit Sibiroi by a Finnish paleontologist colleague to assess the status of wildlife conservation and to “do something about the increasing encroachment of the park” by local tribes. . “That’s what we were asked to do, but we didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do.”
Instead, on their first visit, Cabeza and his colleagues drove around the park, taking in the views and meeting locals. “The first shock was the disappearance of fauna, the loss of fauna,” she said. “We have had many encounters with herdsmen within the park, and we have found children with guns getting very scared of us and running away. Cabeza decided that she and her fellow scientists should approach Dasanaha carefully, “rather than from a purely ecological, purely conservation approach.”
“Cheetahs and leopards are dwindling and all my friends need their skins.”
As the documentary shows, Cabeza and her fellow scientists held group meetings with the Dasanach people to hear their opinions about wildlife. Lokomeri Natodo, an elder of the Daasanaha tribe, took a step-by-step explanation of the tribe’s relationship with wildlife. “We slaughter wild animals and eat them just like cows. There is no difference. The taste is the same,” Natodo said. “When people were hungry, they didn’t want to kill cows, so they killed wild animals so they wouldn’t be hungry. We poached and killed for fun. We killed for food. In addition, their skins were used for sleeping and rituals. And the wild animals disappeared.”
The Dimi ritual is the heart of Daasanaha culture and is a rite of passage for men to become true and respected members of the community. In one group meeting recorded by the scientists, Dasanaha members explained that this ritual “makes the killing of animals a matter of pride.” Another added: “My favorite thing about Dimi is getting together with his friends and sharing stories and songs.” The elder of the group asked the young man if he wanted to stop Dimi. “No,” he answered. “But I don’t know how to find skins. There are fewer cheetahs and leopards now, and all my friends need skins for Dimi, and even if they can buy them, they’re too expensive. When my daughter is old enough What am I going to do then? You can’t have a dimi without skin.”
Youth concerns about the scarcity of animal skins show where the goals of tribes and conservationists align. Jenny Glickman is an expert in the field of human-wildlife conflict and leads research in human ecology around the world. Instituto de Estudio Sorales Avanzados In Spain, he explained that some indigenous groups have shown a willingness to adapt to conservationists’ proposals. She points to the success of Lion Guardians, a nonprofit organization founded by Egyptian conservation biologist Leela Hazza and American Stephanie Drenley that works with the Maasai people of southern Kenya.
“The Maasai traditionally hunted lions for their coming-of-age ceremony. They had to kill a lion to become a warrior,” Glikman explained. However, over the past 50 years, an estimated 50 percent of lions have disappeared. Lion Guardians has “transformed the Maasai people to become protectors and protectors of lions, rather than kill them.” The Maasai people are currently holding a ceremony to select a lion to protect. “This is how some of the traditions survive, because it’s an important aspect of the human-lion connection,” Glikman said.
Glikman and Hersus scientists agree that the path to resolving the often seemingly intractable conflicts between Western scientists and indigenous peoples is through communication. “I hope we all try to be more aware of what’s around us, be more respectful, less biased, and especially try to talk to people wherever we go and do research,” Cabeza said. said. “We go to a lot of places, we ask no questions, we make a lot of assumptions. That’s the big message for me: listen with your eyes open, keep an open mind, and see what you can figure out.”
The Hersus scientists created and presented to the Daasanaha people an illustrated encyclopedia of their myths, stories, and relationships with animals. They listed the authors of this book as Dasanaha community. The tribe’s gratitude gave scientists hope that further collaboration with them might lead to change. They created a proposal to use synthetic replicas of animal skins, an alternative only acceptable to Dasanaha’s millennials. “There was resistance from the elders,” Cabeza said. “Things don’t change in a day, they change slowly.”
But good intentions and projects proposed by Western conservationists cannot be the final word, Cabeza said. Resolutions to protect wildlife should be approved by indigenous peoples themselves. “It’s up to them to decide,” she said.
Elena Kazamia is a science writer from Greece. She holds a Master’s degree in Conservation from University College London and her Ph.D.in Plant Science from the University of Cambridge, UK
Lead photo: Dasanaha members wearing animal skins. Photo: Daniel Burgas Riera.