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  3. Endangered Peoples A)Today, it is not distance, but culture that separates the peoples of the world. The central question of our

Endangered Peoples A)Today, it is not distance, but culture that separates the peoples of the world. The central question of our

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问题                         Endangered Peoples
A)Today, it is not distance, but culture that separates the peoples of the world. The central question of our time may be how to deal with cultural differences. So begins the book, Endangered Peoples, by Art Davidson. It is an attempt to provide understanding of the issues affecting the world’s native peoples. This book tells the stories of 21 tribes, cultures, and cultural areas that are struggling to survive. It tells each story through the voice of a member of the tribe .Mr. Davidson recorded their words. Art Wolfe and John Isaac took pictures of them. The organization called the Sierra Club published the book.
B)The native groups live far apart in North America or South America, Africa or Asia. Yet their situations are similar. They are fighting the march of progress in an effort to keep themselves and their cultures alive. Some of them follow ancient ways most of the time. Some follow modern ways most of the time. They have one foot in ancient world and one foot in modern world. They hope to continue to balance between these two worlds. Yet the pressures to forget their traditions and join the modern world may be too great.
C)Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1992, offers her thoughts in the beginning of the book Endangered Peoples. She notes that many people claim that native people are like stories from the past. They are ruins that have died. She disagrees strongly. She says native communities are not remains of the past. They have a future, and they have much wisdom and richness to offer the rest of the world.
D)Art Davidson traveled thousands of miles around the world while working on the book. He talked to many people to gather their thoughts and feelings. Mr. Davidson notes that their desires are the same. People want to remain themselves, he says. They want to raise their children the way they were raised. They want their children to speak their mother tongue, their own language. They want them to have their parents’ values and customs. Mr. Davidson says the people’s cries are the same: "Does our culture have to die? Do we have to disappear as a people? "
E)Art Davidson lived for more than 25 years among native people in the American state of Alaska. He says his interest in native peoples began his boyhood when he found an ancient stone arrowhead. The arrowhead was used as a weapon to hunt food. The hunter was an American Indian, long dead. Mr. Davidson realized then that Indians had lived in the state of Colorado, right where he was standing. And it was then, he says, that he first wondered: "Where are they? Where did they go? "He found answers to his early question. Many of the native peoples had disappeared. They were forced off their lands. Or they were killed in battle. Or they died from diseases brought by new settlers. Other native peoples remained, but they had to fight to survive the pressures of the modern world.
F)The Gwich’in are an example of the survivors. They have lived in what is now Alaska and Canada for 10,000 years. Now about 5,000 Gwich’in remain. They are mainly hunters. They hunt the caribou, a large deer with big horns that travels across the huge spaces of the far north. For centuries, they have used all parts of the caribou: the meat for food, the skins for clothes, the bones for tools. Hunting caribou is the way of life of the Gwich’in.
G)One Gwich’in told Art Davidson of memories from his childhood. It was a time when the tribe lived quietly in its own corner of the world. He spoke to Mr. Davidson in these words: "Aslong as I can remember, someone would sit by a fire on the hilltop every spring and autumn. His job was to look for caribou. If he saw a caribou, he would wave his arms or he would make hisfire to give off more smoke. Then the village would come to life! People ran up to the hilltop. The tribes seemed to be at its best at these gatherings. We were all filled with happiness and sharing!"
H)About ten years ago, the modern world invaded the quiet world of the Gwich’in. Oil companies wanted to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve. This area was the placewhere the caribou gave birth to their young. The Gwich’in feared the caribou would disappear. One Gwich’in woman describes the situation in these words: "Oil development threatens the caribou. If the caribou are threatened, then the people are threatened. Oil company official and American lawmakers do not seem to understand. They do not come into our homes and share our food. They have never tried to understand the feeling expressed in our songs and our prayers.They have not seen the old people cry. Our elders have seen parts of our culture destroyed. Theyworry that our people may disappear forever. "
I)A scientist with a British oil company dismisses(驳回, 打消)the fears of the Gwich’in. He also says they have no choice. They will have to change. The Gwich’in, however, are resisting. They took legal action to stop the oil companies. But they won only a temporary ban on oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve.Pressures continue on other native people, as Art Davidson describes in his book. Thepressures come from expanding populations, dam projects that flood tribal lands, and political and economic conflicts threaten the culture, lands, and lives of such groups as the Quechua of Peru, the Malagasy of Madagascar and the Ainu of Japan.
J)The organization called Cultural Survival has been in existence for 22 years. It tries to protect the rights and cultures of peoples throughout the world. It has about 12,000 members. And it receives help from a large number of students who work without pay. Theodore MacDonald is director of the Cultural Survival Research Center. He says the organization has three main jobs. It does research and publishes information. It works with native people directly. And it creates markets for goods produced by native communities.
K)Late last year, Cultural Survival published a book called State of the Peoples: a Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger. The book contains reports from researchers who work for Cultural Survival, from experts on native peoples, and from native peoples themselves. The book describes the conditions of different native and minority groups. It includes longer reports about several threatened societies, including the Penan of Malaysia and the Anishinabe of North American. And it provides the names of organizations similar to Cultural Survival for activists, researchers and the press.
L)David Maybury-Lewis started the Cultural Survival organization. Mr. Maybury-Lewis believes powerful groups rob native peoples of their lives, lands, or resources. About 6,000 groups are left in the world. A native group is one that has its own langue. It hasa long-term link to a homeland. And it has governed itself. Theodore MacDonald says Cultural Survival works to protect the rights of groups, not just individual people. He says the organization would like to develop a system of early warnings when these rights are threatened .Mr. MacDonald notes that conflicts between different groups within a country have been going on forever and will continue. Such conflicts, he says, cannot be prevented. But they do not have to become violent. What Cultural Survival wants is to help set up methods that lead to peaceful negotiations of traditional differences. These methods, he says, are a lot less costly than war.
The book Endangered Peoples contents not only words, but also pictures.
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