[D66] The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of the World

[R.O.]

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  An Inuit on the Underground

Ros Coward on how the hunter-gatherer world-view contains important 
lessons for humanity's future in Hugh Brody's The Other Side of Eden
Ros Coward <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/roscoward>

Published on Sun 28 Jan 2001 01.18 GMT

*The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of 
the World*

Hugh Brody

Faber and Faber, £20, pp348


Anthropologist Hugh Brody describes the visit to London of Anaviapik, an 
Inuit who had never previously left the Arctic. Anaviapik is disgorged 
from a British Airways plane on a hot summer's day swathed in a fox-fur- 
trimmed parka and 'wearing sealskin boots with brown trousers tucked 
into their patterned tops'. To Brody's relief, Anaviapik survives this 
visit with equanimity. One thing he never masters, however, is the built 
environment. Everyday Brody teases him, challenging him to find the 
short way home from the Tube. Everyday he fails: 'How amazing that the 
Qallunaat [white people] live in cliffs. I would never be able to find 
my way here without you.'

Back in the vast, white, apparently indecipherable landscapes of the 
Arctic Anaviapik has no such problem. On one occasion, Brody travels 
hundreds of miles with him by dog sledge. En route, Anaviapik diverts to 
a place he has not visited since 1938. 'How did you remember the way?' 
asks Brody. 'Inuit cannot get lost in our own land. If we have done a 
journey once we can always do it again.' This is one of the many 
instances which brings home to Brody the profound difference between 
hunter-gatherers' attitude to the land and our own. Theirs is an 
intimate knowledge of the land's contours, its seasons and creatures. A 
transformed landscape, dominated by man's activities, is alien and 
unattractive to them.

Others have noted the differences in attitudes towards the land of 
hunter-gatherer societies. But all too often racism and prejudice 
dismiss hunter- gatherers as backward people too ignorant to settle the 
land. Over the years, Brody has lived with and studied several 
hunter-gatherer societies. He has become convinced that the 
hunter-gatherer world-view contains important lessons for humanity's 
future.

He devotes much space to discussing Inuit language in addressing these 
issues. It is the language, he claims, that 'reveals different ways of 
knowing the world'. Anaviapik introduces him to Inuit not as a 
collection of words but as a culture. When Brody learns about seal 
hunting, he is shown not only how to hunt but how to talk about the hunt 
to other community members. He also learns there is no generic word for 
seal, only 'ringed seal, one-year-old ringed seal, adult male ringed 
seal, harp seal, bearded seal'.

It is a well-known academic curiosity that Inuit has no generic word for 
snow either, only a vast array of different snowy conditions. For Brody, 
these are far from idle academic points. They expose how hunter-gatherer 
languages 'express and celebrate the importance of detailed knowledge of 
their natural world'. They demonstrate a complex and profound respect 
for their land and the creatures they hunt. Far from the miserable 
subsistence existence imagined by colonists, Brody meets an almost 
spiritual connection to the land. Many hunter-gatherers feel there's a 
porous connection between the natural and spirit world.

Its impossible not to sympathise with Brody's indignation at the way the 
hunter-gatherers' language and culture have been misunderstood, 
silenced, and even repressed by those who have appropriated their lands. 
In one case, George, a member of the Nisga'a society in Alaska, recounts 
how he was forced by the government to leave his valley and attend an 
'Indian residential school'. He was taken forcibly from his parents and 
his familiar coastal forests. He was beaten every time he used his own 
language. The terror George experienced is still palpable, as is the 
pain of separation from his culture. Equally distressing are the 
accounts of Nato's refusal to hear evidence from traditional 'experts' 
when an air base destroyed their hunting grounds.

Those appropriating hunter-gatherer land pour contempt on their culture, 
dehumanising them by reference to their lack of discipline towards 
children, their subsistence existence. Brody sees these as a function of 
an egalitarian culture which is not interested in subduing children or 
landscape but in leaving nature intact. Now he is convinced the 
fundamental division in human history is between this world view and 
that of the hunter-gatherers' oppressors, the agriculturalists.

Normally, hunter-gatherers are seen as nomads and farmers as settlers. 
Brody thinks the reverse is true. Farming culture is accompanied by 'a 
longing to be settled, a defensive holding of ground and a continuing 
endemic nomadism' caused by the continuous growth of population among 
such communities. Genesis, says Brody is the ultimate agriculturalist 
myth, embodying their continuing quest to reshape nature as a lost Eden. 
Hunter-gatherers, by contrast, do not seek to reshape and dominate their 
landscape. Their conviction is that their land is 'already Eden and 
exile must be avoided'.

Brody is also convinced that hunter-gatherers had different cultural 
origins from the agriculturalists since they do not share the 
Indo-European languages characteristic of all agricultural people. Brody 
postulates agriculturalists spread out from one place, a combative and 
imperialist culture which eventually drove hunter-gatherers to the edge 
of habitable land. Brody concludes that the fate of the hunter-gatherers 
is a hugely important part of human history. This is not a primitive 
culture surpassed by superior forms. Instead, it embodies an equally 
significant aspect of the human condition.

As well as being an argument for the political rights of hunter-gatherer 
societies, The Other Side of Eden is also a passionate argument in 
support of recognising and nurturing the hunter-gatherer world-view. At 
a time when nature is so under threat from humanity, there are 
invaluable environmental lessons to be learnt from cultures which seek 
to survive from the land but also leave it as they find it.



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