<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p><img alt="encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS..."
class="n3VNCb"
src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSUN1Z44EpLnprYOBlmIz_-xvsqFpseNnHb6PdXwgWB3ByK4mg_"
data-noaft="1" style="width: 453px; height: 680px; margin: 0px;"></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="css-1nupfq9">
<div class="css-krkkhw">
<div class="css-rhetjd">
<h1 class="css-10d1jpn">An Inuit on the Underground</h1>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-zjgnrw">
<div class="css-1uix35z">
<div class="css-yx10il">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</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1aul2ye">
<div class="css-krkkhw">
<div class="css-ss9mnu">
<div class="css-k4wq22">
<div class="css-fj5ypv">
<div>
<address aria-label="Contributor info"
data-component="meta-byline" data-link-name="byline">
<div class="css-1sq67yf"><a rel="author"
data-link-name="auto tag link"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/roscoward">Ros
Coward</a></div>
</address>
<div class="css-1kkxezg" role="textbox"><span
class="css-nyo8hb">Published on </span>Sun 28 Jan
2001 01.18 GMT</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1pykr4h">
<div class="css-1uuhxtj">
<div class="css-1olk8yb">
<div class="article-body-commercial-selector css-79elbk">
<p class="css-182kmce"><strong>The Other Side of Eden:
Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of the World</strong></p>
<p class="css-182kmce"> Hugh Brody</p>
<span id="sign-in-gate"></span>
<p class="css-182kmce">Faber and Faber, £20, pp348</p>
<br>
<p class="css-182kmce"> 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.' </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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'. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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'. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">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. <br>
</p>
<p class="css-182kmce"><br>
</p>
<p class="css-182kmce"><br>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>