Land Rights and the Forest Peoples of Africa

Land rights and the forest peoples of Africa – Part I
B
Hunter–gatherer perceptions of the environment
From within the hall of mirrors it is almost impossible to imagine talking, thinking,
writing, doing, smelling, imagining and realizing worlds without ‘law’, ‘spaces’, ‘places’,
‘time’, ‘scale’, ‘nature’ and ‘self’. However, local and indigenous communities are doing
this as they construct processes, experiences, thoughts and actions. 27
What is missing from the previous (‘nature–culture divide’) account is the alternative
discourses and perspectives of indigenous peoples. For example, indigenous peoples relate to
their environments in ways manifestly different to the dualistic approach outlined above, as
their environment is not simply something inhabited but something experienced in a
relational way. It is this very concept that leads the Mbuti of the Ituri forest, for example, to
relate to the forest as their ‘father’ and ‘mother, ‘sibling’ and ‘lover’ and to describe
themselves as ‘children’ and ‘people of the forest’. 28 In these contexts it should be argued that
any attempt to separate culture and nature can be done only through an imposed
distinction. 29
The anthropologist Tim Ingold argues that in ‘Western’ ontology, culture and nature are
represented as two distinct entities, where nature is representative of what might be called
scientific nature. Culture has also become divided to form the culture that the western world
creates and the culturally perceived world of nature. 30 By this Ingold means that each
individual or society is understood as having the capacity to ascribe meaning to the
environment it occupies, which may be completely different to the representation created by
another person. These different representations are created culturally and are distinctly
different from the ‘real’ nature to which science is understood as having access. In the ‘West’
we see nature as something to which we have to ascribe meaning, something that we stand
outside of, as opposed to something that we dwell within. Ingold argues that hunter–
gatherers perceive themselves as acting within an undivided world and as engaging with its
constituent parts, which are already inherently meaningful: ‘(the western ontology) may be
characterised as the construction of a view, that is, as a process of mental representation. As
for the other, apprehending the world is not a matter of construction but of engagement, not
of building but of dwelling, not of making a view of the world but of taking up a view in it’. 31
How does this dwelling manifest itself for hunter–gatherers Turnbull 32 and later Mosko 33
have shown how Mbuti forest people relate to the forest as their ‘father’ and ‘mother, ‘sibling’
27 R Howitt and S Suchet-Pearson (2003) ‘Ontological Pluralism in Contested Cultural Landscapes’, in K
Anderson, M Domosh, S Pile and N Thrift (eds), Handbook of cultural geography, Sage, London and
Thousand Oaks, California, p 566.
28 See M S Mosko (1987) ‘The Symbols of “Forest”: A Structural Analysis of Mbuti Culture and Social
Organisation’, in American Anthropologist, vol. 89, no. 4, pp 896–913; C Turnbull (1983) The Mbuti
Pygmies; C Turnbull (1962) The Forest People; T Ingold (2000) The Perception of the Environment:
Essays in Livelihood, dwelling and skill, Routledge, London, pp 43–7.
29 T Ingold (2000) The Perception of the Environment, pp 40–43.
30 Ibid., p 41.
31 Ibid., p 42, emphasis in original.
32 C Turnbull (1962) The Forest People; C Turnbull (1983) The Mbuti Pygmies.
33 M S Mosko (1987) ‘The Symbols of “Forest” ’.
Kidd & Kenrick 12
March 2009