Case Study: Bari andYukpa in Venezuela

Barí

- At the beginning of the 1990’s, members of the Yucca community came upon a group of engineers and technicians of the transnational company MARAVEN

o Without prior consultation with the indigenous were conducting seismic exploration in the habitat of the Indians

o MARAVEN hoped to strike new oilfields soon

o Paths were cut in the forests and the inevitable explosions have already caused environmental destruction and had social consequences

o Even if the pathways were to again grow over it will not be possible to regenerate the original biological diversity in these spots;

o Instead what will merge in such spots will be a secondary forest

o In case exploration and producing activities continue and due to the associated felling and clearing of the rainforest, the area will eventually be transformed into savannah country

o There are innumerable examples of this in the lowlands where intense grazing by the campesinos resulted in the extensive clearing of the forests and their transformation into grasslands

o Wild animals are shocked by explosions for seismic exploration and flee the forest

§ The consequence is that the Bari can no longer pursue their hunting lifestyle

§ Bari spend their time between fish and game but if there is no game then they have to concentrate much more on fishing

· Increases work hours and results in overfishing

· Another reason for overfishing is that indigenous groups are forced to fish because of the ban on hunting in national parks

- In 1991, the inhabitants of village Bakshi discovered the death of fish in the rivers.

- The official explanation of this phenomenon was a lack of oxygen due to a sudden flooding of the rivers

- There were rumors flying that many helicopters overflying the area at the time had contaminated the rivers depriving the indigenous of their life sustaining resources.

- Jose Aragdou, a Bari leader insinuated that the oil company MARVEN had deliberately destroyed the forest in Sierra de Perijá and contaminated their ponds and rivers with its seismic exploration and activities

- The Sierra Perijá is the last refuge remaining for the Bari and Yukpa

- Once can only hope the last 10% of their traditional territory is left to the Bari and Yukpa, although this is already too small for them

- The high rate of population growth amongst the indigenous and the limited land available to them , result in the indigenous overusing their land and hence destroying it themselves

- In order to practice subsistence economy, they are constantly deforesting new parts of their territory and this, like the campesinos, are contributing to the creating of savannahs

- When the Bari and Yukpa groups can no longer subsist, they are forced to look for other means of survivals

- Once such means is the cultivation of cash crops (e.g. coffee), which are intended for sale.

- Another possibility is wage labor that is taken on in the cities or even with the oil companies, to maintain their families on this mostly meager income

Pg 264-265

Strategies of the Indigenous People

- In Venezuela that various groups have adapted differently to Western culture

- Even within the same group there are different forms of adaptation

- The Yukpa, for example are a relatively acculturated group in Venezuela because of their early contacts with the missionaries

- It general , it can be said that those members of indigenous groups who lived in or near the mission compounds have adapted to western culture

- This is it is possible that the Yukpa living in the mission compounds, speak disparagingly of the Yukpa have a traditional lifestyle and describe them as backward

- However, the politically conscious Yukpa, on the other hand are actively supporting the preservation of their culture and lifestyle and take pride in their identity

Bari

- Are also confronted with similar conditions

- Some of them have a traditional lifestyle i.e. primarily practice subsistence economy and our dependent on hunting

- There are others who are dependent on wages paid by western employers and the work is mostly low wage labor for unqualified persons

- This is the case of the Bari also there are some who are more strongly acculturated and take on the wage labor

- The Yukpa have undergone greater cultural transformation than the Bari, the majority of whom still continue to practice subsistence economy

o Reason: different histories – Bari resisted the invader at a time when the Yukpa were already in regular contact with the missions

Impact

- The indigenous often do not agree to the drilling of test wells because permission for this is granted by the competent govt authority, mostly without the approval of indigenous

- However the companies offer them western commodities and technology, such as tractor and motor cycles

- By distributing such largess, the oil companies win over many of the indigenous according to Halbmayer’s estimate about half the labor force who cut the paths for explorations and detonate the explosives are Yukpa

- This leads to increasingly to wage dependence on oil companies, with the indigenous partially working under slave-like conditions in the MARAVEN camps

- The majority of the indigenous work voluntarily

- MARAVEN plays them approximately four times the wage they would earn on haciendas

- Sometimes even the members of indigenous organizations cannot resists such tempting offers

- Parents try to find jobs for their sons and daughters in such camps in order to quickly earn a lot of money for their households

- These jobs are mostly for a limited period of time and there is no guarantee of reemployment

Database Formatting:

Update: http://www.unc.edu/~ndfernan/database/11.8.2010DbTest.xlsx

Database Formatting:

http://www.unc.edu/~ndfernan/database/DbTest.xlsx

i. Transposing all nutritional information
ii. Looking up unknowns

Godoy and Cárdenas - Markets and Health of Indigenous People: A Methodological Contribution

Godoy and Cárdenas conducted a study on Mojeña Indians and Yuracarè to determine whether they could find a standpoint on the debate between the effects of markets and acculturation hurt, help, or produce ambiguous effects on the health of indigenous people as they integrate themselves into market economies.

The three positions that most scholars take are:

• Negative - "markets undermine the health of indigenous people because it leads to the introduction of new diseases and changes in diet,work patterns, and subsistence practices; loss of land and natural resources and a reduction in the biological and ecological complexity of the environments"
• Positive - "greater participation increases health because it raises income and education, thereby allowing households to buy modern medical services and improve their nutrition and hygiene"
  
• Ambiguous - "the morbidity of indigenous people may change over time and may vary depending on the degree and nature of a person's integration to the market"

Godoy explains that there are several reasons for the divergent views on this topic. An example is that isoloated poorer villagers may be more willing to work even when they are ill and more likely to underreport feeling ill - with higher income and greater paricipation in the market health, expectations rise and people are more likely to report illness and seek treatment. One of the major reasons for ambiguity though, may be attributed to the failure to distinguish between acculturation and integration when studying morbidity on variables. Godoy asserts that though related, acculturation and integration do not overlap in full and can be defined in different ways - thereby bearing a different relation to morbidity.

The study:
The Mojeña and Yuracarè are among the largest lowland indigenous groups in Bolivia - and contain more variance in socioeconomic attributes than the smaller groups.

Market integration was measure in nine different ways: 1) share of rice sold, 2) share of maize sold, 3) wage labor, 4) use of credit 5) use of chemicals in farming 6) use of a modern rice seeders, 7) village-to-town distance, 8) number of government and non-government institutions in the village, and 9) number of teachers and health in workers in the village

Conclusions:
Godoy and Cárdenas found that the relation between markets and health to be nonlinear and complex . They conclude that though their evidence suggests that the definition of integration to the nonvillage economoy matters, that "irrespective of how integration to the market is defined, markets seems to have little effect on health, after controlling for a broad range of socioeconomic covariates."

Godoy, Ricardo and Marina Cardenas. 2000 Markets and the Health of Indigenous People: A Methodological
Contribution. Human Organization 59(1):117-125.

Database Formatting:

Project Scope Statement

This system will be used to aid in the research project known as the Ecuador Project (http://www.unc.edu/humanbiolab). This goal of this project is to examine the effects of market integration on the health of seven indigenous groups from Amazonian Ecuador. This particular system will be used in the nutritional aspect of this study. The idea of making this system is to be able to evaluate nutritional health of individuals by evaluating the nutritional content of their first daily meal. On a larger scale this system will provide the means to make comparisons of nutritional health among the seven communities.

Upon completion this system will not only allow the user to be able to evaluate the nutritional intake of individuals, families, households and communities but also to make hypothetical nutritional situations for each of these categories (i.e.; examining the difference in protein intake of each individual in household 7, of community 2, if one egg is added to each person’s first daily meal).

E-R Diagram:

The Basics:

Who are Indigenous Peoples?

• According to current estimates- over 250 million people in 70 countries of the world are listed as indigenous peoples.

• People range from Indian groups of the Amazon Rainforest to the Sami in the higher reaches of Northern Europe to the Aborigines in the Australian outback
• Comprise 4% of global population

• UN uses a flexible multi-factored definition of an indigenous person consisting of four criteria
• Pre-existence
• Non-dominance
• Cultural difference
• Self-identification

• "Indigenous peoples" refers mainly to those groups of people who were earlier describes as "tribal societies"
• Originally societies living in a small area
• Having no central political authority
• Dependent agriculture, swiddening, nomadic livestock breeding or hunting/gathering

• This description no longer reflects the present day realities of indigenous communities, as there is hardly any difference in the lifestyle of many indigenous peoples and the great mass of small farmers
• Indigenous peoples are also residents of urban centers and slum areas
• Reject the term "tribe" as a colonially loaded term

• Until a few decades ago, states reserved the right to determine what could be classified as "indigenous"
• Now, many non profits and other organizations acknowledge the need to also recognize "indigenousness" as a matter of subjective perception

Haller, Tobias. "Introduction." Fossil Fuels, Oil Companies, and Indigenous Peoples: Strategies of Multinational Oil Companies, States, and Ethnic Minorities ; Impact on Environment, Livelihoods and Cultural Change / Tobias Haller, Eds. .... [et Al.]. Wien: Lit, 2007. Print

MI and Indigenous Health

• Two contrasting perspective on markets and health of indigenous peoples:

1. Improves health through access to higher incomes, formal education, and health care services
1. Income and education are associated with ability to smooth consumption, purchase medical services, treat illness promptly, and maintain proper sanitary conditions
2. Markets can also function as a safety net for fluctuating dietary intakes during seasonal short falls in resource availability
3. Increase in household income can augment individual energy intake through improved access to food
2. Market economies are detrimental to health of indigenous populations because market expansion is accompanied by increased disease and dietary alternation
1. Ecological approaches suggest that traditional societies have adapted to their environments in ways that maintains good health and nutrition
2. Greater integration into a market economy and exposure and assimilation into a dominant society can result in shifts in modes of subsistence, decision-making about resource use, and access to health-related goods and services
3. Exposure to acculturative forces (formal education, language skills of dominiant society, frequency of contact) can result in adoption or reject of new values and preferences

• Important to remember: in most places, people are not controlling or determining their own relationship with the market economy and are therefore in a disadvantageous position

Byron, Elizabeth M. MARKET INTEGRATION AND HEALTH: THE IMPACT OF MARKETS AND ACCULTURATION ON THE SELF-PERCEIVED MORBIDITY, DIET, AND NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF THE TSIMANE’ AMERINDIANS OF LOWLAND BOLIVIA. Diss. UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 2003.

Health Effects of Market Integration

Objectives:
Market integration produces mixed effects on well-being and conservation in indigenous populations. There are two basic perspectives on the relationship between market integration and indigenous health. The first is that integration into a market economy brings plentiful benefits such as education, and social services that improve health. The second focuses on detriments market integration causes on health by focusing on the change it brings to the environment that these populations have adapted to in order to maintain good health and nutrition.

Research on the impact of market integration on the health of indigenous populations is important because health is a standard and classic indicator of human welfare and robustness of the society (Godoy).

During the extent of this course, I will be working continuously on the specific case sample of the Ecuador Project. This will consist of data analysis examining the health effects market integration has brought to seven indigenous populations in Amazonian Ecuador. Furthermore, this course will act as an independent study on the effects of market integration on indigenous health specifically through human growth, nutritional status, and development as a result of changes MI brings to traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples, and their use of renewable natural resources.

Books:

Wien; Berlin: Lit 2007:

Fossil fuels, oil companies, and indigenous peoples: strategies of multinational oil companies, states, and ethnic minorities; impact on environment, livelihoods and cultural change

McMichael, Phillip 2009:

Development and social change: a global perspective