Indigenous

IAF Inducts Indigenously-Built Light Combat Helicopter

Developed by the state-run aerospace major HAL, the 5.8-tonne twin-engine gunship chopper is armed with air-to-air missiles, 20 mm turret guns, rocket systems and other weapons.

Jodhpur: The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Monday inducted the first fleet of indigenously-built Light Combat Helicopters (LCHs), which has been developed primarily for mountain warfare after a requirement for it was felt during the Kargil war in 1999.

Developed by the state-run aerospace major Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), the 5.8-tonne twin-engine gunship chopper is armed with air-to-air missiles, 20 mm turret guns, rocket systems and other weapons.

The fleet comprising four helicopters was inducted into the IAF at a ceremony at the Jodhpur Air Force Station in presence of defence minister Rajnath Singh, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari and other senior military officials.

“It is a momentous occasion reflecting India’s capability in defence production,” Singh said.

The LCH would be effective in hitting enemy infantry, tanks, bunkers, drones and other assets in high-altitude regions, military officials said.

“Subsequently, the IAF and HAL began exploring the possibility of developing the platform with a capacity to carry an adequate weapon load, sufficient fuel and still be capable of operating in the higher reaches of the Himalayan ranges,” said an official.

Spotting the Truth and the Hype About INS Vikrant’s Domestic Sourcing of Material

While media paeans rightly acclaimed the fact that 76% of the carrier’s overall ‘float’ content was local in origin, it is also true that nearly 70% of its ‘fight’ content and an equal proportion of its ‘move’ category is imported.

New Delhi: The commissioning into service of INS Vikrant, the Indian Navy (IN)’s first indigenous aircraft carrier-1 or IAC-1, has seen frenzied celebrations over the country’s proficiency in domestically sourcing material, systems and components to successfully build the 43,000-tonne platform.

Official and media paeans over Vikrant’s construction by Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) were right in acclaiming that 76% of the carrier’s overall ‘float’ content was local in origin. This included 23,000 tonnes of warship grade steel, 2,500 km of electrical cables and 150 km of specialised pipes, all of which were obtained from scores of domestic private and public sector manufacturers and micro, small and medium enterprises.

Other internally procured equipment provided to CSL for integration, included rigid hull boats, air conditioning and refrigeration plants, anchor capstans, galley and communication and combat network systems, amongst other assorted kits that comprise Vikrant’s 14 decks and support its 1600-strong crew, including 200 officers. The warship also incorporates an elaborate medical complex, comprising a modular operation theatre, dental centre, specialised cabins for future women officers and kitchens that serve an assortment of cuisines.

However, one of the initial impediments in IAC-1’s Project 71 programme centred on sourcing AB/A steel, after efforts to import it from Russia were abandoned in 2004-05. To overcome this, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)’s Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) in Hyderabad and the public sector Steel Authority of India or SAIL jointly developed three types of steel for the carrier, ultimately supplying some 23,000 tons of it to CSL, and using it thereafter for other naval platforms, including nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Varying in thickness from 3 mm to 70 mm this steel included DMR 249A for the carriers hull and body, while the more resilient DMR 249B variant was used for the flight deck that takes repeated beatings from the impact of 15-18 tonne fighter’s landing frequently upon it. The third steel type – DMR Z25 – was used for flooring in many of Vikrant’s compartments housing heavy equipment, like engines and generators, as it was capable of withstanding compression and decompression emanating from these apparatuses.

Nevertheless, despite the nearly seven-year delay in Vikrant’s construction and a sixfold rise in its building cost to Rs 20,000 crore, CSL competently employed the modular integrated hull outfit and painting (IHOP) technique in IAC-1’s construction. This included the latest shipbuilding techniques, which comprised readying 874 composite compartment blocks, each averaging 250 tons that incorporated most of Vikrant’s machinery employed for navigation and overall survivability.

The extended postponements to Project 71, on the other hand, were due primarily to CSL not receiving the carrier drawings from the under-staffed New Delhi-based Warship Design Bureau – earlier the Directorate of Naval design – on time and complex and bureaucratic equipment import procedures. A paucity of specialist welders and marine technicians and a road accident in 2014, involving one of the trucks transporting the warship’s imported generators to CSL, only multiplied these hold-ups.

Also Read: ‘Ensign of Blue Water Navy Should Reflect Chola Maritime Heritage, New Design Is Uninspiring’

The indigenousness ends there

But the widely applauded indigenousness of Vikrant ends here, as nearly 70% of its ‘fight’ content and an almost equal proportion of its ‘move’ category is imported, adding substantially to its escalated building cost and taking the sheen off the Ministry of Defence (MoD)’s and IN’s indigeous claims. The former grouping includes 30 fighters and assorted helicopters, which Vikrant will eventually embark after completing flight trials, ahead of becoming fully operational and deployable as a battleworthy platform some 15 months from now, by end-2023.

Vikrant’s fighter component will, for now, comprise Russian MiG-29K/KUB fighters and Kamov Ka-31 ‘Helix’ early warning and control (AEW&C) helicopters and Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky MH-60R multi-role rotary craft. The 26 multi-role carrier-borne fighters (MRCBF), including eight twin-seat trainers, that the IN plans on acquiring, to supplement and eventually replace the operationally deficient MiG-29K/KUBs, too will be imported. The navy is presently evaluating France’s Rafale (M) and Boeing’s F/A-18E/F ‘Super Hornet’ fighters for acquisition, in a long-delayed move that has triggered harsh criticism from senior service veterans.

Former IN Chief of Staff Admiral Arun Prakash, for instance, told Reuters on the eve of Vikrant’s September 2 commissioning that due to India’s ‘typically disjointed decision-making process’ the selection of carrier-based fighter got de-linked from the carrier project, and a decision on it was yet to be taken.

We knew the ship was likely to be commissioned this year, Admiral Prakash stated, and hence the selection process, as well as negotiations for the fighter, should have started well in time, perhaps three to four years earlier. He also said that while Vikrant had successfully undertaken sea trials, aircraft operations were yet to commence. “One hopes it will be a success story all the way,” the highly decorated aviator added.

Retired IN Captain Kamlesh Agnihotri from the National Maritime Foundation in New Delhi echoed Admiral Prakash and told Reuters that since the air wing was the main weapon of any carrier to render it operational and not having one was a ‘critical shortfall. It also prevented the carrier from being ‘exploited optimally’, he added.

Furthermore, Vikrant’s Aviation Facility Complex that includes arrestor gears, short-take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) systems for launch and recovery of fighters, and related diverse flight handling equipment – yet to be fitted onto the carrier – was from Russia’s Nevskoe Design Bureau. The carrier’s two aircraft lifts, used to house fighters three decks below the flight deck for storage, servicing and to be armed and bring them back up again, were from the UK, while the ammunition lifts were of US origin, and the aircraft hangar doors were Swedish.

Vikrant was also armed with 32 Israeli-origin Barak-8 Medium Range Surface-to-Air missiles (MR-SAMs) that are manufactured by Bharat Dynamics Limited in collaboration with Israel Aerospace Industries(IAI)-Elta. These, in turn, were supported by the Israeli EL/M-2248 MF-STAR multi-function active electronically scanned array radar, which too is reportedly yet to be fitted onto Vikrant.

In this undated file photo, the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) Vikrant sails in the sea. Photo: PTI

Additionally, the carriers ‘move’ function was powered by four US General Electric LM-2500 gas turbines manufactured at the multinational’s Evendale plant in Ohio, but tested by the Industrial & Marine Gas Turbine Division of the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited under a previous agreement. Collectively, these turbines generate 88MW or 120,000 hp that provide a maximum speed of 28 knots or 52km/hour to the carrier that has an operational endurance of 7.550 nm or 13,900 km.

Moreover, Project 71 also featured essential input from several foreign shipbuilders like France’s DCNS – now Naval Group – in the 1990s to audit CSL and Italy’s Fincantieri, to oversee Vikrant’s design and propulsion system integration in a $30-40 million contract agreed in mid-2004. Although the technical segment of this arrangement has been completed, Fincantieri’s association with Vikrant was committed to continuing through the duration of its sea trials to its commissioning, but it’s not known whether this relationship has concluded or continued. Spain’s state-owned Navantia shipbuilders were also believed to have been marginally involved in providing design expertise related to the carrier’s air groups integration.

Also Read: Positive Indigenisation Lists and the Truth About India’s Self-Reliance in Defence Equipment

Future expansions needed

“While it’s admirable for CSL and Indian industry to have contributed notably and successfully to Vikrant’s float aspect, their success in the move and fight category that is vital to all carriers is greatly restricted,” said a retired two-star IN officer. This needed expanding for any such future platform to qualify as an inclusive indigenous platform, he added, declining to be identified for commenting on such a sensitive matter.

Despite the government’s continuing hype over the atmanirbharta initiative to indigenously source defence equipment, India’s defence industrial complex still remains one in the making. And, despite the involvement of private manufacturers over the past two decades, it is one with relatively competent engineering skills, but limited developmental expertise, and an inordinately high dependence on imported systems and components like engines, radar and electronic warfare units, amongst others.

The import content, for example, in India’s three showcase indigenous platforms – the Tejas light combat aircraft, Arjun main battle tank and Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter – all of which were developed after interminable delays and massive cost overruns, averages 50-60%.

Consequently, all three platforms, in accordance with the MoD’s frequently revised Defence Procurement/Acquisition Procedures, stand disqualified as ‘indigenous’ due to their high import content. And, even the IN, for its part, credited with doggedly localising its warship building, compared to the indigenisation affected by the two other services, had emerged largely as a systems integrator, as demonstrated to a large degree by Vikrant.

Perhaps, it’s time for the MoD and the armed forces to look at indigenisation with an element of practicality and realism.

Canada’s Long Overdue Reckoning With Its Colonial Past

This year, many towns across the country are canceling Canada Day celebrations and encouraging people to use the day to learn about the residential school system and reconciliation with Indigenous people.

Dustin Ross Fiddler was raised with these stories. They are not new. He heard them from his grandparents, his parents, the elders in his community, countless uncles and aunts — stories of the stolen children who never came home.

“This was something that was truth and knowledge to Indigenous people. But a large majority of Canadians did not learn about it until a gruesome discovery such as this,” said Fiddler, a councilor with Waterhen Lake First Nation, a Cree Indigenous community located in the northwest of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. “And it’s sad that it takes a gruesome discovery for people to question their blind spots.”

The discovery of more than 700 unmarked graves on the site of a former Indigenous residential school in Saskatchewan, just weeks after a similar smaller finding in British Columbia (B.C.), has sparked a long overdue reckoning with the country’s colonial past.

As more Indigenous communities across Canada begin to unearth the remains of children who have been lost for decades, Fiddler is bracing himself.

“I know that I will have relatives in these unmarked graves,” Fiddler said. “And that’s not just my individual experience… when each site is discovered or about to be explored, you have this anxiety and apprehension. You’re not entirely certain how many relatives will be there.”

Residential schools ‘were prison camps’

Residential schools operated in Canada for over 150 years, with more than 150,000 children passing through their doors until the last ones closed in 1996. Indigenous children were taken from their families, often by force. They were housed in crowded, state-funded, church-run facilities, where they were abused and forbidden from speaking their languages. The system’s purpose: “To kill the Indian in the child.”

Also read: Canada Indigenous Groups in Nationwide Hunt for More Graves after New Discoveries

“The use of the word school is a misnomer,” said Cindy Blackstock, a professor at Montreal’s McGill University and the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. “They were prison camps. Their intent was to assimilate these students.”

A decaying white cross lies in a small cemetery for children who died at Brandon Indian Residential School near one of three sites where researchers, partnered with the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, located 104 potential graves in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada June 12, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Shannon VanRaes/File Photo

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2008 to investigate residential schools, called the practice “cultural genocide.”

Many children never returned home, either dying from neglect, disease or suicide. Their families learned little about their fates. Some were told nothing at all — their children simply disappeared.

The federal government stopped recording the deaths around 1920 after the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs suggested children were dying at an alarming rate.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified 4,120 children who went missing from around 150 schools. Murray Sinclair, an Indigenous former judge who led the inquiry, said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he now believes the number was “well beyond 10,000.”

“Survivors talked about children who suddenly went missing,” said Sinclair in a statement. “Some talked about children who went missing into mass burial sites. Some survivors talked about infants who were born to young girls at the residential schools, infants who had been fathered by priests, were taken away from them and deliberately killed — sometimes thrown into furnaces, we were told.”

Also read: Hundreds More Unmarked Graves Found at Erstwhile Canadian Residential School

Searching for answers

The commission requested that the Canadian government conduct a fuller inquiry into the missing children, but their request was denied. The work is now being done piecemeal, led by the Indigenous communities, who long for answers.

The federal government has promised to assist communities financially with the searches.

“The hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canada’s responsibility to bear, and the government will continue to provide Indigenous communities across the country with the funding and resources they need to bring these terrible wrongs to light,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a media statement. “While we cannot bring back those who were lost, we can – and we will – tell the truth of these injustices, and we will forever honor their memory.”

On Wednesday, the Lower Kootenay Band — a First Nation — in B.C.’s South Interior announced the discovery of 182 unmarked grave sites in the community of ?Aq’am. The revelation followed the discovery of 751 unmarked graves by the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan on the site of the now-defunct Marieval Indian Residential School.

In May, 215 children’s remains — some as young as three years old — were found by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nations using ground-penetrating radar at a different Indigenous residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Canada’s federal government apologized for the residential school system in 2008, but for Blackstock and other First Nations people, apologies mean little without action.

“What we want is justice. Sending flowers and prayers is not enough,” she said.

People visit a makeshift memorial on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc band council encouraged mourners to take part in a national day of prayer to honor the remains of 215 children that were found at the site in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada June 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Jennifer Gauthier/File Photo

Apology from the Catholic Church?

The Roman Catholic Church operated 60% of the residential schools in Canada, while the Anglican Church, the United Church and Presbyterians ran the rest.

Pope Francis has yet to apologise, and the Catholic Church still has not disclosed all the historical documents in its possession that are related to the schools.

The pope is set to meet with Indigenous leaders and residential school survivors in December.

“Pope Francis is deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous Peoples, expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system, in the hopes of responding to the suffering of Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma,” said the Catholic Bishops of Canada in a statement.

Six years after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau affirmed his government’s commitment to implement all 94 calls to action recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation report, few have been completed. A December 2020 investigation by the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nation-led research center based in Toronto, found only eight have been fully implemented.

For Blackstock, the residential school system is not a closed chapter of Canada’s history. Systemic racism prevails in the systems that replaced it.

Also read: Debate: ‘Colonialism Is Conquest of Land, Labour Exploitation, Oppression – All at Once.’

The 2016 census revealed that First Nation, Inuit and Metis children represented only 7.7% of all children under the age of 15 in Canada but accounted for 52.2% of children in foster care. More than 30% of inmates in Canadian prisons are Indigenous — even though they make up just 5% of the country’s population.

Moving forward

This year, many towns and cities across Canada are canceling Canada Day celebrations and encouraging people to use the day to learn about the residential school system and reconciliation with Indigenous people.

For non-Indigenous Canadians like Eva Goldthorp, the news from Cowessess and Kamloops has been an awakening.

“Only after the Kamloops story broke did I look into it and realize how little I knew about it,” said Goldthorpe, whose husband is Indigenous.

“I had a perception, like many Canadians, that residential school issues were something that happened a long time ago. I didn’t realize how recent it was. This was still going on while I was alive.”

To show her solidarity, Goldthorp made an orange paper heart with cut-out feathers to hang in the window of her home. She made a few extra ones for neighbors but soon she was fielding calls for more hearts from across the neighborhood. Her hearts are sparking conversations and causing people like her in Chilliwack, B.C., where she lives, to question Canada’s colonial legacy.

“There should be more education about exactly what went on. When the mass part of society doesn’t really understand what’s going on, people don’t care enough to want to see change,” Goldthorp said.

It’s exactly what Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation asked of Canadians during a virtual press conference last week, after news broke of the unmarked graves in Saskatchewan.

“All we ask of all of you listening is that you stand by us as we heal and we get stronger,” said Delorme. “We all must put down our ignorance and accidental racism of not addressing the truth that this country has with Indigenous people. We are not asking for pity, but we are asking for understanding. We need time to heal, and this country must stand by us.”

This article was first published on DW.

Canada: Indigenous Group Finds Unmarked Graves of 751 People at Erstwhile School

The latest discovery, the biggest to date, is a grim reminder of the years of abuse and discrimination indigenous communities have suffered in Canada.

An indigenous group in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan on Thursday said it had found the unmarked graves of an estimated 751 people at a now-defunct Catholic residential school, just weeks after a similar, smaller discovery rocked the country.

The latest discovery, the biggest to date, is a grim reminder of the years of abuse and discrimination indigenous communities have suffered in Canada even as they continue to fight for justice and better living conditions.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “terribly saddened” by the discovery at Marieval Indian Residential School about 87 miles (140 km) from the provincial capital Regina. He told indigenous people that “the hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canada’s responsibility to bear.”

It is not clear how many of the remains detected belong to children, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told reporters, adding that oral stories mentioned adults being buried at the site.

Delorme later told Reuters some of the graves belong to non-indigenous people who may have belonged to the church. He said the First Nation hopes to find the gravestones that once marked these graves, after which they may involve police.

The area of the Marieval Indian Residential School is seen in an undated map on the Cowessess Reserve near Grayson, Saskatchewan, Canada. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation/Handout via Reuters.

Delorme said the church that ran the school removed the headstones.

“We didn’t remove the headstones. Removing headstones is a crime in this country. We are treating this like a crime scene,” he said.

The residential school system, which operated between 1831 and 1996, removed about 150,000 indigenous children from their families and brought them to Christian residential schools, mostly Catholic, run on behalf of the federal government.

“Canada will be known as a nation who tried to exterminate the First Nations,” said Bobby Cameron, Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan. “This is just the beginning.”

Old wounds

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which published a report that found the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide, has said a cemetery was left on the Marieval site after the school building was demolished.

The local Catholic archdiocese gave Cowessess First Nation C$70,000 ($56,813) in 2019 to help restore the site and identify unmarked graves, said spokesperson Eric Gurash. He said the archdiocese gave Cowessess all its death records for the period Catholic parties were running the school.

Also read: Remains of 215 Children Found at Former Indigenous School Site in Canada

In a letter to Delorme on Thursday, Archbishop Don Bolen reiterated an earlier apology for the “failures and sins of Church leaders and staff” and pledged to help identify the remains.

Heather Bear, who went to Marieval as a day student in the 1970s and is also vice-chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, recalled a small cemetery at the school but not of the size revealed on Thursday.

“You just didn’t want to be walking around alone in (the school),” she recalled. There was a “sadness that moves. And I think every residential school has that sadness looming.”

The Cowessess First Nation began a ground-penetrating radar search on June 2, after the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia outraged the country. Radar at Marieval found 751 “hits” as of Wednesday with a 10% margin of error, meaning at least 600 graves on the site.

The Kamloops discovery reopened old wounds in Canada about the lack of information and accountability around the residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families and subjected them to malnutrition and physical and sexual abuse.

Pope Francis said in early June that he was pained by the Kamloops revelation and called for respect for the rights and cultures of native peoples. But he stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded.

Thursday was a difficult day, Delorme told Reuters. But he wants his young children to know “we will get the reconciliation one day with action like today.”

($1 = 1.2321 Canadian dollars)

(Reuters)

Remains of 215 Children Found at Former Indigenous School Site in Canada

Canada’s residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted ‘cultural genocide’, a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015.

Toronto: The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children, a discovery Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday.

The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978, according to the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation, which said that the remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement. “At this time, we have more questions than answers.”

Canada’s residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted “cultural genocide”, a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015.

The report documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s.

Also read: Children in Gaza Have a Right to a Peaceful Childhood

It found that more than 4,100 children died while attending residential school. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canada’s largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery.

Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news “breaks my heart – it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history”.

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologised for the system.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation said it was engaging with the coroner and reaching out to the home communities whose children attended the school. They expect to have preliminary findings by mid-June.

In a statement, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations regional chief terry Teegee called finding such grave sites “urgent work” that “refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia.”

(Reuters)

The Stories of Tupaia and Omai and Their Vital Role as Captain Cook’s Unsung Shipmates

The stories of Tupaia and Mai highlight the central role Indigenous people played during the exploration of the Pacific islands, which for too long has been described as one of only European exploration.

Several recent exhibitions on James Cook have sought to include discussions of the Indigenous people who journeyed with him on his Pacific voyages.

In exhibitions marking the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour’s departure from Britain in 2018, for example, both the British Library and the National Library of Australia focused in part on the priest Tupaia, who travelled with Cook from Tahiti to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1769.

These exhibitions emphasised Tupaia’s navigational prowess, but didn’t provide extensive detail on the role he played in the British enterprises.

Likewise, little to no attention has been paid to the islander who journeyed with Cook the longest, Mai, who joined the captain’s second and third voyages.

Shining a light on the islanders who travelled with Cook is necessary to put his achievements in proper context. Cook was more reliant on their assistance for his empire-expanding project than is often acknowledged. And these islanders had more agency during the so-called Age of Discovery than is typically believed.

The stories of Tupaia and Mai highlight the central role Indigenous people played during this period, which for too long has been described as one of only European exploration. And they also question the way Cook has been portrayed throughout history – as a lone genius, connecting the world more closely through his unique abilities.

It turns out many different people contributed to globalisation in the 18th century.

Tupaia’s motivations for joining the Endeavour

Mai, or Omai as he was mostly known by the British, shared many characteristics with Tupaia. Both were motivated to journey with Cook because of intense dramas playing out on their home island of Ra‘iatea in what is now French Polynesia. And both became useful to the British voyagers by brokering introductions with other islanders in the Pacific.

But in other ways, the two men differed. They were from separate social ranks and they experienced very different fates.

Tupaia was of the exalted ari’i rank, a leading priest of the ‘Oro sect that ruled most of the Tahitian archipelago during this era.

Because of his high status, he was directly involved in a tumultuous war between Ra‘iatea and neighbouring Bora Bora in the 1760s, which eventually ended in defeat for the Ra‘iateans. After the war, he became a refugee in Tahiti, where he came into contact with the Endeavour and befriended the naturalist, Joseph Banks.

For Tupaia, the motivation to join the Endeavour voyage was complex and political. He saw in the British tallships an opportunity to gain arms, knowledge and possibly even men for a restorative offensive against the Bora Borans at Ra‘iatea.

Some descendants today also suggest he joined the crew as a way of continuing a long-established practice of voyaging – returning to islands he had previously visited in his own waka (canoe) and by his own navigational techniques.

And Banks saw in Tupaia’s adventurousness a chance to fulfill a dream to study man in a so-called “state of nature” back home in Britain.

Tupaia’s assistance during the voyage

Tupaia joined the Endeavour in July 1769. Cook, until now skeptical of including islanders in his crew, acquiesced partly because he saw it appeased Banks and partly because he judged Tupaia

a Shrewd, Sensible, and Ingenious Man.

The captain learned a great deal from Tupaia. Not only did Cook listen to and attempt to document all of Tupaia’s recitations on the scores of islands around Tahiti, he also gained rare insight into Pacific voyaging.

Most of all, he had Tupaia’s help when he met wary islanders in other archipelagos. With Tupaia mediating, these encounters went smoothly.

Tupaia was ill through much of the Endeavour’s stay at Botany Bay. Unfortunately, his health only worsened and he died during the ship’s layover in Batavia, thwarting Banks’ long-term aim of bringing him to Britain.

Perhaps, though, Tupaia fulfilled at least part of his own dream to travel the Pacific once more.

Mai’s fierce determination to join Cook

Banks was not on Cook’s second voyage, but the captain carried with him the memory of the naturalist’s hopes to study a Pacific islander.

As I recount in my latest book, The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire, Cook found that man when he encountered Mai in 1773.

Like Tupaia, Mai was also displaced by the Bora Boran invasion of Ra‘iatea. A generation younger than Tupaia, Mai had been a child at the time and also lost his father in the conflict. In Tahiti, his lower social rank meant he had fewer concessions as a refugee.

Arguably these conditions made Mai even more determined to join Cook’s expedition when the chance came.

Mai travelled to Britain on Cook’s second ship, captained by Tobias Furneaux. The Englishman admired Mai and remarked several times on his maritime and culinary skills. Mai also helped translate and mediate with other islanders they encountered. This wasn’t because he sympathised with the British; rather, he was eager to speed up their return to Britain.

Mai’s mission in London and return home

Arriving in London in 1774, Mai met with Banks, who assumed responsibility for his accommodation. Due to his high-profile patron, Mai encountered and bedazzled much of the glamorous set in London, including King George III.

Mai seemed to enjoy himself well enough, but his mind was always focused on his larger mission. Everyone who met him recorded that his aim in Britain was not to impress or assimilate but to gain support for his mission of retaking his home island of Ra‘iatea from the Bora Borans.

Mai found himself aboard Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific in mid-1776, with promises from Banks and the Admiralty to take him home and provide him with British goods to help him achieve his goals.

Once again, he provided critical assistance to the captain during negotiations with other Pacific islanders, as well as with Indigenous people in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Only when the expedition neared the Tahitian archipelago did Mai start to doubt Cook’s good faith.

He saw Cook give away much of the livestock that had been promised to him and watched as he held long meetings with assorted elders. Mai realised Cook planned to dump him on another island rather than fulfill the Admiralty pledges to land him on Ra‘iatea.

Mai was devastated. After four long years away, his life project had collapsed.

Grand ambitions only partly realised

Historians like to recount the emotional farewell between Cook and Mai in late 1777, noting Mai’s desperate wailing and Cook’s misty eyes. It’s usually depicted as a touching example of how Mai had grown to love the British and, equally, of how Cook had a softer heart than most believed.

From Mai’s perspective, though, the moment likely had a far different meaning.

Neither Tupaia nor Mai had achieved their ultimate goals in joining the Cook voyages, but this does not discount the grandness of their ambitions.

Both undertook epic feats of exploration. And their missions were just as political as Cook’s had been. Instead of imperial expansion, however, these men had sought a continuation of their Indigenous ways of life.

And it’s worth pointing out that Cook failed in his ultimate goal in the third voyage, too. He had been tasked with finding a northwest passage for imperial trade and to deliver Mai home according to his wishes. Instead, he ended up assassinated in Hawai’i.

Kate Fullagar, associate professor in Modern History, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study Reveals a Fragile Web of Knowledge Linking Plants to People

To understand how indigenous knowledge is structured, a group of researchers chose to focus on communities’ use of palm plants.

“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, a plant identification specialist formerly at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the UK.

This particular survey was part of a previous months-long trip through the Andes, Chocó and Amazon Basin regions of South America. Rodrigo Cámara-Leret and his fellow researchers Jordi Bascompte and Miguel A. Fortuna of the University of Zurich analysed data collected during visits to 57 indigenous, mestizo and Afro-American communities.

The answer from the Matapí elder kept Cámara-Leret busy for a while: “Eight hours later, I was still frantically writing down information!” he says.

This and other findings from their study are presented in a paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where the researchers examine how global changes could affect networks of local and indigenous knowledge.

Some of the world’s most precious knowledge is stored in the minds of people; passed not through books or computers, but through stories and shared experiences. Such is the case in many communities in the American tropics, where a living library of knowledge about plants and their uses isn’t written down. As this knowledge disappears with the people who hold it, it’s much harder to see than the loss of more tangible forms of knowledge.

A typical scene in an indigenous household where palm-derived products play a central role in daily life. Photo: Rodrigo Cámara-Leret.

“It was shocking to return to some communities and hear of the passing away of elders who did not transmit this knowledge,” Cámara-Leret says.

To understand how this knowledge is structured locally and regionally, the researchers chose to focus on the communities’ use of palm plants, various species of which are used across the world for a range of economically important human needs – from medicine to rituals, roofing to flooring, hair products to handy tote bags. Each community they encountered knew of seven to 41 palm species (18 on average) and 12 to 94 different uses for the plants (36 on average).

“The indigenous elders that I met were just as knowledgeable as university professors,” says Cámara-Leret, the lead author of the study. “Their knowledge transcends single disciplines, covering not only the names and uses of plants and animals but also ecological interactions or long-term changes in ecosystems, river dynamics in areas spanning thousands of square kilometres.”

The primary goal of the research was not to document the uses of the palms but to study how knowledge is held in communities and how it might change. To do so, the researchers created a visual representation of knowledge, a network map in which knowledge (the connection between a plant and its known uses) could be visualised, quantified and used in simulations. In these simulations, the effect of removing particular plant species or knowledge links could be tested.

The network map includes the locations of the 57 communities in the study. Links under the green palm and black house symbols represent plant species and plant services, respectively. Photo: Rodrigo Cámara-Leret.

The team concluded that cultural heritage is just as important as the plants themselves in our realisation of nature’s services. They also uncovered a rather fragile network in which a handful of Keystone communities serve as vital links, where removing just a few components could have enormous consequences for the entire system.

“Most studies still place emphasis on the biological components of ecosystem services,” Cámara-Leret says. “By highlighting the importance of cultural heritage in underpinning our realisation of ecosystem services, we hope our work may contribute to a greater appreciation of indigenous and local knowledge in policy initiatives.”

Also Read: Hunters Should Stop Using Lead Bullets and Help Save the Vultures

The value of local and indigenous knowledge is already being incorporated into policy initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Cámara-Leret said he hopes culture will be included in more initiatives like these, which advocate for the recognition and protection of ecosystem services – the benefits bestowed upon society by leaving natural systems intact. By prioritising this knowledge, the rationale goes, perhaps we can preserve the volumes of wisdom stored in the minds of indigenous and local communities before it’s lost.

This article first appeared on Mongabay and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Stop Mythologising the Amazon – It Just Excuses Rampant Commercial Exploitation

The history of the rubber ‘boom’ demonstrates how such mythologising plays into the hands of non-Amazonian interests, rather than Amazonian constituents.

Credit: Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock.com

The Amazon, perhaps more than any other region of the globe, has consistently been idealised and mythologised. This is true both of its societies, often envisioned as “lost tribes in the forest”, and the “raw green hell” of its environment. Although it has been incorporated into the modern world system since the 16th century, Amazonia is still widely regarded as a lush, beckoning frontier of untapped natural resources.

This matters because stereotypical images effect how the region continues to be treated in terms of international politics, commercial ventures, environmentalist interventions and developmental prescriptions. The modern reassertion of Amazonia as untapped nature, also currently wrapped in a globalist eco-package – lungs of the Earth, bio-diversity, carbon sink – offers license for rapacious commercial exploitation.

One of the implications of the “frontier still to be conquered” is that Amazonia offers the comparative advantage of “cheap nature” and is not seen as a social landscape. This is an idea that is captured in the subtitle of the archaeologist Betty Meggar’s influential book Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise. This process of erasing the idea of a social landscape proceeds in part by denying the viability, or indeed history, of the numerous social landscapes of Amazonia, past and present.

We’re seeing the building of highly destructive roads and hydroelectric dam programmes, such as those currently pursued in the Tapajós and Xingu basins. The region is also currently succumbing to little-regulated extraction of minerals and commercial foodstuffs, such as soybeans, as well as timber felling and cattle-ranching.

Huge storage facility for soy beans waiting to be exported from Brazil to the US and Europe. Credit: Frontpage/Shutterstock.com

But the region does have a history, albeit one that is little understood. And one period of this history in particular demonstrates how such mythologising plays into the hands of non-Amazonian interests, rather than Amazonian constituents.

The ‘boom’

The rubber industry, which flourished between 1820 and 1910, is perhaps the best-known historical epoch of the region. At its height, the industry attracted as many as 300,000 people, mainly immigrants from northeastern Brazil, and there were direct shipping lines between New York and Liverpool and the ports of Manaus and Belem. The Opera House in Manaus exemplified the cosmopolitan character of “rubber society”.

But it has been idealised, too. This 100-year-long extractive industry, upon which industrialisation in Europe and North America depended, is conventionally depicted as a “boom”, an unexpected and transitory event that transformed the region and promised much, only to be followed by an equally dramatic regional decline. But re-examination of the period challenges this portrayal.

Amazonian rubber (primarily Hevea brasilensis) was extracted from trees that were naturally distributed in the forest, not from plantation cultivation. The growth of the industry was therefore dependent on increasing the number of tappers, not on technical changes that might enhance productivity.

Milky latex is extracted from a rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). Credit: Alf Ribeiro/Shutterstock.com

With the development of vulcanisation in the mid-19th century, the uses to which rubber was put increased dramatically. So, therefore, did the range and intensity of extractive enterprise, including enslavement of Indian tappers, notoriously in the Putumayo. But change was incremental. The “boom” of the rubber industry applies better to the global growth of the range and volume of industrial applications of rubber than it does to the industry on the ground at the time.

We might compare the output of Amazonian rubber at the height of the so-called boom with that of Southeast Asian plantations (initially, mainly Malaysian). In the chart below, output from Amazonia (which peaks in 1910-1912) is about 60,000 metric tons. (Some published figures would place it just under 90,000 tons – but in terms of the broad picture, this is an inconsequential difference.) This is a number that pales in the face of plantation output, which in just a few years overtook Amazonian output.

But despite the precipitous collapse of the price of wild rubber in 1910, when plantation rubber came onto the market, Amazonians continued to produce rubber for decades (as the chart above indicates). They did so not as a central cash crop, but in combination with other autosubsistent and low-key market activities.

Wild rubber

And so to regard Amazon production as a “boom” that failed to be converted into a mature plantation industry utterly misrepresents it. The industry’s collapse was not the result of intrinsic Amazonian shortcomings, but because of the cheaper sourcing of rubber from Southeast Asian plantations, which were not susceptible to the leaf blight that plagued attempts at Amazonian cultivation.

Although the rubber period is hailed as an age of commercial success, it is also invoked as an example of the chronic failures of flawed South American enterprise. That failure is variously attributed to a shortage of entrepreneurial zeal, the fatal lassitude characteristic of “the tropics”, truculent peasants and “the Dutch disease”, among many other suggested flaws.

The collapse of rubber is cited as the immediate predecessor to the economic stagnation said to have characterised Amazonia throughout most of the 20th century. It is said that the rubber industry singularly failed to transform the region and provide a lasting basis for integration into the modern world economy.

But none of this can be blamed for the local “bust”. The global character of the rubber industry is disregarded in these portrayals of a regional phenomenon.

Rubber plantation in Thailand. Credit: Watchares Hansawek/Shutterstock.com

Modern frontiers

It is as though after the supposed industry “boom”, blossoming “Amazonian society” merely devolved back into, or was overwhelmed by, a natural regime. In light of this, it is not surprising that in the recurrent myth-making apparatus of “the lost world”, “the land people forgot”, “the last frontier” and so on, a general picture of “non-indigenous” Amazonia as a land of inept and barely coping colonists resurfaces.

Thinking of the rubber industry as a “boom” reinforces the notion that attempts to “tame the Amazon” are precarious because of the intractability of the forest. And now that the portrayal of Amazonia as fundamentally a natural and durable space, inimical to humans, has returned, the developmental emphasis is on the gross extraction of raw materials, not the supported settlement of Amazonian communities.

The renewed commercial extractive exploits in the region appeal to the same old “conquest of empty frontiers” and the rational exploitation of “natural wealth”. But these are actually being conducted against the existing, but ill-defended interests of Amazonians – indigenous, peasant, and colonist alike – who have occupied those “empty frontiers” for centuries, and whose voices and presence are too often overwhelmed by the iconography of a regal, Amazonian tropicalism.

Stephen Nugent, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.