Again and again in History 453 we have encountered the question, what is wilderness? I would argue that one of the most useful concepts in answering this question is to do away with absolutes — with the idea that “wilderness” is an absolute. — That some region is absolutely wilderness, — and that some other region is not wilderness at all. So lets say, that wilderness is a piece of the natural world that is not controlled or modified by human beings. I have been arguing that clouds over downtown Spokane are part of the natural world, even though the streets and buildings in that place are not. I also made that point about the “wildness” in the Hotel New Otani Garden in Tokyo Ok, I confess — when we say “wilderness” we are usually referring to larger spaces of uncontrolled nature. The history of wilderness appreciation as described by Roderick Nash is a history of a history of Americans seeking to define and protect “big wilderness” — big in the sense of including plants and animals as well as geological features such as the geysers of Yellowstone and the rock faces of Yosemite, big in the sense of minimizing the. human impact, big in the sense of being a large area of land, big in the sense of being “natural” and unaltered by human beings. This week with the “Tanzania Journal (3)” we will explore how this concept can be applied to indigenous people living close to their traditional ways of life. Are there places in the world where people are living in ways that are fundamentally unchanged since the growth of modern civilization? And if so can we of the modern world visit them in their “natural” condition. During our Safari in Tanzania in August, 2021, we met such a people, known as the Hazda — “one of the last remaining societies of hunter-gatherers in the world.” (Frank W. Marlowe, The Hadza: Hunter Gathers of Tanzania) Here is how our tour brochure described this prospective encounter: “At sunrise, you and your local guide will embark on a search for the Hadzabe bushmen. The Hadzabe subsist entirely off the bush and hunting with bows and arrows. Everything they use is made from local materials, including their bows, strung with giraffe tendon, and their arrows are coated in lethal poison. Their language, with clicking sounds, resembles that of the Kalahari Bushmen (featured in the 1980 film ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’). Witness the Hadzabe get ready for hunting for their daily meal and observe them preparing poison arrows. Then we will take off together on a hunt. Learn how they cure diseases using natural medicines, learn how they light a fire and collect honey. Later, pay a visit to their home caves.” We did indeed visit a small Hadzabe encampment. Our guide, himself a Hadza who had adopted western culture and spoke broken English, knew just where to find his people — so there was no “search” involved. We did go on a “hunt,” and the tribesmen did use bows and arrows, but they shot no larger game for breakfast, nor did we see any “home caves.” That said, I did have a sense that we were indeed seeing people living in traditional ways. Just as we were able to view wild animals in Tanzania that were living as they had for thousands of years, we were able to visit a people who had at least one foot in the world they had inhabited for centuries. In the film that follows, I reviewed about 80 film clips from my visit to the Hadza, selected about 40, and edited them into a film of about 10 minutes duration. In the beginning you see Moses and Nassaro, our driver-guides for the full week of the Safari. They have just driven us to near the Hadza encompment, where we will meet our guide of the visit, a native Hadza tribesman who has given up to bush life to live in the outside and speak English and Swahili as well as his native tongue. (By the way, at one point Moses says “Hakuna Matata” — a phrase we often heard in Tanzania. And no, Hollywood did not learn that expression from “The Lion King.” In fact the producers of the movie learned the phrase from indigenous Africans. It is Swahili for “no worries.” While we are at it, here are two more Swahili words used in the movie that you might like to know: Simba means Lion, and Pumba means stupid!) We learned other phrases from our Hadza guide. You can see him in the film telling us how to greet the Hadza men and women, girls and boys. As you watch this film you can pretend you were one of us entering a strange new world, listening to a guide who is sometimes a tad hard to understand. Welcome to our visit to a people of the wilderness, hunter gatherers of Tanzania. — By the way, at the end of the hunt scene, and the archery instruction you will see see a Hadza dance. This was done simply for our entertainment, but after a successful hunt, such a dance was a usual way of celebrating.
After writing this Talk and crafting this video I searched YouTube to see what Hadza films might have been posted, and I discovered an extraordinary series of films created by Joel V Bushcraft, ahom some of you may know from the TV series “Alone.” You can view his four-episode series called “A Hadza Documentary” on YouTube, starting with Episode 1 at this site. Each episode is about 30 minutes, and I am not “assigning” you to view all or any of the series. But if you have time, I highly recommend that you watch, say, the first ten minutes of Episode 1. You will see the difference between a “mere” tourist (me) who spent an hour or so among the Hadza, and a man (Joel Bushcraft) who lived among them and learned their language (incredible!). That said, I was pleased to see that even the first few minutes of his film showed (and helped explain) some Hadza practices and technologies that we mere tourists had glimpsed.
Picture below shows Joel Bushcraft at a Hadza Fire
Sample from “A Hadza Documentary” — Bushcraft Explains the Making of Poisons