Paper short abstract:

Lessons learnt in ten years of fieldwork among the HG Akie compared with the situation among Hadzabe (contacted more recently) in light of immense outside pressure with particular reference to conservation problems.

Paper long abstract:

The HG communities the author had contact to in Tanzania are the Akie as well as the Hadzabe. Both communities are not related at all (Akie being a Southern Nilotic people that has split off from Kenyan Okiek, Hadzabe belonging to the First Peoples of Africa). Both minorities are known to be guardians of a life in harmony with nature and their neighbourhood. For the Akie that have been studied since 2009 their relationship to nature is i.a. evident in rituals where an imaginary dialogue with ancestors was recorded (Legère, ACAL paper, forthcoming), see also MPI Nijmegen DoBeS archive (Akie collection). The ancestors were requested to maintain the status quo, i.e. to make sure that the Akie can live their traditional life even in a situation the control of which has been taken away from them. Being mostly marginalized means, that only a few Akie live and interact together in groups of their own in the periphery of villages (Kitwai A, Gitu, Chang’ombe), while others are scattered in a large area as individuals. These Akie groups are concerned of the loss of the territory that has traditionally been theirs, where they have been foraging, hunting, collecting honey, scooping water, etc. The expansion of their neighbours and strangers has initiated among the Akie the painful, destructive process of being forced to change their life style. They don’t have land rights that are guaranteed by local authorities, must pay a fee when honey collecting, can’t hunt as usual, because poachers and hunting tourists kill game, and more. In the Akie neighbourhood pastoralists graze their cattle which spoils the few waterholes where drinking water is available, virgin soil is turned into fields where maize or beans are grown, trees are cut for charcoal making, etc. Nobody cares for conservation any more. In this respect, the Akie are powerless, being overruled by ongoing changes that are not controlled and administered on their behalf. The Tanzanian central authorities are aware of the changes that HG groups are exposed to. There is the 2013 draft of a revised constitution which has not been approved by Parliament. Therein, paragraph 45 which deals with haki za makundi madogo katika jamii (Rights of small groups in society) recognizes the land right that is indispensable for the perpetuation of the traditional communities, but nothing has been done, for the revised constitution is not in power. A few more documents (also a 2017 TBC radio programme) have addressed HG problems, but nothing has been implemented. As a consequence the future of the small HG groups doesn’t seem to be ideal, and their existence is further endangered. They can’t play any role which aims at maintaining or improving the conservation in the territory they have been roaming before.