Date: June 17, 2017 at 8:42:11 PM EDT
Agta children learn the traditional way of leaving a message on the trail as part of their new school curriculum
Dear Members and Friends of the ISE,
Less than one week to go in the Darrell Posey Fellowship Program’s Indiegogo Campaign!
The remarkable people who receive these Fellowships - whether community leaders, activist scholars, and/or lifelong advocates of indigenous, human or environmental rights – are found through the efforts of our worldwide ISE network.
Jenne de Beer, the Darrell Posey Field Fellow in 2010-2011, is one such extraordinary person. He is widely considered to be the “father” of the Non-Timber Forest Products movement by his many Asian collaborators. Through his work as a researcher, advocate and writer, he has drawn global attention to the key contribution of forest products to local livelihoods and their huge potential for the sustainable use of forests.
Jenne used his Field Fellowship to focus on a project close to his heart: supporting the cultural revitalization of a marginalized group of indigenous people in the Philippines. Collectively known as the “Negritos’: the Agta, Ayta, Ati, Ata, Batak and many others belong to the most ancient civilisation in the Philippines; their ancestors are known to have first arrived in these islands at least 50,000 years ago.
Persistent acculturation pressures, in recent years taking form in violent invasion by oil palm and mining companies, are threatening the lifeways and sometimes the lives of these forest-dwelling peoples, who possess a unique and irreplaceable wealth of knowledge and biocultural treasures.
Let us support our own ISE champions, like Jenne, in their often under-recognized, unrewarded and dangerous efforts to protect the planet’s biological and cultural diversity!
You can help us with your contribution OR with 10 minutes of your time for promoting this campaign; see the information below for details.
The Darrell Posey Fellowship Team
(Mary, Miguel and Sarah)
How to Help
1 – Donate. Every little bit helps, so give what you can: Visit our Indiegogo campaign and help ‘Support a Fellow’
Link here: https://www.generosity.
2 – Support the campaign. ‘Follow’ (Twitter)
3 – Spread the word. Forward this email, ‘Share’ through Facebook, or ‘Retweet’ through Twitter to everyone you know and encourage them to visit our Indiegogo Campaign to make a donation, or if they want to find out more, or our website: https://www.
Thank you so much for all your help and support.
The Darrell Posey Fellowship Team
(Mary, Miguel and Sarah)
(Preparing a healing medicine, the traditional way)
More details on Jenne’s Field Fellowship:
In the past few years, and building on decades of work, Jenne has been a major instigator of the ‘Negrito Cultural Revival and Empowerment Initiative’, an informal and expanding network of Negrito elders and youth, supported by a committed team of volunteers.
This network promotes ‘bottom-up’ forms of cultural revival, including festivals and different kinds of events and meetings. These activities also help different generations and ethnic groups mingle, learn from and support each other and come together to represent and defend their interests more clearly and effectively.
Here are some of the transformative accomplishments of the network in recent years:
- holding numerous food revival festivals with cooking and tasting demonstrations, supporting the revitalisation of healthy traditional diets and lifestyles that maintain the rich biocultural heritage of the Negritos.
- overhauling the curriculum in six Agta elementary schools in the Sierra Madre of Luzon, giving due recognition and importance to traditional knowledge and skills, in an effort recognized by the Department of Education as pioneering.
- creating a traveling forest school designed to provide Negrito youth with a suitable window for secondary education.
- forming the ‘Guimaras Ati Healers Working Group’, an organisation of traditional healers and midwives seeking to promote solidarity and better defend their cultural rights.
