End of the road for Rautes? 
Nepal’s last hunter-gatherer forest nomads face
extinction in the name of development

JANA FORTIER

The fact that the Raute, the last hunter-gatherers of
Nepal, have survived into this century is truly
remarkable in our current age of diminishing cultural
diversity.

Today, only a handful of societies around the world
still practise full-time
hunting-gathering. The Raute are even more special
because they hunt with nets and axes rather than guns
or bows and arrows. Based on this communal hunting
technique, Raute share all of their food and other
property equally among each other. Politically, they
have created the most democratic sub-culture in Nepal.
Those of us living in highly stratified societies
could learn much from one of them.

For this reason alone, Raute society should be
protected and regarded as a precious national treasure
of Nepal. Sadly, without any understanding or
appreciation for the basic social rules of the Raute’s
nomadic foraging society, international development
agencies and the Nepali government continue to
assimilate the Raute in the name of social
improvement.

In March the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced
that it would provide aid for the "upliftment of the
nomadic Raute tribe". Even though the Raute have
repeatedly said that they do not "stick to one place",
WHO plans to settle the Raute in Surkhet District.

Since the Raute will then be unable to hunt monkeys,
their main protein source they hunt several times a
week, or gather food from the jungle they will need
unsustainable food rations. And since the Raute will
be unable to collect the forest materials necessary to
build and maintain their traditional tents, pine
needles for flooring, softwood for tent poles, special
leaves for wind screens and tent covering, Raute will
have to be "provided" tenting material.

There have been news reports that the Raute have
refused to let their children take the polio vaccine,
saying that it runs counter to their beliefs. One
Raute was quoted as stating: "There is no need for us
to live like you."

Yet the Raute are no match against the wishes of
interna-tional agencies. WHO’s goal is to eradicate
polio throughout the world by the year 2003. And in
order to accomplish this, WHO will have to
‘domesticate’ the Raute before vaccinating them.

Another international agency, CARE-Nepal, lumps the
Raute into a grab bag of cultural groups it calls
"Disadvantaged Groups (DAG)". CARE-Nepal has
determined that DAGs are disadvantaged because of
"extreme poverty and illiteracy". While CARE’s
assumptions about illiteracy are accurate for people
living in writing-literate societies, this assumption
is highly inappropriate for "orally literate"
societies such as the Raute.

Knowledge of how to live successfully in Raute society
is passed on through stories and oral histories. If
the Raute were to attend school they would have to
give up their continual foraging and hunting that is
the core of their social life.

A sedentary lifestyle represents an abomination to
Raute cultural life, as voice to me by Man Bahadur
Raskoti, a Raute elder: "We can’t marry in the
village. We can’t own land. We shouldn’t marry with
people in the village. I can’t marry you (speaking to
a Nepali woman). If I married you I’d have to go to
Kathmandu. I would have to begin farming. Then we’d
have to be landowners. My elder son should therefore
get married within our group. Otherwise, we’d have to
cut grass (for livestock), we’d have to give service
(to the government and others), we’d have to study in
schools. We love our own people."

Raute must maintain their hunting-gathering lifestyle
and any change in their nomadic life, which would come
about by attending schools or settling into villages,
would mean the cultural collapse of their society.

The carrying capacity of Nepali forests can only
support the Raute for about one month which is exactly
why the Raute are continuous nomads. Nomadic foraging
societies such as the Raute rely on continual movement
to successfully exploit—but not overexploit—their
forest resources.

If the Raute are forcibly settled, within less than a
year they will have exhausted all nearby forest
resources. This could lead to tensions with nearby
villagers who also make use of the forest.

Also within less than a year, they will have bartered
their woodenware with every possible household in the
vicinity. With the market thus "saturated" for the
only commodity they have to offer a market society,
the only option left will be to join the poorest, the
most exploited underclass of Nepali society.

Around the world, there have been tragic outcomes of
forcibly settling hunter-gatherers. Native Americans
and Australian Aborigines are now fighting poverty,
alcoholism, and other social problems as a result of
being coerced into assimilation. The Raute too is not
likely to successfully adapt to a farming lifestyle.
As Raute youth said, "We would kill ourselves than
take up farming."

Like their neighbouring relatives the Raji-Raute and
the Chepang who are now part-time foragers/part-time
farmers, the Raute too will become part of Nepal’s
landless sukumbasi. t

(Jana Fortier is a visiting scholar at Dartmouth
College in the US and is working on the book
Hunter-Gatherers at the Harvest: Asian Foragers in
Contemporary Perspective.)

http://www.nepalnews.com.np/ntimes/sep20-2000/raute.htm