Hill Tribes Displaced On Basis Of Propaganda
Channel: Paul Hunt
Date: 2013-09-07

Traditional ceremonial structures around their villages and farmed land exemplify how Akha hill-tribe people respect their natural environment. They occasionally migrate and clear sufficient forest for self-sufficient agriculture. The trees, bamboo and any useful plants they cut down are used for construction or other purposes. While burning may be used to clear fields to grow rice, corn, vegetables and other crops. But natural forest usually remains around villages and quickly moves in if a village moves. Traditional hill-tribe people do not destroy the natural environment. They depend on it, and have sustainably been living in their natural environment for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Yet state- and corporate-sponsored propaganda invariably cite "slash and burn" practices used by hill tribes as being environmentally destructive. This lie is then used as reason to displace hill tribes and take their land for forestry, national park, dam, conservation or other such state or corporate projects. Such projects, for the gods of "progress" or "development", then often move in with big equipment to destroy the natural environment more quickly and efficiently than any traditional hill-tribe village would ever imagine doing.
This is worse than hypocrisy! Such "progress" and "development" comes at the terrible cost of environmental destruction and displacement of whole villages. The true costs are not accounted for by modern development ideologies. Displaced, landless villagers lose their livelihoods, ways of life, and often end in dire poverty bearing the costs of others who impose their wills using powerful technologies believing resolutely in their god - "progress"!