After seeing another news story about a minority tribe being forced to perform for tourists, I wondered whether it was all true or whether it was media embellished. I wanted to ask this question to someone who had visited with minority tribes. That’s when I thought of Caz and Craig of y travel blog. They have spent time with tribes in several countries. So I raised the question and in return I received this post which sheds some light on the situation.
Longsheng-Rice-Terraces-China
I’ve been fortunate to spend time on my travels with many ethnic minority people from around the world.
From the colourful Red Zao of Sapa, Vietnam; the long haired women of Longsheng, China; the simple homes of the Akha in Northern Thailand; to the fierce Masai warriors in Kenya.
There have been so many lessons I have learned from the time I have spent with each of these minority tribes, or can we say those who live as they did many years ago.
However, how they live now is still not a 100% true to how they lived all those years ago. In essence, is any culture?
Tourism and Minority Cultures
In Sapa, walking past the water buffalo rolling around in the muddy rice terraces after a hard day of working the fields, I was astounded to see the village children sitting around the TV in the Chief’s house. Only Vietnamese from the black and white TV and an occasional giggle could be heard.
My heart sank a little.
Just like it does when I see McDonald’s on a corner in Thailand or Kenya. It seems out of place and I feel as if I’ve participated in tainting a culture with the heavy hand of commercialism and obesity.
In Longsheng, many of the village women ran down to greet us, their woven baskets on their back full of trinkets and blankets. I felt uncomfortable. I did not want to buy, or be pestered to buy.
long-haired-ladies-of-Longshen
I just wanted to sit in their small wooden homes and gaze upon the rice terrace in comfort, breaking the silence intermittently with conversations about their life and why they grow their hair so long.
An elderly woman, who was fitter and stronger than I, took us on a half day trek to the next village. We stopped along the way to admire the chili growing on the sides of the track and the stark beauty of surrounding hills. She tried to tell us about her land and culture through gestures, gigantic smiles and laughter.
In Kenya, the Masai greeted us with their brightly beaded bracelets and necklaces draped in the red blanket that signifies to the rest of the world who they are.
Masai-warrior
At the end of our stay there was a harried attempt to involve us in the traditional jumping dance. It was sloppy and half-hearted, obviously done just to keep the tourists happy. It made me a little sad and I wondered about the value of our visit. The answer came to me later.
In the stillness of the night we sat around the campfire with our Masai guide listening to tales of initiation into manhood and how one gained the right to marry by killing a lion.
I learned just how much the lions feared the red blankets when they saw them among the Savannah; I felt proud that this fierce man with a leopard tooth around his neck would be protecting my tent, while I slept that night, from marauding big cats.
The next day I sat with the chief in the darkness of his mud hut, barely able to make out the outline of his face from the dim light of the kitchen fire that sat so close to the bed.
Our guide in Longshen
He spoke of the difficulties the tribe faces now when so many of their young men want to leave to go to the big city, the attraction of the money that can be made there, mostly from tourism, is too much to keep them within their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle.
When questioned by our guide about progress and why the Masai continued to live like they had for centuries, he replied,
“Because we are happy. We don’t need TV’s, fancy clothes or gadgets to be happy. We don’t need the Western World who thinks they have to change and modernize us. The way we live works and it is the way we choose to live.”
I took with me a turquoise beaded bracelet to remind me that life should be lived in the custom that suits you, and a red warrior blanket which carries the message to be fearless in your attainment of that life.
Climbing Mt Fansipan Sapa Vietnam with hill tribe porters
There was a part of me throughout my travels and time spent with these minority tribes that I felt sad. I felt as if tourism, a part that involved me, was ruining their cultures and taking away what was so special to it.
We were forcing them to put on display their lives as if they were monkeys in the zoo to be ogled. We stick our cameras in their faces; we ask to see certain rites or rituals, or traditional clothing.
In the middle of all this we forget that underneath the clothes, the jumping dances, and the long hair lay people with hearts, thoughts, beliefs and stories to share. They have more to teach us then the outside stuff that attracts us there in the first place.
The same as anyone really.
My last visit to a tribe was only a few weeks ago in Chiang Rai, Thailand. It was the Akha people and our group were one of the first tourists to spend time with them. (Yep, even Lonely Planet doesn’t know about this one.)
The leader of the Tourism council and his herbal doctor wife came to greet us and took us for a walk around the village, explaining their culture through our own interpreter. We were invited to sit on the wooden floor of the home of a beautiful couple and eat a simple meal that they had cooked for us.
Akha tribal doctor
What struck me was that the handsome husband, dressed in his black shirt with blue trim – the male uniform of the tribe – usually changed into western clothes, jumped on a motorbike to ride down to the city to work as a manager for a dairy farm during the day.
A tribal person living a “normal” Western life, long before the tourists had even arrived in his village.
The second thing that struck me, with delight, was when we were watching them prepare our food over a simple kitchen fire. Their young son came into the room and threw a tantrum, hitting his mother. A huge sense of relief washed over me to know that even in the remote hills of Thailand, toddlers chuck tantrums and embarrass their parents.
Akha child throwing a tantrum
We are more alike than we think.
Is Tourism really destroying Minority Cultures?
I am a firm believer in evolution. Change to me is something to be welcomed and embraced. Without it we are not living and we run the risk of not surviving.
Evolution is not good or bad; it just is.
My thoughts on the idea that tourism is ruining cultures around the world has changed throughout the years, where once I firmly believed this, felt extremely guilty and sad about it, I no longer think it is the case.
Who are we to hold them back?
Just so we can gawk at them, take their photos, write our articles and say “Hey, I spent time with the long haired people of China, how cool am I?”
Evolution is a given; an unstoppable force, an unstoppable motion.
If minority tribes see tourism as a path that is going to give them what they need now to move forward to the life they want, then we can’t say no to that. That is their choice.
You can’t wrap up a culture and preserve it just because we want it that way.
Take some time to look at your own culture. How has it evolved and changed? Imagine if it was still how it was fifty years ago.
Does that scare you a little?
Women you should be terrified right now as you’d be still on the beach wearing a swimsuit that goes from your neck to your ankles. God help you if you are black, or red, gay or atheist.
And please don’t believe in the power of our minds and spiritual beings, you’ll be burned on a stake.
Outside influences definitely have an impact, but ultimately cultures change because the people within the culture decide they want a new way of being. Perhaps they heard of how others lived through the tales of those who went there, or from their own interactions. Perhaps they said to themselves and their elders, you know this is the best way for our tribe to now go.
It’s best because it will help us evolve.
I know without a doubt that tourism has affected my way of living and evolved my consciousness, so how can I ever say that it is a bad thing for others?
It has changed me in so many ways and made my life so much more enriched and fulfilled. I never have the right to not wish that for any other culture, just because I think it’s cute that they still live in mud homes, go to the toilet in the bush, and kill lions with their bare hands.
I don’t believe that tourism is the cause of the destruction of cultures. I believe everything is the way it should be and that people create their own destinies, and this includes whole tribes of people. It is an inevitable path because it is evolution.
How can we make it a better transformation for minority tribes?
The best thing that we can do as travellers, to make this a better experience for those tribes that are changing is:
1 Make them realize how special and important their culture is. Share what is so great about it with the world. And I don’t just mean the jumping dance.
2. Ban McDonald’s. I know this might go against what I am saying, but that stuff is absolutely nasty for your health and skyrocketing obesity rates. We need to make sure we educate them on the dangers of westernized food – highly addictive and fatty. One thing I do know is that when I go to South East Asia and see the introduction of western food, I do want to spray paint a huge sign on the wall “Stop this blaspheme now.” Asian food is soooooo good, how could you want to eat anything else?
3. Don’t treat the local people like they are animals in the zoo. Treat them like they are people. Talk to them, allow them to share their stories and share your stories back. Respect their beliefs and don’t compare them to yours to be superior, compare them just because it’s interesting to see the differences and hence the similarities.
4. Focus on the similarities and celebrate the differences.
5. Follow their laws, traditions and customs. If you are a guest, you adhere to them. If you don’t like it then leave. They don’t have to be like you, talk like you, or act like you.
6. Have your heart open to allow tourism to evolve your way of being and thinking.
7. Don’t go to Laos just to go tubing in Vang Vieng. Don’t trash a culture with Western excess and debauchery.
Do you think tourism is destroying minority cultures?
Bio: Caz Makepeace is the co-founder of y Travel Blog and has been traveling and living around the world since 1997, first solo, then with her husband, and now with her two daughters. Caz believes travel taught her how to live an empowered life and she shares 20 of the lessons she learned through travel in her free ebook. You can follow y travel blog on twitter or join their facebook community.
I have been wanting to discuss this issue with my family after a visit to Sapa, Vietnam and Yangshuo, China. I am confused by the role of minority cultures and how they are put in a position to be “observed for money”. Your writing helped me appreciate the experience. Respect the gift these cultures have given our family in opening our hearts to other cultures. But also to consider that a different choice for an ethnic to get a job in the city is no different than my choice to leave suburbia and become a traveler with my family. Very interesting food for thought….
Cheers and happy travels! Annie
FB: Bangert’s – Round The World 2012
Blog: http://www.bangertsrtw.blogspot.com
Thanks Annie. I know how shocking it can be when you spend time with the minority cultures and experience the effects of tourism. But we really have to take our biases out of the way we look at things. To them, they are happy (well to an extent) to have us gawk as it means extra money, food, and opportunities for their families. It is just progress on their behalf, and we can’t hold them back from that. At one stage all our cultures were farmers and hunters that wore strange clothing and had certain traditions, but now our lives are dramatically different and we are okay and happy.
Really interesting read, Caz! It certainly is a tough issue – and one that I’m not entirely sure where I stand on. I love your idea of it just being evolution, though; that’s so true. Why should we feel sad if villagers WANT to watch TV and wear Western clothes? They have every right to, and we shouldn’t feel guilty about it so long as we’re not actively exploiting them.
In a world where globalization is making the world smaller and making everyone more connected to everyone else, it’s really tough to know where to draw the line on issues like this, though. I mean yes, preserving culture is good. But are we to expect that these people will never evolve just because WE don’t think they should? It’s so complicated. Thanks for sharing your views on it!
It is so complicated Amanda. And I’ve flip flopped for many years, but just recently with my last trip to Thaialnd I realized how selfish we were to expect them to continue to live in a primitive state while we traipsed around with our modern gadgets waving them in their faces. Why should we deny them the same, if that is what they want.