This is an interview with Aidai Asangulova, one of the most well-known young felt-maker artisans in Kyrgyzstan, and a leader of Min Kyial (an artisan organization). The interview was translated from Kyrgyz into English by Aibek Samakov. 

How did you learn the art of traditional felt-making?

I grew up in my grandparents’ house in Kyzyl-Tuu village of Ton district, Issyk-Kul province. When I was a child, almost every household in the countryside used to make felt carpets. So I can say that I grew up making felt. During the summer in my grandmother’s house, we would make ala-kyiz carpets (single layer felt rugs with colorful ornaments) and several pieces of regular kyiz (single color rugs) for shyrdaks (double-layered felt carpets: one layer serves as a background while the second one is used to cut out traditional ornaments). 

Participation in the felt-making process was a lot of fun for me and other young girls in the neighborhood. We would make a game of fluffing up the wool by pulling it apart, an important step to do before felting it.

We would watch how our mothers and grandmothers washed and then beat the wool with a rod. We were also fascinated by the stories and fairytales the elderly women told us. They made us believe that when the pile of fluffed wool gets as high as your nose, a pearl would fall out of your nose. We were each eager to get a pearl this way.

What challenges inspired you to experiment with felt?

When I graduated from high school I applied to the designer-constructor program at the Kyrgyz Institute of Architecture and Building. At the end of my six years there, my final project was to make an outfit from felt.

For the project, my father, who was then working at Kyial Kyrgyz Traditional Crafts Union, brought me two types of hand-made felt and one piece made in a factory. All of them were meant for felt carpets and were so thick and tough that it was impossible to sew clothes out of them. My attempts to slice them thinner got me nowhere. My project was on the verge of failure and I wondered why it wasn’t possible to make a soft, thin felt suitable for sewing. I somehow finished the project but my question remained unanswered.

Shortly after graduation I got a job at Kyial Kyrgyz Traditional Crafts Union, where I worked with my sisters. One day my father brought us a pile of the highest quality wool. We decided to experiment with it, making some things we never had done before. We made small pieces of thin felt suitable for sewing clothes, small felt rugs with decorative holes, colorful scarves, and many other small things.

Women from the village of Kyzyl-Tuu in the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan demonstrate the process of making ala-kyiz during the 1st annual World of Felt festival. Photo by: Erkin Baljurov

There are two ways of making felt things. In the first method, a craftsman uses ready-made pieces of felt to put together souvenirs or carpets such as shyrdak. In the second method, called the ala-kyiz method, a craftsman felts wool directly into a product. Whatever I saw I wanted to make out of felt using the ala-kyiz method. Was it possible to make a stone, an apple, or an apricot out of felt? My relatives joked about it, saying “Aidai looks at the world through felt eye-glasses.”

In 2002, we received a small grant from an international organization to support our felt-making experiments. At the time, none of us had a bank account to receive the money, so a woman named Chynara eje who ran the Tumar traditional crafts shop allowed us to use her bank account. We purchased 30-40 kilos of wool and various dyes, and made twelve types of scarves. We worked hard, and every day was filled with happiness.

At the end of the project I went to thank Chynara eje for helping us. I shyly gave her one of the scarves we made, assuming she would think little of our humble efforts. She immediately asked me to show her everything we had made, and then she suggested that we do an exhibition.

Aidai has perfected her own method of crafting exquisite, thin felt and silk creations like these unique scarves

In your opinion, why it is important to preserve the felt tradition in Kyrgyzstan?

We need to preserve and further develop this tradition because Kyrgyzstan is “the heart of felt-making.” Diverse felt-making technologies have been preserved in Kyrgyzstan. Where there are only one or two felt-making techniques in most felt-making countries, almost all felt-making methods are present in Kyrgyzstan. And someone in every household in our country knows how to make felt.

If we fail to preserve and develop the felt-making tradition, we might lose much of it. When I was a child, almost every Kyrgyz family made felt carpets, and mothers and wives made kalpaks (mens felt hats) for their husbands and sons. Nowadays, fewer and fewer families observe this tradition. And this problem arises not only with felt carpets but with traditions and authentic handicrafts in general.

Was this why you decided to do the Kalpak project?

Yes. With the help of The Christensen Fund, we collected various types of kalpaks from all over the country and made an exhibition and book about them. We did this to showcase a tradition that was getting lost. I believe that the situation is much better now, but back then it was very poor.

Kalpak, as well as any other types of headress, occupies a significant place in traditional Kyrgyz culture. Kyrgyz people treat kalpak with great respect, and there are a lot of rituals and taboos related to it. For instance, a man is supposed to keep his kalpak off the ground or floor, and the kalpak is not usually given as a present but made for sons and husbands by mothers or wives.

When we started the project, the traditional culture surrounding the kalpak was sinking into oblivion. People had started wearing kalpaks in saunas and giving them as presents to random people. Moreover, authentic handmade felt kalpaks were supplanted by kalpaks made out of synthetic fabrics. These were produced using computer embroidery, machine sewing, and synthetic felt, and as a result they were very cheap.

Over the course of the project, we worked with many traditional knowledge-bearers from all over the country. We worked with ethnographers to research traditional values related to kalpaks and the meaning of the traditional patterns that they usually bear.

We met many elderly people who had unique kalpaks that had been made many years ago. Unfortunately, when we asked to use those kalpaks for the exhibition, most of the elders refused to give them to us. According to tradition, Kyrgyz people should not give kalpaks to anyone but their children or grandchildren. For instance, my son wears my father’s kalpak.

Two handmade kalpak displayed on a shelf (kalpak should never touch the ground) in the workshop of Aidai and her colleagues

In order to restore the kalpak’s important place, we want to re-introduce a custom of presenting kalpaks to pupils at the age of 12, which is when young people are considered adults in our Kyrgyz culture. In 2010, we invited famous people such as Daniar Kobonov (a sportsman) and Ernest Abdyjaparov (a film director) to school #68, where the celebrities presented kalpaks to 12-year-old schoolboys. The students gave an oath when accepting the kalpaks. Receiving a kalpak from a famous member of society motivates the young people to think about who they want to be in the future. They also learn about the kalpak and appreciate its importance. In the coming years, we want to get kalpak added to the United Nations List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

How can young people learn the traditional crafts that you practice?

It is relatively easy to learn these crafts in Kyrgyzstan. Even though there are now fewer people who know the tradition of felt-making than in the past, the tradition remains pretty strong. They say if there is a student, surely there is a master for him. We are seeing a recent revival of the felt-making tradition. There are more and more young designers and felt-makers producing exquisite things.

A handbag adorned with felt flowers being made in the workshop. Aidai and her designers have successfully melded felt-making traditions with contemporary style to create unique products

They will learn that is important to keep things slow. We produce felt things without hurrying because there is a big difference between felt and other types of fabric. Every step of felting—starting with washing and fluffing the wool and ending with trampling it on special mats—must be done very thoroughly. A piece of felt should be perfectly even. We check a piece of felt by holding it against the sun. If sunlight comes through some parts of it the entire piece is considered to be spoiled.

It is also important to use high-quality wool. Without fine wool it is impossible to make good felt. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many farmers started switching from fine-fleeced to meat breeds of sheep. In order to have a strong felt-making tradition, we need to have a strong tradition of fine-fleeced sheep breeding.

The toughest decision for the young craftsmen is whether to make felt for money or for spiritual satisfaction. I made felt things because I liked them, and I grew angry when somebody would call it a business. However, now I realize that it is useful to employ small-business approaches to preserve and maintain the tradition. We take orders from customers and try to make the highest-quality things for them. At the same time, we preserve our traditional approaches.

For more information and to order some unique felt products, visit Aidai Design

Although the words biodiversity and development often seem to make a bad pair, people and birds continue to thrive together in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, sharing the benefits of this rich landscape and shaping each other’s fortunes. This co-evolution and cohabitation is central to the biocultural diversity of the region. And wise and respectful stewardship of the Rift’s natural bounty ensures that such inter-species relationships will continue to anchor the area’s ecological health.

Birds and a Healthy Rift

The colorful Malachite Kingfisher forms part of the healthy bird community of Lake Hawassa

Ethiopia is in the midst of a remarkable economic transformation of the kind that all too often spells disaster for nature. The shallow, eutrophic Lake Hawassa, on whose shores the beautiful regional capital of Hawassa is booming, is the type of place particularly vulnerable to the ravages of poorly managed development.

Water extraction, overfishing, insufficiently treated sewage, and agricultural runoff often drain and pollute such bodies of water. This has been the fate of lakes up and down the Rift Valley, most famously Kenya’s Lake Naivasha.

And yet Lake Hawassa remains generally healthy. It brims with fish and is home to an extraordinary number and diversity of birds, from the diminutive Malachite Kingfisher to the glorious African Fish Eagle.

Large populations of Little Egrets and other fish-eating birds are testimony to a still-healthy fishery

The lake is fringed with thousands of giant fig trees of various species that have been preserved over generations, even as the lakefront has been developed as a prime tourism and residential locale. These trees sustain monkeys and birds alike, including great flocks of the magnificent Silvery-Cheeked Hornbill which, as in Nairobi, are proving to adapt well to a suburban landscape. Leaving the giant fig trees intact has not only maintained the famed beauty of the area, but is helping secure its biodiversity.

Even with rapid economic development, the city of Hawassa has not destroyed the richness of the lake (on the left)

While there are concerns about mercury build-up in Lake Hawassa, the government and Ethiopian scientific community are diligently working to characterize and resolve the problem. And the government is also expanding sewage treatment for the growing city of 700,000.

 Birds and Humans Thriving Together

The Sacred Ibis takes flight

Many bird species in Ethiopia live very intimately with people; and indeed the communities of this region do not traditionally eat or even threaten birds. African Sacred Ibis and Hadada Ibis forage confidently among the people, goats, and houses on the shoreline. The typically shy Hamerkop allow people in Ethiopia to approach within a few feet, and their giant messy nests (that in turn support many other species) are allowed to grace the plush resorts where weekenders from Addis Ababa relax. Even the noisy Egyptian Geese assert themselves without risk.

Most of the bird species that humans depend on continue to thrive as Ethiopia develops. In particular, many of the species that consume what humans throw away are flourishing.

Fabulously grisly, the Marabou stork provides vital urban clean-up services

Hawassa and Ethiopia’s other booming towns such as Arba Minch and Ziway are all home to colonies of Marabou Storks, which roost on the crowns of the flat-topped acacias that line the neatly cobbled or tarred streets. Stately from a distance and grizzled-with-a-hint-of-festering from close by, the Marabou leave no fish head or other offal behind, helping to keep cities and villages clean.

The snappy Black Kite is also a champion forager with the gall to snatch food straight out of the hands of people. Butchers slaughtering livestock must post a guard with a stick nearby to ward off the scavengers. This thieving behavior gives rise to the bird’s Amharic name, chilfit, which similarly applies to loitering and pilfering humans. But even if the Kites can be a menace, no community would seek to harm or control them.

The Black Kite, known locally as Chilfit, is a crafty, loitering, and necessary member of the bird-human dynamic

Birds Facing Threats

Despite Rift Valley communities’ welcoming attitude, the stresses of development are threatening some of the birds that provide important services to local peoples.

The Honeyguide cooperates with honey hunters to find and open wild bees’ nests, and various Oxpecker species travel with pastoralist herds, picking them clean of ticks and other ecto-parasites. Both these species and their relationships are threatened throughout the Rift Valley by insecticide and acaricide use (cattle dipping), forest destruction, and other dimensions of modernization.

The vultures that efficiently remove dead dogs, roadkill, carcasses and waste are disappearing, threatened on a global scale by such dangers as the overuse of banned antibiotics in livestock.

Large trees provide roosting sites for Lappet-Faced Vultures that are important for removing disease-causing carrion in the town and surrounding area

Vultures are a crucial component of Ethiopia’s public health system, as their clean-up of carcasses keeps down the spread of diseases such as rabies, anthrax, and bubonic plague. Removing carcasses and refuse in other ways than relying on vultures is often prohibitively expensive and impractical, especially in dry environments, making the spread of disease all but inevitable.

Such large, soaring fliers are the only birds that can survive entirely on scavenging, making them “absolutely unique creatures and one of the pinnacles of evolution,” according to distinguished ornithologist and Christensen Fund grantee Dr. Cagan Sekercioglu, of the Turkey-based conservation group Kuzey Doga. “Not only do vultures provide crucial services, but they are some of the most majestic creatures in existence.”

A mixed woodland of acacia and fig trees attract both birds and tourists, while helping to maintain biodiversity and water quality

A Promising Future

While many of Ethiopia’s bird species do face danger, the country continues to rely upon and respect its rich and valuable biocultural diversity even as it charts its transformational development path. The intimate relationships that have evolved between human communities and the natural world in the Rift Valley can help ensure the continued health and abundance of both its people and its nature.

Flocks of Silvery-Cheeked Hornbills feed noisily and with much charm among the wild fig trees on the Lake Hawassa shores

Many pairs of the majestic African Fish Eagle breed on the grounds of lake-front homes and hotels. The female Fish Eagle is significantly larger than the male

Global food issues are grabbing our attention and for good reason: the industrial system of the last sixty years is fraying at the edges, causing a cascade of environmental and social problems. Worldwide, a billion people go hungry. A similar number over-eat the wrong foods. And yet one-third of food produced for human consumption is wasted.

Industrialized food production promised liberation from the constraints of Earth’s natural cycles. And unfettered trade seemed to enable culinary abundance wherever there was money to buy it. But the over-use of fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and precious groundwater supplies has levied significant costs on our planet. We are now overshooting Earth’s bio-capacity by 40 percent.

There’s a better way. It’s called agroecology, and it integrates scientific understanding about how particular places work – their ecology – with farmers’ knowledge of how to make their local landscapes useful to humans. Only by re-orienting our approach to food production in this way can we begin to solve the food, energy and development crises afflicting our planet.

Industrial food production is destabilizing Earth’s life-support systems. Every calorie it provides requires so much oil and gas to produce that our agricultural system generates nearly a third of the globe’s greenhouse gases. And through massive use of fertilizer, we have disruptively tripled the nitrates in Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle.

Soils have been treated as inert – and are consequently dying. The productivity of nearly half of all soil worldwide is decreasing. Another 15 percent can no longer be used for farming because its biology has been so depleted.

Biodiversity is fading, too. Eighty percent of the world’s arable land is dominated by genetically homogeneous monocultures – that is, single crops grown over wide areas. Only weeds and pests can thrive in such environments.

Agroecology, by contrast, celebrates the value of diverse and complex methods of land stewardship. The approach re-integrates livestock, crops, pollinators, trees and water in ways that work resiliently with the landscape.

Agroecological techniques replace the “vicious cycles” bringing down our planetary support systems with “virtuous circles” that mimic nature’s own systems.

For instance, agroecology can restore soil fertility and sequester carbon naturally rather than spewing it dangerously into the atmosphere or as acid into the ocean. Its nutrient cycling approach – whereby nitrogen passes again and again through food systems, roots, and soils – can turn waste into raw materials rather than pollutants.

Indigenous agro-ecology, practiced for generations in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia, maintains a balance between culture and local natural resources, mixing a variety of crops with animal proteins, trees and traditional agricultural knowledge. It can repair damaged lands, improve nutritional diversity and create vibrant local food economies

In essence, agroecology seeks out nature-based solutions by empowering farmers to do what they know works best on their own lands – and then to spread those lessons far and wide.

And agroecology is now set to rise beyond the fields of marginalized small landholders – and onto the global stage.

We can learn from examples like those set by farmers in Kenya, who have created a “push-pull” system to control parasitic weeds and insects without chemical insecticides. The system “pushes” pests away by planting insect-repellant species among corn crops while “pulling” pests to plots of napier grass, which excretes a sticky gum that attracts and traps insects.

The results have been remarkable. “Push-pull” doubled yields of maize and milk and is now used on over 10,000 farms in East Africa.

Such results can scale up. One study examined 286 agroecological projects covering 37 million hectares in 57 poor countries. Researchers found that these interventions increased crop yields by a stunning 79 percent.

The Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project reviewed 40 agroecological projects in 20 African countries. Between 2000 and 2010, these initiatives doubled crop yields, resulting in nearly 5.8 million extra tons of food.

But agroecology doesn’t just increase the output of farms. It also values farmers’ relationships with and knowledge of their lands – and does not treat them as passive recipients of aid or external inputs. As such, it is a powerful, cost-effective and sustainable model for development.

Many foundations already have experience, especially in the US, with how supporting small-scale sustainable agriculture can revitalize local economies and communities (through farmers markets and other approaches), and transform diets and health. Groups such as the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders are helping to scale such work. We need to re-double our efforts to expand this movement internationally and link it more explicitly to agro-ecological approaches. Another effort is the International Fund to Amplify Agro-Ecological Solutions, a multi-donor fund that represents some of the most effective actors in the field in Asia, Africa, and South America.

These evolving alliances are exploring how the fields of conservation and agriculture can work more effectively together. A similar effort is needed to integrate agriculture into the climate change agenda, and Mr. Howard Buffet’s call for a “brown revolution” that recognizes the central importance of living soils to planetary wellbeing is a step in the right direction.

All of these efforts should be embraced by foundations and agricultural specialists as parts of an agro-ecologcal approach to fitting within our shrinking, but still delicious planet.

To see a detailed info-graphic on the differences between industrial agriculture and agro-ecology, click here. 

Dr. Ken Wilson is the Executive Director of The Christensen Fund

Kenson and Cymbol are successful parents and homeowners in the island nation of Vanuatu. They garden, spend time with their kids and eat well. To pay for their children’s school fees, Cymbol weaves valuable straw mats that serve as local currency. The family lives off the bounty of their ancestral lands and has very little need for modern money. Because of this, the United Nations and others would count them as extremely impoverished.

This is the paradox presented by the Republic of Vanuatu. In the language of modern economics, the small island in the South Pacific is called one of the world’s ‘least developed countries’. At the same time, Vanuatu has ranked Number One on the pioneering Happy Planet Index. This incongruity points to major problems with today’s standard measures of human progress, and has many policymakers rethinking the notion of wealth.

A recent study called “Alternative Indicators for Well-being for Melanesia” (PDF - Video)—by the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs, Vanuatu National Statistics Office, and Vanuatu Kaljarol Senta—suggests the need for metrics that measure people’s fundamental social and emotional welfare, instead of merely fixating on financial fortunes.

Challenging Assumptions

In the typical language of development economics, one of the key measures of a country’s “progress” is gross domestic product (GDP), the market value of all officially recognized goods and services produced in a national economy. It is widely assumed that a higher GDP is associated with greater incomes, improvements in human resource indices like health and education, and the growth of market economies.

While many of these indicators are linked, GDP and its related development measures do not correlate to levels of happiness and well-being, nor do they recognize thriving traditional economies or ‘informal’ economic activities.

Widespread access to communal gardens in Vanuatu contribute to health, well-being and the local economy, yet are not valued by mainstream economic measures.

A key example from the study in Vanuatu is the case of Torba Province, which has the lowest GDP per capita and most restricted access to markets in the country, but is also the province whose people claim the highest subjective well-being, by a large margin. Torba boasts the greatest levels of perceived equality, community interaction, access to communal lands and resources, and trust in neighbors and in traditional leaders.

Needless to say, such positive influences on a community’s life do not show up in financially-focused measurements like GDP.

Vanuatu is exploring alternative ways to measure well-being including the measurement of ‘access to customary lands’, and ‘trust in leaders’, that GDP does not consider.

 To GDP or Not to GDP

The GDP was developed as a tool to measure the growth of the U.S. economy during the Great Depression to give the federal government a sense of how the country was (or wasn’t) recovering. The measure’s developer, Simon Kuznets, admonished the U.S. Congress that GDP should only be used as a policy tool for understanding the dynamics of the economy and not as a method of assessing living standards or citizens’ well-being.

But as community organizer Jonathan Rowe testified before a Senate subcommittee in 2008, “Congress and everybody else have done exactly what Kuznets urged us not to do.” We have judged the worth of our entire economy by looking at one part of it—the rate of expenditure.

This approach has several profound flaws. GDP weighs all expenditure equally, failing to differentiate between the social value of various types of spending. According to the GDP, spending on education and spending on alcohol and weapons are of equal worth to the well-being of the country. GDP also fails to account for large and vital pieces of any economy—the unpaid work of caring for one’s family and the so-called informal economy of odd jobs and services. Disastrously, it also leaves the value of a healthy environment out of its calculus.

Additionally, GDP incorrectly assumes that people will always act ‘rationally’ and selfishly; that the economy’s growth is driven by people making decisions in their own best interest to improve their lives. But expenditure is just as often driven by emotion, addiction or obligation as it is by rational choice.

All of these drawbacks create a highly problematic way of measuring a country’s well-being. Kuznets knew that the amount of money paid for something does not necessarily correspond to its importance and that some of the most vital elements of the economy are not paid for at all.

“By the standard of the GDP, the worst families in America are those that actually function as families—that cook their own meals, take walks after dinner, and talk together instead of just farming the kids out to the commercial culture,” said Rowe. The same goes for families in Vanuatu and around the world.

GDP looks exclusively at the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time. Critics say that it leads to policies that undermine human well-being.

 (Under) Appreciating Cultural Values

Considering the GDP’s skew toward monetary exchange of any kind, it is no wonder that Vanuatu’s poor showing on mainstream economic indicators belies the substantial benefits that  residents draw from unrecorded and underappreciated factors like traditional culture and customary land tenure.

The United Nations assigns the ignoble title of “Least Developed Country” (LDC) to those nations that are the most poverty-stricken; have the lowest levels of nutrition, health, education, and adult literacy; and exhibit economic vulnerability and instability. With a gross national income (GNI) per capita of $2,760 (compared to the U.S.’s $48,890 and India’s $3,620),Vanuatu is stuck in this category.

But residents of this vibrant island nation report strong community cohesion, high levels of respect for others, and robust inter-faith trust. For the most part, the ni-Vanuatu eat well, and the study reveals that among the majority (79%) of residents who have access to customary lands, almost all of them (95%) use that land for subsistence living and the vast majority (88%) feel that their land can meet their needs. Such widespread food security and property ownership are highly beneficial to the ni-Vanuatu sense of well-being, despite the arrangement not resulting in a heightened per capita GNI or GDP.

Residents also benefit from a positive and supportive social environment around the country—a value that is certainly unaccounted for in the LDC criteria. Ni-Vanuatu generally rate the presence of such qualities as love, kindness, generosity, care, obedience, virtue, and faith in their lives to be ‘strong’ or ‘very strong’.

Another reason GDP paints an inaccurate picture of Vanuatu’s well-being is that communities around the country use traditional forms of currency that do not register with the World Bank’s accountants.

As pigs are particularly valuable on the island for practical as well as spiritual reasons, much of the “kastom” economic activity is based on using pigs and their parts—skulls, tusks—as currency. On the east coast of Pentecost Island the chief of one community has gone so far as to build a “kastom bank” to store valuable pig tusks and has called on the government and reserve bank to recognize this custom currency and agree to a fixed rate of exchange with the national currency, the vatu.

Measuring Well-being

Clearly, measuring only income and expenditure patterns in a country’s official currency is insufficient to assess the more holistic aspects of a country’s strength. The new study is part of an effort by the Republic of Vanuatu to test alternative indicators—what the report calls “income-neutral factors”—of well-being that more accurately reflect Melanesian values.

Similar territory has been charted by the UK’s pioneering New Economics Foundation, which established the Happy Planet Index (HPI) as a measure of “sustainable well-being.” The Index, based on the idea that growth-based indicators of progress are flawed, aims to measure “the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens.” The scale reveals the deficiency in using materially-oriented criteria to account for a nation’s well-being. Only four of the countries in the list’s top 40 claim a GDP per capita of more than $15,000. And while the United States—which scores high on mainstream development indices—is currently 105th out of 151 countries, ‘impoverished’ Vanuatu topped the HPI list in 2009.

A related movement toward more accurate measurements is that of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which the country of Bhutan tracks as a way of protecting culture and ensuring that citizens’ subjective sense of well-being is accounted for. The index, built from periodic surveys of a diverse cross-section of Bhutan’s people, recognizes that “happiness is . . . multidimensional”—not only concerned for and with oneself, but also with the collective social health of one’s community or nation. “Different people can be happy in spite of their disparate circumstances, and the options for diversity must be wide,” the Centre for Bhutan Studies writes in its Short Guide to Gross National Happiness Index.

Promoting Real Development

Governments and development economists who suggest that economic growth-based assessment is the best way to rank the progress of nations not only neglect to account for people’s real-life experience, but also fail to recognize the natural limits of such growth. Reliance on this methodology is resulting in the systematic liquidation of our planet’s natural resources.

They would do well to remember the quip by economist E.J. Mishan that a person falling from the top of a 100-story building won’t be harmed for the first 99 stories. We may be OK now as we push our economies to grow endlessly, but with climate change and the erosion of critical planetary boundaries, we can see the ground getting closer.

The key to changing that downward course is shifting what we value about our societies, as policy decisions flow from assessments of our countries’ strengths and weaknesses. Widening our perceptions of wealth — as they are doing in the highly rich nation of Vanuatu—will help us embrace development paths that are more just and sustainable.

Olisarali Olibui carries a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a camera in the other. A member of one of Ethiopia’s most isolated tribes – the Mursi – Olibui knows his culture’s way of life is in danger from the encroachment of outside forces.

“My people live in a very remote area,” he says in a short film he made to document the power of the camera for his people and to show the world the richness and struggles of his culture. “We are always at war with our neighbors because less and less land is available to us. The outside world is closing in, and Kalashnikovs cannot really help us.”

The camera is his new weapon of choice. “I want to give my people a voice. I found the camera more powerful than the Kalashnikov. The camera can shoot something, and camera bullets go all over the world.”

Preserving, Celebrating, and Transmitting Culture

The film Shooting with Mursi, by Olisarali Olibui and Ben Young, won a ‘Best Documentary’ award at the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival in 2010

Like Olibui, Indigenous peoples around the world are adapting digital technologies for a variety of reasons, from expressing their unique perspectives to maintaining their cultures and livelihoods.

Inexpensive digital video is enabling new access to global media environments, helping groups like the Mursi to represent themselves to the outside world, instead of having others portray their culture, as has been the case for centuries. With a small bit of money and a little guidance, marginalized tribes can make and share their own stories in rich, unfiltered ways.

“For Indigenous communities, many of whom have only seen their culture and history recorded by outsiders, the ability to author, shape, and direct media environments means an opportunity for self-determination and self-definition,” says China Ching, a Native Hawaiian and Associate Program Officer of The Christensen Fund. “Increased access means an opportunity to promote, renew, and enrich Indigenous cultures from the inside.”

Isuma TV, launched in January 2008, is an inspiring example of digital media used for rich cultural expression. Inuit Filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk created it to be a kind of Indigenous YouTube for the Inuit and other Aboriginal Peoples of the Canadian North, but it is now attracting interest from Native communities around the world. Kunuk’s film, “Atanarjuat The Fast Runner,” won the Caméra d’Or for best feature film at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and was the first feature film in the Inuktitut language with an all Inuit cast.

“Kids all over Nunavut (Kunuk’s home village) are playing Atanarjuat in the streets,” said producer Norman Cohn in a 2002 interview. Isuma TV now boasts more than 5,000 films in more than 50 languages, and has also created an interactive community that debates pertinent issues on Indigenous rights and representation around the world.

Documenting and Reviving Native Languages

“Of all the arts and sciences made by man, none equals a language, for only a language in its living entirety can describe a unique and irreplaceable world.” –Earl Shorris, author and journalist.

Language of course takes center stage in Native self-presentation and cultural expression, and as such digital technologies that help to teach, reinforce and disseminate Indigenous tongues are proliferating. The digital world creates space for Indigenous language, especially as young people find ways to represent and adapt their languages for use in media technologies such as text messages.

In one example, Indigenous straw broom makers from Assam in northeast India developed a phonetic version of their previously unwritten language for use in texting after the community’s youth dispersed across India to work as laborers.

With their livelihoods devalued by the influx of cheap plastic brooms from China, the group had no choice but to send their young people away to work, but the youth continue to refer to their elders for traditional decision-making on key issues like marriage. The laborers required an easy method of long-distance communication, so a new version of their language was born.

After an egregious, unrelated terrorist act, the Indian secret service commandeered the texting history from the phone company and found a network of unintelligible ‘secret’ communications criss-crossing the country. Their request for the company to close these accounts was met with outrage from the Assam tribespeople.

Realizing their error, the company reopened the accounts of the Assam and also brought in linguists to help the community turn their text-based phonetic communications into a systematized written version of a language that had always been solely spoken.

The Ngata Dictionary project is helping both Maori and non-Maori people to revive the tongue of Native New Zealanders

Many Indigenous languages have gone through similar processes of being recorded systematically now that the Web allows for easy cataloging and widespread access. Websites and apps are recording and broadcasting languages of all kinds, some of which are obscure and threatened.

The Ngata Dictionary, for example, is a website named after a historic documenter of the Maori language of Native New Zealanders. The site, which offers translation and other programs to help visitors become familiar with Maori, is part of an effort that has brought back the Maori language from near extinction to a vibrant source of pride. More Maori are speaking their own language again, and more non-Maori than ever before are learning the language as well.

The revitalization of the Maori language is also a story of cultural empowerment and continuance. By asserting their heritage and language, the Maori have been able to gain considerable political power in New Zealand, gaining official language status within the state and also establishing a Maori political party.

Using Technology for Resistance

Along with its role as a documenter and disseminator of culture, digital technology has also become part of many Indigenous efforts to resist encroachment by industries, governments and other forces.

One example is the use of GPS technology to document culturally modified trees. Such trees were altered at some point in their existence for cultural purposes— a piece removed to make a canoe, for example, or a piece of art or for other purposes.

With a few hand-held GPS devices, basic GIS technologies and a little training, Native communities can map the trees to document their groups’ historical presence across their lands. Using this method, tribes have been able to produce the kinds of “tangible evidence” for occupation that the Canadian and U.S. courts have demanded they show to regain control of their ancestral territories.

Other similar efforts now enable Indigenous communities to track changes in their forests through GPS-enabled cell phones and real-time satellite imagery such as that of the Google Earth Engine. This can benefit people in many ways, such as detecting illegal logging in their territories and demonstrating carbon capture to qualify for REDD+ credits.

The Surui tribe in Brazil is using the Google Earth Engine to highlight their ancestral lands and document invasions by illegal loggers and others. Photo: Andrea Ribeiro

In one notable example, which we’ve written about here, Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia are using GPS technology to manage seasonal fire timing and frequency on their lands. Their goal is to shift savannah fire regimes back to a mosaic of smaller, cooler early-season fires from the devastating late-season fires that have taken over since the Native groups lost control of their lands.

Senior Ranger Otto Campion, with the Gurruwilling Ranger Group in Northern Australia, is part of a growing culture-based economy in the region.

The traditional owners are able to manage the health of their lands by starting and stopping fires just as their ancestors did, only now they are using gas fire sticks, hoses, quad bikes and small planes. They monitor these fires using satellite imagery in real time.

The project has enabled Aboriginal Australians to earn voluntary carbon credits from corporations and enter into advanced negotiations with government to introduce the system to other areas of Australia where fires still burn uncontrollably.

Creating a Lasting Legacy

Digital technologies are powerful tools in the process of recording and broadcasting Indigenous narratives, reviving Native languages and supporting the self-determination of historically marginalized peoples.

Indigenous groups are able to leverage Internet connectivity and other modern-day tools to serve profound ends. They can ensure that Native youth learn about their own cultures and languages, help outsiders to understand Indigenous cultural imperatives and histories, and work toward improving livelihoods for tribes. They can help peoples to resist government and corporate overreach into their territories and community life.

All of these efforts help to ensure that Indigenous communities and cultures will thrive into the 21st century and beyond.