Subsistence Groups

It is amazing how development can change the status of subsistence groups so quickly. One minute, you and your group of herdsmen are labeled a ‘subsistence rural population’ who live off of the resources of say, a forest, and are the subject of intense anthropological study, your experiences heavily romanticized. The next minute, you are branded a bunch of ‘illegal loggers’ who are encroaching in the forests belonging to the government. Academics make so much out about the debate between traditional and commercial rights. But is there really any debate to speak of? The reality is, if there is little hope for the aborigines of Australia, whose lands are being ploughed by mining interests, and the First Nations of North America, whose livelihoods have been disrupted by an array of commercial interests – groups based in developed countries with significant NGO representation – what hope is there for the groups in say, the Niger Delta?

The most amazing thing about subsistence groups is how they become the topic of intense criticism for doing nothing - or more specifically, for doing ‘their own thing’. Groups, for example, who have been living in a patch of forest or in a wetland area for centuries, deploying the same hunting, foraging and gathering skills as their parents and their parents before them. It as if there is a multimillion dollar propaganda facility aimed at swaying public opinion about these subsistence groups. As soon as there is a mine that has been sited or patch of forest that is to be harvested, the articles start to be churned out by the hundreds about how these groups are ‘resisting’, are ‘encroaching’ on government lands, or are ‘criminals’.

This is what is happening throughout Ghana, and it extends well beyond the small-scale mining sector, whose operators, despite being branded as criminals, are making significant contributions to national coffers. It includes the Ewe fishing communities of the Bui area, which, despite having been there for a hundred years, are now being pushed aside to make way for the Chinese-funded Bui Hydroelectric Dam. And, the Fante fishermen of the Western Region, who will no doubt be pushed aside and whose interests will be ignored because of newly-discovered oil reserves offshore. Their inevitable resistance will no doubt get the propaganda machine going.

So a warning to all subsistence groups: beware of commercial interests. They could be in your backyard next and soon, you too could also be branded 'a bunch of criminals'.