Hugh Brody

A very moving examination of a way of life under threat from the continuing White settlement and commercial expansion and exploitation of natural resources in northeast British Columbia, Canada. Brody's insight is coloured by his 18 month sojourn with the First Nation bands of the area. The chapters alternate between his beautifully and respectfully written accounts of various key moments in the annual season, with relevant essays exploring in some detail the different aspects of the show more historic betrayals and increasing pressures and restrictions on the Indians' way of living on their own land.

An early chapter retells a hunting trip to the Bluestone area. The dreams of the hunters play their part in guiding the itinerary, and the soul of these men and women is conveyed to the reader with considerable art and delicacy by Hugh Brody.

Occasionally becomes a touch dry with some of the extensive detail covering the Indian economy , but on the whole the book is very informative and written with passion and sensitivity for the subject. I now plan on reading Brody's 'The Other Side Of Eden'. show less

Defenders of capitalism tell us that it is futile to try to create a more co-operative and equal society because they claim that human society has always been, and always will be, unequal, class-divided, competitive and driven by the innate selfishness of human beings.

But for over ninety percent of the time that Homo sapiens has existed, until the development of agriculture twelve thousand years ago, all humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies. These societies were classless, egalitarian show more and co-operative. (Marx and Engels called this type of society "primitive communism".)

Hugh Brody's book is about hunter-gatherer societies that still exist in remote parts of the world today. Brody has spent years living with hunter-gatherers, particularly the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, and helping them to resist the encroachment of "civilised" modern society.

The book has two elements. There is a narrative about Brody's time with the Inuit and other hunter-gatherers, and there is a general discussion about hunter-gatherer societies. Personally, I found the constant jumping backwards and forwards between narrative and analysis rather annoying. But the book is still well worth reading.

Of course, present-day hunter-gatherer societies are not exactly like their prehistoric equivalents. For one thing, none are untouched by more "advanced" societies. For another, the only remaining hunter-gatherers today live in marginal areas of the world: farmers and more developed societies have taken over the best bits. Nevertheless, today's hunter-gatherers still see their homelands as "lands of plenty".

Incidentally, there is evidence from the archaeology of bones that hunter-gatherers had a healthier diet and life-style than later farmers. No wonder that one social anthropologist has called hunter-gatherer societies "the original affluent society".

Brody shows that the hunter-gatherer way of life is one which combines co-operation, equality and "individualism". But this is not a capitalist-style selfish individualism. It is a respect for individuals and for their freedom and choices. Hunter-gatherer "leadership" is based on respect for someone's expertise; and people can choose whether or not to follow the suggestions of a "leader".

These egalitarian attitudes are not the result of some abstract moral "goodness" of the people. They arise from the real, co-operative way of life that the people lead. The picture painted by Brody also corresponds very much with that painted by Richard Borshay Lee in his studies of the !Kung hunter-gatherers in Africa.

Two other positive aspects of these societies should be mentioned. One is the equality of the sexes. Men do most of the hunting and women mainly do the gathering, because the latter are often breast-feeding or pregnant. But gathering is usually at least as important economically as hunting, so this division of labour does not lead to inequality between the sexes. Secondly, the hunter-gatherer way of life is nowhere near as destructive of the environment as more modern human activities have been.

Brody rightly wants us to protect and learn from the surviving hunter-gatherers. But I would go further and say that only by getting rid of capitalism and taking collective democratic control of society can the whole of humanity save our environment and combine the benefits of modern technology with the co-operation, equality and freedom that we see in hunter-gatherer societies. show less

Brody is that particular breed of anthropologist who deserves special mention for the respect he shows to the people whose story he tells. This is an excellent account of indigenous people living in their traditional, and in the modern world. The particular trigger for this study was the imminent construction of a oil/gas pipeline through their traditional hunting territories in Canada's West. In undertaking this work Brody unfolds the question of what is a viable hunting territory, and how show more the indigenous peoples manage their land alongside modern urban hunters. At the same time there is a profound insight into the dynamics of the groups he lived and hunted with. This is a raw account of the destruction of indigenous culture and ways of life, but it's also a testiment to the resilience of that culture. show less

Some great passages in here on the different hunter-gather communities Brody has spent time living and working with. Unfortunately, for me, too often it gets rather bogged down in the intricacies of linguistic origins or the various belief systems. As interesting as these subjects are it felt much more disjointed and less satisfactory reading than his other work Maps And Dreams which I'd recently read and enjoyed far more. For a student of this particular field of anthropology it will show more doubtless prove extremely valuable. show less