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Royalty From The UAE Threaten
To Take Over Tribe's Land
July 18, 2007 2:03 p.m. EST
Tomasz Filipczak - AHN
Yaeda Valley, Tanzania (AHN) -- The Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates
might wipe out the second -oldest indigenous tribe in the world.
Africa's primitive Hadzabe people, only 1,500 members strong, have survived
for millennia despite disease, famine, and encroaching civilizations.
However, a deal between Tanzania and the UAE threatens to destroy their way of
life.
The Hadzabe are hunter-gatherers that call the 2,500 square miles of sprawling,
yellow-green Yaeda valley near the storied Serengeti Plain their hunting
grounds and home.
The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris Ltd. leases
this land to members of the royal family, who selected it after a helicopter
tour.
The Royalty of the UAE plans to use the land recreationally. They already own
land nearby but are looking to expand.
A Tanzanian official said that a nearby hunting area the family shared with
relatives had become "too crowded" and that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal
family "indicated that it was inconvenient" and requested his own parcel.
"I don't even know what an Arab looks like," said Kaunda, a Hadzabe man who
prefers khakis but still hunts with hand-hewn poison arrows, "Maybe he's black.
Maybe he's another color. I don't know. But we are ready to die."
The Hadzabe have been described by the Tanzanian government as a "backwards"
people that are resistant to change and who refuse to accept modernization,
according to the Washington Post.
Concepts like standardized time are even too much for the Hadzabe. "What is
the need for time?" Kaunda asked. "You wake up, you get honey. What do you
need time for?"
But dozens of Hadzabe, who still make fire by rubbing sticks together said
that they are ready to modernize, slowly. However, they feel slighted because
they were not consulted on the deal, which is a direct threat to their way of
life because it involves hunting.
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