He documents twenty nine tribes, some more lost than others on this crazy planet.
Our so called civilized world.
There's more than fifteen million people at home in the mountains, the ice fields, the jungles, along the rivers and in hidden valleys.
Jimmy Nelson's wonderful book Before They Pass Away gives us the opportunity to see, understand and remember before many of these remote and indigenous peoples are no more. Many of these tribal people are vanishing and with their passing, their unique languages and traditional ways of life.
A last visual witness of human beauty perhaps.
Painted bodies, pure spirits and free souls.
When they pass, part of ourselves will pass too. Forever...
Fascinating, thank you for this introduction to Jimmy Nelson's work and his call to understand and remember...
ReplyDeleteIs this vanishing inevitable? Must every race, culture and free spirit end up in the melting pot of civilization and globalization? If there is a known enemy, are there no soldiers to fight back?
ReplyDeleteSuzy, sadly, money is usually the driving force behind the destruction of so much, people, cultures, land, good water. Every one of us are the soldiers, in what ever way we can be, what we buy, what time we'll put in to speak out, write letters, organize. It's hard, thankless and often bittersweet. Pick your battle, don your shield and jump in.
ReplyDeleteThanks MJ for reaffirming what I knew in my heart already. We all need reminding once in a while and we can never do too much. The harvest is great but reapers so few.
ReplyDeleteExacto.
ReplyDeleteThe upside is that, due to resource depletion, especially fossil fuel depletion, global industrial civilization is currently entering what will probably prove to be a long dark age of contraction, collapse and ruin: bad news for most of us in the industrial world, but probably great news for indigenous peoples and the ecosystems that support them. So buck up - progress is winding down, and collapse is on its way!
ReplyDeleteWhoopdeedoo!
DeleteI love that last statement Kevin.
Progress is winding down and collapse is on it's way!
I love your optimism, Kevin. If you read about what is happening with the tribes above, it's a little harder for me to believe more will join the gone list before we see a turn around. But I'll hang on to that hopeful view.
DeleteI can't help feeling uneasy about this book - if he was there with his camera and western mind wasn't he contributing to the disappearance of these ways of being......??
ReplyDeleteNow I feel more uneasy.... When you look into the eyes of a Westerner don't you see cash registers, financial transactions, wanting and having things? How were they changed by their interactions with him? Taking photos of these people for others to wonder at could be looked on as a form of voyeurism and of course he will have made money out of it.
ReplyDelete