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Zart Extra Term 2 2010

We the World

Survival International

Art and culture have always walked hand in hand and this has always been especially true for the tribal peoples of our planet, whose art has been woven into every aspect of their existence.

In the last 15 years it has been my very great privilege to work with a truly ground breaking organization called Survival International, a worldwide human rights organisation supporting tribal peoples. It stands for their right to decide their own future and helps them protect their lives, lands and human rights and is dedicated exclusively for the rights of these smaller tribal societies.

Survival has been a lifeline for many endangered peoples and cultures for the last 40 years and has spread its message of respect and protection for cultural and racial diversity to the farthest reaches of our earth. From central London to the rainforests of Sarawak, from downtown San Francisco to the Siberian tundra, Survival has fought for the rights of peoples who might otherwise not have had a voice loud enough to be heard on national and international stages.

In helping to promote the aims of Survival, in our own small way, my partner Jacquie and I are fortunate enough to have been in a position to have run many workshops in schools, universities, in civic centres and at festivals. In the Arts we have made tribal masks, painted faces and bodies, built ceremonial headdresses, created totems, and helped people make jewellery, all based on tribal art and designs. We have done this to feed the imaginations of young and old alike and to help people realise the part small tribal societies play in today’s world with their vast treasure trove of ideas, arts, culture and millennium of experience.

It is estimated that there are over 150 million people who can be classified as tribal people; there are over 100 tribes who have yet to make contact with the outside world.
We have borrowed and appropriated extensively from the arts and cultures of numerous of these micro civilisations that have grown up alongside that of our own. And yet, in many cases, they have been unceremoniously cast aside by the juggernaut of our ‘progress’.

In the works of the most avant-garde of 20th century artists, such as the Spaniards, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, can be seen the unfettered imaginations and exuberant inventions of countless tribal artists from the cultures of New Guinea and the South Pacific. And not only have our pictorial and sculptural imaginations been fed and watered by these rich veins of ancient cultural heritage, but also our Haute Couture and our decorative personal ornamentation: our face make up, our tattooed body art and piercings, our most ingenious pottery, our weavings, our medicines derived from obscure tribal healing herbs and even some of the very buildings we inhabit, with their sometimes simple and intelligent environmentally friendly earth cooling systems.

All these new views that have fed our imaginations and advanced our own sense of self and our appreciation for new ways of seeing and being, owe an uncountable debt of gratitude to the very many small and diverse indigenous tribal cultures who share this sacred earth with us.
For Jacquie and I to be able to share small parts of the lives of tribal peoples with others in face and body painting, mask making and other decorative arts is but a tiny payback to the millions of tribal people around the globe and a small step in acknowledging that we are, all of us, small parts of this incredibly diverse and fascinating world.

SURVIVAL for tribal peoples. To read, watch and hear more about tribal peoples, visit: www.survivalinternational.org

Mikki Storey
Jacquie Coupe
Survival International

 

 

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