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02/03/2006
knife making
Ran Prieur has commented on a posting at In the Wake and the general discussion has reminded me of a story I heard on a Bioneers radio episode. The discussion has been about how to control populations in a post crash situation and there is reference to the idea that indigenous populations are harder to control because they are more resourceful. What I was reminded of was this story by a guy called Wade Davis who was hunting around the tip of Baffin Island and met an individual (whose name wasn't clear in the recording) who told a story about his grandfather who refused to go into one of the Inuit settlements;
"His family took away his tools and implements, hoping that it would oblige him to go into the settlement. Did it work? No. He simply stepped out into the arctic night and in the darkness, pulled down his trousers and defecated into his hand. As the faeces froze he shaped it into a blade. He put a spray of saliva along the edge and as the shit-nife took form he butchered a dog. He skinned the dog with it and made a harness, he took the rib cage of the dog and made a sled and harnessing the sled to an adjacent dog he took off over the iceflows"
Beat that!
21:25 Posted in Crash | Permalink
Comments
This post reminds me of a reference I read in William Koetke's "The Final Empire" about SE Asian indiginous peoples...who essentially believed that "wealth" consisted of how much knowledge a tribe had about how to use their environment. Evidently some tribes held others in very high esteem because of, for instance, their ability to identify various plants, as well as their understandings about HOW many various uses for each them they knew of to benefit the tribe.
It makes complete sense--but only from the point of view of a people who wish only to live in harmony with their environment, and not to subjugate and extort it for immediate benefit.
Posted by: Steven Lagavulin | 02/04/2006
Coolest. Thing. EVAR.
Posted by: Jason Godesky | 02/06/2006
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