The Wind in the Bamboo

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 - 4:00pm
Linderman Library, Room 200
The Wind in the Bamboo
Indigenous People Historically defined as “Negrito” Survive in Asia
 
Edith Mirante
Author/Activist
 
Author/activist Edith Mirante presents a slideshow related to her latest book, “The Wind in the Bamboo: A Journey in Search of Asia’s ‘Negrito’ Indigenous People”.Called “savage pygmies” and “hideous dwarfs,” sold into slavery, exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, nearly exterminated by disease and a cataclysmic volcano, these extraordinary people now survive as forest hunter gatherers in a few places: mainland Malaysia, the Philippines and India’s Andaman Islands. The slideshow features historical images and her own photographs, with an emphasis on the indigenous peoples’ 
adaptive modern foraging cultures, issues of ethnic identity, and ongoing forest land rights struggles. 
 
Edith Mirante has roamed Asia since the early 1980s, collecting information on human rights and environmental issues. In 1986 she founded Project Maje, an independent information project on Burma and she has testified before the US Congress, European Trade Commission and International Labor Organization. The LA Times has called her writing "a contribution to the literature of human rights and to the literature of high adventure.”
 
Co-sponsors: Center for Global Islamic Studies, Department of Journalism and Communication, Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Global Studies Program.