REMOTE CULTURES

Ancient Wisdom from Around the World

In the last few years of my research-oriented travels, I’ve spent time in the remote corners of Northeast India, where the elders still worship the sun and the moon and speak an unscripted language that is rapidly dying; stayed with the last remaining headhunters; visited deep in the heart of the San José del Pacífico, where the Mazatec curanderos still journey beyond earth with their young sons and daughters; met with the Tana Torajans, who still bring their dead back to life in the triennial ritual of Ma’nene; and shared stolen laughs with the last tattooed-faced women of the forgotten Chin mountains; while capturing portraits of cultures on the brink of extinction.

Anthropologists have said that Indigenous cultures are not failed attempts at modernity, let alone failed attempts to be us. These peoples show us that the social world in which we live is simply one model of reality. There are different ways of thinking, being, and interacting with the earth. But with every dying culture, a great amount of precious wisdom is being washed away; languages forgotten; unscripted, centuries-old knowledge fading as new, Western philosophies are being adopted by new generations. All of this is happening at an alarming rate, and we must work toward preserving the wisdom, intelligence, innovation, and creativity of the indigenous peoples if we want to preserve a polychromatic world.