EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

Lodu leads his visitors to the top of his temple and sacred god—Niam Raja, as he calls this mountain—and hangs his axe head over his sinuous, copper-skinned shoulder. They peer through a break in the dense foliage of the Niyamgiri forest to the valley floor below. It is bereft of vegetation. Splayed out over a red, dusty wasteland is an imposing, smoke-stacked bauxite processing plant, where raw material is converted into a sodium alumina liquor using caustic soda, lime and steam. Once separated from the water, this is smelted into aluminum. The resulting turquoise solution is captured in holding ponds, where it seeps into the ground. The plant is the property of Vedanta Resources, a British mining company.

The Niyamgiri Hills are home to more than 8,000 Dongria Kondh, one of India’s most remote tribes. They are skilled horticulturists who see themselves as protectors of the streams, hills and jungles, where they survive on foraging, hunting and gathering, and subsistence agriculture. They live in the mountainous state of Orissa, known as Kalinga in ancient times, on the east coast near the Bay of Bengal.

More than 100 tribal families on the plains of Lanjigarh have already been displaced by the refinery, which had been built before Vedanta received legal clearance to mine. Their homes were bulldozed by night. Now, Vedanta wants to expand into the revered hills for open-pit bauxite mining. The company has offered the Dongria Kondh money, but they have refused it. They have no interest in the roads that are being carved into the forest, as they have no cars to drive. They worship the rocks, the hills, their homes and villages. And they are willing to lay down their lives to protect their sacred Niyamgiri Hills.

Roughly 5% of the world’s population count themselves as members of an indigenous culture. Though their populations are small, they account for 60% of the world’s languages and over half of the intellectual legacy of humanity, according to anthropologist Wade Davis. “At risk is a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination, an oral and written literature composed of the memories of countless elders and healers, warriors, farmers, fishermen, midwives, poets and saints,” wrote Davis in Light at the Edge of the World. Their visions are “attached by myth and memory to a particular place on the planet.”

In late December gangs of men—known by villagers as ‘goons’—intimidated human-rights investigators as they approached the controversial mine site. One Dongria elder told the team, “Vedanta wants to take our bauxite, but we will not let them take it. We are all together—you and me. Like this we are strong. But if one of us falls we all will fall. You have the language. You can carry our voices to the outside—we cannot do that without your help.”

Last week the $6.6 billion Vedanta Group announced plans to expand its metals business and to spend $2 billion over the next two to three years “to significantly enhance capacity.” The company plans to increase its aluminum production by 25 times.

“Tribal people find themselves in the frontline of a global battle against the wholesale destruction of the planet,” said Survival’s director, Stephen Corry. “While world leaders talk about stopping climate change, tribal people around the world are literally sitting in front of bulldozers—not just for them, but for all our sakes.” Founded in 1969, Survival is "the only international organization supporting tribal peoples worldwide."

To learn more about the plight of the Dongria Kondh, watch Survival’s stirring and informative video.

[February 11, 2010 update: Amnesty International just released a report criticising Vedanta Resources for its human rights violations in Orissa, India. - Ed.]

Additional resources:
Fantasy Film ‘Avatar’ Is All Too Real—In Our Time on Our Planet

[Photographs for this piece were provided courtesy of and are © Survival. - Ed.]

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