ANTHROPOLOGISTS' FUND

FOR URGENT ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

including
Annual Report 2006

G. N. Appell, Ph.D.
Founding Sponsor
P. O. Box A
Phillips, ME 04966
USA

• Entirely Supported by Individual Contributions.
• No funds are used for administrative or fund-raising expenses.

THE FUND

The Anthropologists' Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research was launched in late 1993 to support basic ethnographic research on threatened or disappearing cultures and languages of indigenous peoples. It is entirely supported by individual contributions.
It is expected that the research funded will make a fundamental contribution to anthropological knowledge and will also serve, where appropriate, as an aid to indigenous peoples in their struggle to control their own destinies.

AGREEMENT WITH THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

The Fund awards grants to the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to support their Fellowships in Urgent Anthropology.

An inaugural five-year programme (extended for a sixth year) of Fellowships was set up by the RAI in association with Goldsmiths' College, part of the University of London, which is the largest centre for anthropological research in the United Kingdom. The heads of Goldsmiths’ anthropology agreed to maintain their interest and involvement in the programme and give advice where appropriate.

In 2001 the RAI entered into an agreement with the University of Durham to continue this programme of Fellowships and they hosted the programme until 2006. It is testimony to the importance the University set on the programme that in financially very straightened times they had found the funds to cover their contribution over this period.

The new host for the Urgent anthropology programme, for the next 3 years 2007-2010, will be University of Kent at Canterbury.

The selection of RAI Fellows is made by a panel from the University of Kent at Canterbury. Academic oversight of the projects is provided by the senior members of the anthropology department. There is an RAI oversight committee on the Urgent Fellowships.

Fellowships are awarded without discrimination of ethnic or national origin, or residence, etc.

All monies contributed to the Fund are spent on research with the Fund and the Royal Anthropological Institute making no charge for administrative services.

OBJECTIVES OF THE FELLOWSHIPS IN URGENT ANTHROPOLOGY

The primary goal of the Fellowships is to make a contribution to anthropological knowledge. However, basic ethnographic research has proven to be of material aid and help to indigenous peoples whose cultures and languages are threatened or disappearing. Thus, grantees are encouraged, where appropriate, to:

a) report to the people concerned relevant records made in the course of the study of their culture and history, so as to help them make use of valued aspects of these in the construction of their futures;

b) foster respect, where this has been eroded, for their culture and language and their preservation, including the development of local interest in collecting oral histories and traditions and the incorporation of these in the educational system;

c) collect data on the traditional patterns of land use and rights and make them available for the people;

d) facilitate the study of local medical practices and their incorporation into the modern health delivery systems;

e) report violations of human rights to pertinent human rights organizations.

It is expected and required that scientific publication will result from the research.

FINANCIAL STATUS OF THE FUND

The Fund's investments are managed by the investment firm of Pell Rudman, Boston and by the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, also of Boston.

The financial status of the Fund – 1993 through 2006:

The Fund’s investments are divided and managed by the institutions: The Boston Foundation and Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, also of Boston.

The cumulative financial activities of the Fund as of December 31, 2006 are:

Total Contributions Received since inception: $673,825

Total Grants made to the RAI since inception: $389,230

Net: $284,595

Net current funds invested and held for future Fellowships: $625,071

The finance of the Fund have appreciated over this period: $340,476

FUND RAISING GOALS

The Fund is currently seeking additional donations and legacies in order to achieve its goal of a permanent endowment of $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, the income from which will support at least two to three fellowships per year.

We would welcome any advice on further sources of contributions to this Fund.

To make contributions to the Fund cheques should be made payable to the Anthropologists' Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research and sent to Dr. George N. Appell, P.O. Box A, Phillips, ME 04966, USA or to the Royal Anthropological Institute, 50 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 5BT, UK. All contributions are tax exempt and will be deposited in the Fund's account in the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, of Boston, MA, or in the account at the Boston Foundation (a community foundation), the assets of which are being managed by Pell Rudman, of Boston. Other contributions from within the United Kingdom are held by the Royal Anthropological Institute and are also entirely tax exempt.

Dr. Appell, Founding Sponsor, will be pleased to discuss donations and legacies for the Fund with prospective donors.

Also, please advise us if any contributor wishes to remain anonymous.

We are very pleased that this Fund is progressing so well and that all contributions go to funding research. No funds are used for fund-raising or administrative expenses whatsoever.

RAI FELLOWSHIPS AWARDED

The first Royal Anthropological Institute Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology was awarded in December 1994 to Dr. Roxanne P. Hakim, of Bombay, India, and King's College, Cambridge. She has continued her research on the Vasavas, of Gujarat, India. The Vasavas form a community of subsistence farmers who supplement their agriculture by forest hunting and gathering and also raising some cattle. Their language has not been recorded. Recently the community has been resettled because of the Sardar Sarovar Dam project. Dr. Hakim has been working on completing a dictionary of the Vasavas language and pursuing her collection of Vasavas myths, stories, and songs.
In addition, she planned to spend time with two less isolated groups, the Tadvis and Rathwas, who are also being resettled as part of the same project.

The second annual fellowship was awarded in December 1995 to Dr. Stuart Kirsch, of the University of Michigan, who has conducted extensive research in Papua New Guinea since 1987. Dr. Kirsch has been studying the resistance of the Yonggom of Papua New Guinea to an open-cut copper and gold mine which is polluting their river system. The project is intended to contribute to anthropological knowledge about an indigenous people's effort to maintain autonomy within the global system by defending their natural environment.

The third RAI Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology (June 1997 to December 1998) was awarded to Dr. Hua Cai for fieldwork to document the shamanic knowledge among the few remaining shaman of the Na, an ethnic minority group in the Yunnan Province, PRC, rapidly facing assimilation. The Fund and the RAI have also provided a video camera for Dr. Hua Cai to use to video tape shaman performances. This research is an extension of the original research that Dr. Hua Cai did for his Ph.D. (1995) from the l'Université de Paris X-Nanterre on the kinship system of the Na. Dr. Hua Cai's dissertation was published as Les Na de Chine: Une Société, Sans Père, Presses Universitaires de France, in which he reports the absence of the institution of marriage and family.
Dr. Hua Cai has recently completed a video of a Na shamanistic performance with the help of Dr. Paul Henley, Chair of the RAI Film Committee. This video is available from the Royal Anthropological Institute and includes a fifty page Study Guide.

The 1998 RAI Fellowship was awarded to Dr. Barthlomew Dean (University of Kansas) to continue research in Peru on Urarina social organization, cosmology, and shamanism. He also worked with Urarina leaders and local organizations to develop an intercultural school curriculum that will revalorize the Urarina language and contribute to cultural survival, including the preservation of Urarina knowledge. This work will also contribute to the protection of Urarina land tenure and their natural resource management.

The fifth RAI Fellowship was awarded in 1999 to Veronica Strang (D.Phil. in Museum Ethnography from Oxford), lecturer and deputy head of a new department of anthropology at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Her project is on the maintenance of aboriginality in far north Queensland, where she has extensive field experience since 1982. She will examine the efforts of an ex-mission community, Kowanyama, to preserve a traditional Aboriginal environmental relationship while grappling with issues of land rights, tourism, mining, etc. The younger generation is very keen to acquire their elders' traditional knowledge. She will use the technique of "cultural mapping" and the recording of language and other data, with special reference to the internal debates and tensions within the community. She writes that there is a close coincidence between the aims of the project and the current urgent needs of the community.

The 2000 RAI Fellowship was awarded to Dr. Christopher Duncan (Research Associate in the Asian Cultural History Program, Smithsonian Institution). The original proposal submitted for the RAI Research Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology was for funds to document the indigenous cosmology and ritual practices of the Forest Tobelo, the forest-dwelling foragers living on the island of Halmahera in eastern Indonesia. However, due to the outbreak of violence in 1999, and continuing instability throughout 2001-2003, research plans had to be changed. A new research proposal was submitted in 2002 titled “Communal Violence in North Maluku: An Examination of the Violence and the Resulting IDP Situation in Northern Sulawesi and North Maluku, Indonesia.” This new research project had two main foci: (1) documenting and better understanding the violence that broke out in North Maluku from 1999 to 2000, and (2) examining the lives of those people that it displaced. The research was undertaken in the provinces of North Sulawesi and North Maluku in eastern Indonesia. The former was home to approximately 35,000 largely Christian internally displaced people (IDPs). Approximately 10,000 of these IDPs were living in several large IDP camps in the cities of Bitung and Manado, and an additional 25,000 were scattered throughout the province in individual homes. Research was conducted among both groups. The second research site was the province of North Maluku where the conflict that produced these IDPs occurred. Field work was concentrated in the districts of Tobelo and Kao. Copies of this final report are available on request.

Professor Alan MacFarlane and Dr. Mark Turin (Cambridge University) were awarded a special RAI Fellowship for 2001-2003. Digital Himalaya is a pilot project to develop digital collection, archiving and distribution strategies for multimedia anthropological information from the Himalayan region. They digitized a set of existing ethnographic archives comprised of photographs, films, sound recordings, field notes and texts collected by anthropologists and travellers in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and the Indian Himalayas (including Sikkim) from the beginning of the twentieth century to present.

The project had three long-term objectives:
1. To preserve in a digital medium valuable ethnographic materials that are degenerating in their current forms;
2. To make these resources available in a searchable digital format to scholars and to the Himalayan communities from which the material originated;
3. To develop a template for collaborative digital cataloguing that will allow users to contribute documentation to existing collections and eventually to link their own collections to the system, creating a dynamic tool for comparison.
If successful, the project should provide a model for others which may even lead to a larger project in the future to establish a set of interconnected archives of anthropological materials.

The 2001-2002 Fellowship, under the direction of the University of Durham, was awarded to Dr. Noriko Sato to study a group of Syrian Orthodox Christians who were originally expelled from Turkey in 1922, the year of the Great Massacre, also called the Year of the Sword. Dr Sato spent a large amount of time for field work among Syrian Orthodox Christians in Syria and collecting data in 2002 and is planning to publish the results as a book. The political and economic situation in Syria came to be problematic due to the long-standing Israeli military operations over Palestine and the recent war against Iraq. This has affected her research project of promoting tourism in Syria, as the number of tourists has drastically decreased during these three years. Furthermore, due to the downsized local economy, private sectors, including tourism, have lost the prospect of new investment and scaled back their business. In such a situation, she was unable to launch a pilot scheme of historical tourism that obliged for Syrian Orthodox Christians to invest their capital and therefore had to seek an alternative way of pursuing the aim of what the project of the historical tourism attempted to achieve. The adult educational project, in which Dr. Sato organized study groups to visit historical sites of Byzantine churches and read texts related to their history, is the way that supports the Christians to understand their historical affiliation to Syria and, through this process, they might confirm their modern Syrian identity. The outcome of this group activity was similar to that of historical tourism, which was expected. An analysis of the Adult Educational activities suggest that their interest in both ancient Christian history and the religious texts is closely related to their socio-political aim of repossessing their past.

The 2002-2003 Fellowship, under the direction of the University of Durham, was awarded to Dr. Ananda Rajah of the University of Singapore, for a project entitled “Karen Refugees in the Thailand-Burma Borderlands: Ethnic Conflict, Flight and Cultural Change.” Research has primarily involved a survey of the literature, published and unpublished, on the ethnic conflict in Burma leading to Karen refugee flows into Thailand and the collation of “grey” literature previously collected. Dr Rajah also made a field visit to a Karen refugee camp along the Thailand-Burma borderlands.

Dr. Rogiai Abusharaf was awarded the RAI Fellowship for 2004. Her project is entitled “The Impact of Arabization and Islamization on Identity and Self-hood among the Southern Sudan’s Indigenous Peoples.” She will take up the Fellowship early in 2004, with two periods at Durham University separated by field work in the Sudan.

A special grant was awarded to Dr Tatiana Bulgakova, Professor of the Insstitute of Northern Peoples in Alexander I. Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. The goal of this project is to digitalize the old records of Nanay folklore, which are under threat of being lost and to do the most urgent work for preparing a textbook “Nanay Folklore,” which is the first part of the planned textbook “Traditional Nanay Culture”: (1) “Nanay Folklore” and (2) “Ethnography of the Nanay.” This is the way to incorporate traditional knowledge, lost in the course of rapid change, in education, to make this knowledge available to the people, from whom it has been recorded. The collaboration with native teachers and elders in the process of preparing the textbook can foster their eroded respect for their native culture.

The 2004 RAI Fellowship was awarded to Dr. Emma Gilberthorpe. She was awarded the eleventh Fellowship after open competition. She will be conducting urgent research among the Fasu and Min people of Papua New Guinea, who face the short-term threat of virtual extinction brought on by rapid resource development; particularly the effects of temporary extraction and mining projects. Both groups face the demise of traditional knowledge and are likely to be forced to abandon their historic areas of settlement and move to larger towns. Both have specifically requested anthropological assistance in documenting their indigenous knowledge. The results are being disseminated to the extraction/mining companies to obtain maximum benefits and internally generate sustainable development.

The 2005 RAI Fellowship was awarded to Dr. Mark Jamieson. He is working on language and identity among the Sumu people of Rio Siquia, in the Mosquito Coast region of Eastern Nicaragua. This isolated and probably disappearing population of fewer than 300, speaking an endangered language, has never been studied by professional anthropologists. Threatened during the 1980s with dispersals, kidnappings and human rights abuses during a civil war which was particularly fierce in the area, this community is now threatened with extinction under pressure from advancing Spanish-speaking campesinos and cattle farmers.

The 2006 Fellowship was awarded to Dr. M. Thanuja, for her project entitled “The Konda Reddia: Perspectives on their social organisation and shifting cultivation overlooked by developmental intervention”.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FUND

I would like to thank the various contributors and several anonymous contributors to the Fund for their support and interest over the past six years:

Nathan & Meredith Altshuler; Dr. G. N. Appell; Mrs Helen F. Appell;Mrs Laura W. R. Appell ; Mr. Louis J. Appell, III; Appleby Foundation; Scott & Annie Appleby Charitable Trust; Jonathan C. M Benthall; Dr Robert Colby; Dr. Robert K. Dentan; Dr. Amity A. Doolittle; Professor Norman Dorsen; Dr. Richard Allen Drake; Dr. Brian Durrans; Dr Charles Frantz; Dr. Rosemary Gianno; Dr. Peter R. Goethals; Dr. Joan Bamberger Goodheart; Dr. Felicitas D. Goodman; Dr Stephen Gudeman; Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock; Mr. & Mrs. Steven G. Hoch; Dr. W. W. Howells; Dr A. Thomas Kirsch; Dr Robert Manners; Dr. & Mrs. J. Wallace McMeel; Mrs. Charity R. McNabb; Dr. Eugene Ogan; Dr Kazunori Oshima; Dr. James L. Peacock III; Dr. Anton Ploeg; Dr Daniella Sieff; Sutasoma Trust; Mrs. Laura P. Appell Warren; Ethan R. A. Warren; Miss Amanda P.A. Warren

BOARD OF SPONSORS

In order to establish the bona fides of the Fund, it was decided to enlist a group of eminent anthropologists to serve as sponsors of the Fund. The main function of the Board of Sponsors is to give intellectual support to the goals of the Fund in order to demonstrate the importance of this work. Also, if members of the Board know of individuals or foundations that might be interested in giving support to this work, we would appreciate hearing from them. We are constantly interested in enlarging this Board of Sponsors and
would welcome hearing from anyone who would be interested in lending their support. We would like to express our deep appreciation and thanks to all the sponsors who have given their support to this project.

David F. Aberle* (University of British Columbia)
K. Alexander Adelaar (University of Melbourne)
Nathan Altshuler (College of William and Mary)
George N. Appell, Founding Sponsor (Brandeis University)
Diane Austin-Broos (University of Sydney)
Joan Bamberger (Wellesley College)
Jonathan C. M. Benthall (Royal Anthropological Institute)
Brent Berlin (University of Georgia)
Megan Biesele (Rice University)
Robert Blust (University of Hawai'i)
John H. Bodley (Washington State University)
Erika Bourguignon (Ohio State University)
Donald E. Brown (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Thomas Buckley (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Ann Pat Caplan (University of London)
Janet F. Carsten (University of Edinburgh)
Michael M. Cernea (The World Bank)
Norman A. Chance (University of Connecticut)
Benjamin N. Colby (University of California, Irvine)
Harold C. Conklin (Yale University)
William Davenport* (University of Pennsylvania)
John Davis (All Souls College, Oxford University)
Robert K. Dentan (State University of New York, Buffalo)
Amity A. Doolittle (Yale University)
Michael R. Dove (Yale University)
Richard Allen Drake (Michigan State University)
Brian Durrans (The British Museum)
Timothy Earle (Northwestern University)
James F. Eder, Jr. (Arizona State University)
R. F. Ellen (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Sir Raymond Firth* (London School of Economics & Political Science)
James J. Fox (Australian National University)
Charles Frantz (State University of New York, Buffalo)
Thomas M. Fraser, Jr.* (New Hampshire)
Derek Freeman* (Australian National University)
Robert Gardner (Harvard University)
Rosemary Gianno (Keene State College)
Peter R. Goethals* (Hawai'i)
Walter R. Goldschmidt (University of California, Los Angeles)
Anthony Good (University of Edinburgh)
Felicitas D. Goodman (Denison University)
J. R. Goody (University of Cambridge)
Robert J. Gordon (University of Vermont)
P. Bion Griffin (University of Hawai'i)
Stephen F. Gudeman (University of Minnesota)
Marie-Franoise Guedon (University of Ottawa)
Alfred Harris* (University of Rochester)
Olivia Harris (Goldsmiths' College)
Eric Hirsch (Brunel University)
Robert K. Hitchcock (University of Nebraska)
Anna Hohenwart-Gerlachstein (IUAES-Commission on Urgent
Anthropological Research)
W. W. Howells* (Harvard University)
Dell Hymes (University of Virginia)
Nitish Jha (Brandeis University)
Cornelia Ann Kammerer (Hampshire College)
William Kelly (Yale University)
Victor T. King (University of Hull)
A. Thomas Kirsch* (Cornell University)
Stuart Kirsch (University of Michigan)
Claude Levi-Strauss (College de France)
E. Douglas Lewis (University of Melbourne)
Celia Lowe (University of Washington)
Alan MacFarlane (University of Cambridge)
T. N. Madan (University of Delhi)
Luisa Maffi (Northwestern University)
Robert A. Manners* (Brandeis University)
Charity A. McNabb (Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research)
Torben Monberg (Fredensborg, Denmark)
Brian Morris (Goldsmiths' College)
C. Patrick Morris* (University of Washington)
Shuichi Nagata (University of Toronto)
Rodney Needham* (All Souls College, Oxford University)
Ida Nicolaisen (University of Copenhagen)
Stephen Nugent (Goldsmiths' College)
Eugene Ogan (University of Hawai'i)
Kazunori Oshima (University of Kyoto)
Robert Paine (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Richard J. Parmentier (Brandeis University)
Stephen L. Pastner (University of Vermont)
James L. Peacock (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Anton Ploeg (Nijmegen University)
Laura Rival (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Paul B. Roscoe (University of Maine, Orono)
Benson Saler (Brandeis University)
Clifford Sather (University of Helsinki)
Bernard J. L. Sellato (University of Provence)
Parker Shipton (Boston University)
Daniela F. Sieff (Real World Pictures)
Masri Singarimbun* (Gadjah Mada University)
Melford E. Spiro (University of California, San Diego)
Leslie E. Sponsel (University of Hawai'i, Honolulu)
Vinson H. Sutlive, Jr. (College of William and Mary)
R. L. Tapper (School of Oriental and African Studies)
Mark Turin (Cambridge University)
Motomitsu Uchibori (Hitotsubashi University)
Evon Z. Vogt* (Harvard University)
Reed Wadley (University of Missouri)
Laura P. A. Warren (Milton Academy)
Peter Wogan (Willamette University)
* deceased