All members of primitive tribe survived tsunami

[RedEarth]

HUT BAY, India - When the water in the creek suddenly ran out to sea on the morning of Dec. 26, the aboriginal Onge tribe knew the evil spirits were up to no good.


They scattered pig and turtle skulls around their settlement and hurled stones toward the ocean. Hurriedly gathering their baskets, bows and arrows, they then fled into the jungle, bearing amulets of ancestral bones for protection.


Minutes later, the tsunami that left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing in the Indian Ocean region slammed into their tribal reserve in India's remote Andaman islands. All 96 Onge survived, even as residents of the nearby town of Hut Bay perished.


The Onge (pronounced OHN-ghee) lived while so many others didn't because of their innate understanding of how nature works. While tourists on a morning swim in Thailand didn't know what was happening when they suddenly found themselves standing on exposed seabed, and fishermen in Sri Lanka ran out to pick up flapping fish stranded by the receding tide, the Onge knew that the disappearing water meant danger.


"The water went away very quickly, and, like breathing in and out of the body, the sea water had to come back very rapidly and in a big way," Totanagey, an Onge man, explained to anthropologist Vishvajit Pandya. "We saw the water and knew that more land would soon become covered with sea, and angry spirits would descend down to hunt us away," the 60-something man said, according to Pandya's transcription of his notes. "But our ancestral spirits would come down to help us if we stayed together and carried our ancestral bones with us to ensure assistance from the good spirits."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2270&u=/krwashbureau/20050303/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_tsunami_india_tribe_wa&printer=1

[Kota]

1. Good for them. The animals new instinctively also.

[ochazuke]

2. There is an important lesson here.

So-called primitive people are different from us "civilized" folk. They listen to their parents, for one thing. That is, they tell their children stories, and their children repeat those stories to their children and that becomes what we call the oral tradition. It gets wrapped up in religion and mythology, but at the bottom are simple truths and a oneness with nature. So, the story of a long-dead ancestor who survived a big wave thousands of years ago becomes a part of the collective wisdom of the people.

That's why I think we can say that the tsunami of 12/26/04 was not a natural disaster. It was a natural event, but nature and the people in touch with it did not suffer the disaster. It was only the people who have lost their bond with the earth, and their heritage, who didn't know better than to get away from the beach, who didn't know that beachfront property is not the place to live.

Along these lines, there is more to come, you can be sure.

[ewagner]

4. Excellent post

Your insight is great.

[ochazuke]

5. Yours too, obviously. hehehehe

[hootinholler]

3. So just who are the smart ones? n/t

[oneold1-4u]

6. volcano memories

Living many years near Crater Lake OR and while we still had many of the Original People of the local Tribes of the American Nation nearby, it was common knowledge that many could tell the story of the mountain and the eruption as though it was yesterday. Their histories lived for more than 7000 years! They were told over and over around campfires and sung in their songs and chants. How many of our children today can say the preamble, the first sentence of Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, name one of the first ten amendments,
name the first 5 presidents or even the last five. Those things, are of course, not important in todays computer age. So ask them what will happen to their ability to think and remember when the electricity is no longer a familiar commodity to the general population. What are the things going on today in our nation that should be remembered when those of us who were once free to learn and teach are gone?