Learning from Mobile Indigenous Communities

A thousand years old tradition at risk of disappearing

At present, nomadism has suffered a sharp decline due to the spread of intensive agriculture, the industrial growth oriented to massive production, processes of internal re-colonization and population transfers, and state policies addressed to prioritize the urban-based interest. it is estimated that the current nomadic and semi-nomadic population ranges between 30 to 40 million people, which is less than a 10 % from the 476 millions of the existing indígenous people, today distributed in 90 countries and grouped in 5,000 communities.

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Nomads: who are them?

Nomads are indigenous people who move strategically in a given habitat following food opportunities while establishing long-term cyclical patterns of life in specific ecosystems without basically altering the environmental original conditions but adapting to them.

Altough there are not pure categories among nomadic peoples, traditionally these groups have been classified into three general categories: hunters-gatherers, pastoralists and itinerants, to which shifting cultivators can be added as a fourth category. Until about 10,000 years ago, all humans were mostly hunters and foragers. Paradoxically, nowadays these communities form the smallest and most fragile group among all the nomadic people, especially those uncontacted or who live in voluntary isolation.

Currently, most of the surviving nomads are pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. Born in Neolithic times at environments less favorable to farming, pastoralists heavily depend on their herds, athough they usually combine herding practices with trading, cultivation, hunting and gathering.

Nomads fulfill an important function as experts of the natural ecosystems they inhabit and custodians of those same environments, especially in the current worrying scenario of climate crisis and loss of biocultural wealth.

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