Q: Who are indigenous people?

A: Rainforests are bursting with life. Not only do millions of species of plants
and animals live in rainforests, but people also call the rainforest their home. In
fact, indigenous, or native, peoples have lived in rainforests for many thousands
of years. Early accounts of these people by European explorers indicate a far
denser population lived in the forest than today. Many of these original peoples,
such as the Caribs (after whom the Caribbean Sea is named) have disappeared
completely. Others are only scattered remnants of what they once were. However
thousands of distinct ethnic groups with their own distinctive language and culture
remain today in tropical rainforests around the world.

Q: In general, how do they live?

A: Although some indigenous people live much as we do, others still live much as
did their ancestors thousands of years before them. These communities organize
their daily lives differently than our culture. Their food, medicines and clothing
come primarily from the forest.

Q: Do the children go to school?

A: Most tribal children don't go to schools like ours. Instead, they learn about
the forest from their parents and other people in their community. They are taught
how to survive in the forest. They learn how to hunt and fish, and which plants are
useful as medicines or food. Some of these children know more about rainforests
than scientists who have studied rainforests for many years!
Q: What do they find to eat?

A: Besides hunting, gathering wild fruits and nuts and fishing, Indigenous people
also plant small gardens for other sources of food, using a sustainable farming
method called shifting cultivation. First they first clear a small area of land and
burn it. Then they plant many types of plants, to be used for food and medicines.
After a few years, the soil has become too poor to allow for more crops to grow and
weeds start to take over. They then move to a nearby uncleared area. This land is
traditionally allowed to regrow for 10-50 years before it is farmed again. Shifting
cultivation is still practiced by those indigenous groups who have access to a
large amount of land. However, with the growing number of non-indigenous farmers
and the shrinking rainforest, other groups, especially in Indonesia and Africa, are
now forced to remain in one area. The land becomes a wasteland after a few years of
overuse, and cannot be used for future agriculture.

Q: Why is the forest so important to indigenous people?

A: Indigenous people revere the forest that, until the present, has protected them
from outsiders and given them everything they need. They live what is called a
sustainable existence, meaning they use the land without doing harm to the plants
and animals that also call the rainforest their home. As a wise indigenous man once
said, "The earth is our historian, our educator, the provider of food, medicine,
clothing and protection. She is the mother of our races."

The Pygmies- This Pygmy woman is food outside her hut, with her baby cradled on her
back. Mbuti and Baka Pygmies live in the rainforests of Central Africa.
Traditionally they live by hunting and gathering food.
The Huli- The Huli are one of the many tribes that live in the remote highland
forests of Papua New Guniea. They live by hunting, gathering plants and growing
crops. Men and women live seperately, in large group houses. The men decorate
their bodies with colored clay and wear elaborate headdresses for ceremonies.
The Yanomami- One of the largest groups of Amerindian people in South America is
the Yanomami. Their village life is centered around the yano, or communal house.
The yano is a large, circular building constructed of vine and leaf thatch, which
has a living space in the middle. This picture shows Yanomami men eating a meal.

Bumblebee species all compete for nectar from flowers, but crucially these flowers
vary in the length of their corolla. Matching this variation, different bumblebees
in this area appear to be adapted to specific species of plant that have different
corolla lengths in their flowers. Careful observations of bumblebee visits to
different flowers revealed clear resource partitioning � different species
preferred different length corollas in accordance with their proboscis length
(i.e., long proboscis, long corolla; short proboscis, short corolla).
By consuming slightly different forms of a limiting resource or using the same
limiting resource at a different place or time, individuals of different species
compete less with one another (interspecific competition) than individuals of the
same species (intraspecific competition). Species, therefore, limit their own
population growth more than they limit that of potential competitors, and resource
partitioning acts to promote the long-term coexistence of competing species.