Indigenous evaluation blog
Bhuban B Bajracharya, Chairman, Nepal Evaluation SocietyMeeting with Uru Warige Wannila Aththo, Community Leader, Dambana Indigenous Community Each of the EvalIndigenous Team members was welcomed in turn. Holding hands together with the community leader in their traditional style, each of the EvalIndigenous team member self-introduced to him. While talking to the Nepal members, he told that he met people from Tamang community while visiting Nepal. Randhika and Chamathkara explained to him about the EvalIndigenous Team, Academic Symposium on M&E Education, APEA and its activities, and about the importance of EvalIndigenous world-wide. Along with Fiona, they presented him a copy of the APEA Toolkit on Indigenous evaluation.. Uru Warige Wannila Aththo briefly introduced his community having hunting and harvesting jungle products as their main livelihood activities. He highlighted some of the challenges the community is facing at the moment - major ones related to the restriction rules of the Ministry of Environment and Wildlife affecting their livelihood activities. They do not have land rights also. Non-compliance to these rules can often take them for some legal actions also. He asked if EvalIndigenous and APEA could do anything in these matters. Thanking him for his welcome remarks, Fiona, Co-Chair of EvalIndigenous, responded to him on what the EvalIndigenous and APEA could do. She explained that negotiation with the Government is quite important and key to solve the problems. For the negotiation process, consulting also with the UNESCO, EvalIndigenous and APEA can help in producing required documents based on various UN resolutions. Such a negotiation process with well thought out documents, the community can reach to the agreement with the Government. He was not so hopeful about the talks with the Government. They have taken this issue to the Geneva Convention which in turn corresponded with the Sri Lankan Government to address to their issues and helping them continue with the age-old traditional practices. The Government has not responded to it so far. The meeting has been very much helpful in understanding the difficulties that the indigenous communities are facing and are likely to face even more in future due to the conflict between their traditional practices / lifestyles and the government policies. Who need to change or who would have to change is the question, and in the process, the risk of eroding of the cultural identity would be looming large. After the meeting, some of the community members demonstrated some of their routine and cultural practices. Some of them are:
Members of the EvalIndigenous Team
Related posts: Part 1. About the Community John T. Njovu's post about the Academic Symposium and visiting the Dambana Village AuthorBhuban B Bajracharya, Chairman, Nepal Evaluation Society Indigenous evaluation advice
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