I feel like you should know something about the folks who taught me so much...

The Hadza hunt, forage, and migrate across Mongo wa Mono, the Yaeda Valley, and Eyasi regions of Tanzania. Since their focus is providing for their most essential physical and emotional needs, time is dedicated to hunting, finding the most plentiful vegetation, building new (temporary) villages, and learning the songs and dances that fill the time in between. There’s little room for war (intra- or extra-tribal), political leadership, or anything else that could get in the way of them staying alive, healthy, and happy. The constant moving, the amount of time it takes to get a few tubers for a day’s meal, the difficulty of catching and preparing a decent kill to feed the family, and the need to take a break from work all amount to a lifestyle that doesn’t allow them to give much thought to the future. Saving is unheard of. What’s available is only available for the now. If what they do nourishes them in the present moment, then their satisfied.

The Hadza’s lifestyle is admirable but can’t be emulated in our capitalist, “developed” world. We only know how to exploit the Hadza’s principles to serve our own interests. Case-in-point, the Tanzanian government’s efforts to gain economically from displacing the Hadza under the guise of “development” are directly benefited by the Hadza’s non-confrontational lifestyle: Under Land Act No. 4 and Village Land Act No. 5, the Tanzanian government is sanctioning pastoralists’ and farmers’ occupation of Hadza land. They reason that if the Hadza see others modeling a more “respectable” lifestyle, then they’ll become “civilized”. While the Tanzanian government’s disgust with the Hadza is (unfortunately) sincere drives their efforts to convert them, their more lucrative motivation is pressure from other governments to buy Hadza land. Such systematic, government-sanctioned ethnocide has dwindled the Hadza population from 5000 to 1800 in the past 3 decades.

The Hadza have no interest in farming or herding and are disgusted by game hunting, but won’t fight – physically or legally – their invaders because that’s just not how they operate. Instead, they move to parts of their land that haven’t been taken over by outsiders and rely on advocates like Dorobo Tours Ltd to represent them in government. Though they’ve survived thus far, their land and population shrinks every year.

To be honest, I wasn’t too shook when I read about the injustices levied against the Hadza; displaced and disenfranchised peoples are in East African news all the time. It wasn’t until we went hunting with them that their situation really hit me: One of the hunters spotted an impala. He was going to shoot it, but two pastoralists – one on either side of the impala – came herding their cattle. The impala ran off at the sound of 20+ stamping hooves. The worse part though was that these cattle were being herded through already-depleted land to a field that hadn’t been ate up yet. What hope is there for the Hadza when people legally scare off their lunch? How can they reasonably compete for food with animals that eat more for lunch than they can eat in a week?

But they don’t think in terms of weeks. When they see cattle grazing on their land, they see a field that just happens to be occupied at the time they want to use it and move on. This ability to live completely in the moment is their weakness and strength: If they don’t think of the future, they don’t think of their lifestyle being a memory in a few decades. If they don’t think of the future, then why would they create a plan to save their future selves?

But by living for today, they live completely fulfilling lives despite their disenfranchisement. If you told me that the Hadzabe weren’t proactive about fighting the injustices levied against them before I had lived with them, I would have thought that they felt too powerless to act. That is not the case at all. They don’t feel a need to act in harmony with the “modern” world. While that means they don’t represent themselves in the Tanzanian government*, it also means they understand that what they need can't be found in a dusty Parliament or court of law. What they need is in them, with them, and surrounding them. From this perspective the question becomes: Is there more power in gaining the upperhand over your enemy or in being able to fully sustain the self every day? I think the Hadza believe the latter.

*Hadza who have left the hunting/gathering lifestyle and advocates in Tanzania and elsewhere lobby on the Hadzabe’s behalf.