The Dani live a tropical highland on Papua New Guinea, where
they have created a very intensive irrigation system. They dig channels in
order to gather water from the numerous streams that run through the valley in
which they live in. These ditches are dug in a special fashion to allow the
fields to be watered in the dry season and drained in the rainy seasons. Their irrigation system also provides a way
to fertilize their land with runoff of topsoil and rotting plants, which
enables the Dani to skip fallowing their fields. The crops that are planted in
these fields are mainly sweet potatoes. In fact, 90% of one’s diet is sweet potatoes.
The rest of their diet is usually pork. Although their diet is very dull, the
Dani people are quite healthy.
1997 Dani Subsitence: Intensive Cultivation. Electronic Document,
http://umanitabo.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/dani/cultivation.html,
accessed November 4
First off, I was surprised to hear the Dani are primarily farmers and rear pigs. Although I maybe shouldn’t have assumed they weren’t farmers before I did my research, but I thought they would rely more on hunting because they lived in a valley that was surrounded by seemingly not crossable terrain limiting the influence of humans in the environment. Second, When I finished my research and started comparing the Dani culture to others, I noticed how “western”, one could say, their diet seemed. For example, in the film Milking the Rhino, the Maasai in Kenya had to learn the types of food western tourists ate in order to feed them at the lodge. Although I didn’t do research on the Maasai tribe, but based on the movie, one could infer the foods the Maasai eat are, to some extent, different than what Americans would typically eat. On the other hand, the Dani eat sweet potatoes and pork. Many could agree that this is food is culturally relevant to what’s eaten in America.
ReplyDelete