Like the Oshtok Gaan there are hundreds of diversified traditional theatre forms that are still practiced in Bangladesh, something many urbanites do not even know the existence of. Usually, traditional theatre forms are presented in music-dance-drama form and include one or more of the following elements: dance, music and narratives or dialogue. Traditional theatre is always geared towards the masses, created and supported by them and not by the ruling class. Indigenous theatre presentations do more...

Improving the livelihoods of the rural poor requires combining indigenous knowledge and local innovation with formal agricultural research and development and support from governments and other institutions. This brief from IFPRI, an international food policy research organization, outlines how formal and informal knowledge and innovation can be linked to accelerate sustainable agricultural development. The brief identifies such necessary steps as scaling up investments in agricultural science, more...

The indigenous people in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) are losing their culture and customs as the CHT peace accord has remained unimplemented for years.

Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma (Santu Larma), chairman of CHT Regional Council and also chief of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS), said this in Rangamati while inaugurating a rally yesterday on the occasion of Biju, the biggest festival of the indigenous people in CHT.

Indigenous communities including Chakma, Marma, Tripura, more...

Through the Heritage Images Archives Initiative, NHK and UNESCO are contributing to the documenting and safeguarding of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and of natural heritage, in order to ensure transmission of knowledge between generations and promote cultural diversity. These 197, short beautifully-produced videos are part of that effort.

The partnership between UNESCO and NHK Japanese broadcasting corporation builds on state-of-the-art digital visual and sound processing techno more...

This authors suggest that peer pressure in the United States tends to decrease grades of high achievers in the black and hispanic students in the United States.

Abstract: 'There is a debate among social scientists regarding the existence of a peer externality commonly referred to as ‘acting white.’ Using a newly available data set, which allows one to construct an objective measure of a student’s popularity, we demonstrate that there are large racial differences in the relationship bet more...

There are two contradicting, but broadly held, views and understandings when it comes to the deep history of indigenous Native American Indian peoples in the Great Basin culture region of North America. The predominate one found in archaeology and across much of the social sciences is that today’s indigenous Native American Indians of the Great Basin (the Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Ute, Bannock, Kawaiisu, and Chemehuevi) have only resided in the area for a relatively short time; on the order of more...

Although he is only 21, Camilo Yoge has seen his indigenous tribe lose its culture, territory and traditions. Yoge, a member of the Cofan tribe, has seen farmers, ranchers and oilmen invade his ancestral lands to plant illegal coca crops, raise cattle and search for oil. He has seen many young Cofan take to wearing Western-style clothes, listening to popular music and abandoning their native language for Spanish.

'We're losing out traditional dress, our environment,' lamented Yoge, who is st more...

Languages are not only extremely adequate tools of communication, they also reflect a view of the world. Languages are vehicles of value systems and of cultural expressions and they constitute a determining factor in the identity of groups and individuals. Languages are an essential component of the living heritage of humanity. Yet, over 50% of some 6700 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing.

Indigenous peoples currently number some 350 million individuals in more than 70 countries in the world and represent more than 5000 languages and cultures. Despite their important contribution to the world cultural diversity and to the sustainable development of our planet, many of them live on the fringes of society and are deprived of basic human rights. Through its partnership with indigenous peoples, UNESCO seeks to support them in addressing the multiple challenges they face, while acknowl more...

One of the most perplexing problems in the field of anthropology over the last hundred years has been the relationship between language and culture. Does language shape culture? Does culture shape language? Further, and perhaps more interesting, does language shape our cognition, effecting the very way that we see the world? Similarly, does culture shape our language in such a way that the very words, concepts, and semantic structures within a language are the direct result of the culture’s ph more...