A reader wrote to object to the Mail & Guardian's usage of the term "Bushmen" for Southern Africa's first people. Kobus Faasen quoted at length from a Dutch dictionary published in 1902, which said the word meant "one who lives in the bushes" but had also been applied to apes, particularly the orangutan.
Dramatic images of an isolated Brazilian tribe believed never to have had contact with the outside world were published by officials on Friday to draw attention to threats posed to their way of life. The pictures showed alarmed Amazon Indians pointing bows and arrows at the aircraft carrying photographers.
It's one of the most fashionable ideas to save the planet from global warming: buying up tropical rainforest to save it from destruction. But like all big ideas it is controversial, and this week a leading Amazonian campaigner will visit Britain to protest that this latest trend is linked to a health and social crisis among indigenous people.
A planned lodge development at the settlement of Molapo in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve has become a source of controversy. Tourists who frequent the 40-room lodge's luxury accommodation will enjoy the sights of the Kalahari. The outlook for indigenous Bushmen from the reserve is less positive, however.
