About the Andaman Association
The founders and honorary members
The Andaman Association was formally founded in Spring 1997 in Switzerland by Thomas Weber and Ursula Capaul of ALPA Cameras together with Maria and George Weber-da Cruz. The Association has existed, in all but name, since the late 1980s and goes back to a suggestion made to George by Judy and Geoffrey Kingscott in England in 1986 (for more information about Geoffrey see http://www.geoffreykingscott.co.uk/contents.html ).
The Honorary Members are appointed by majority vote of all Members present at the Annual General Meeting which is usually held in December of each year in Switzerland.
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Prince Rasheed Yussuf of the Nicobar islands, India Prof.A. Abbi, India Prof. R.K. Bhattacharya, India Dr. Z. Cooper, India Prof. K. Ebert, Switzerland Mr. J. Falconer, England Mr. D. Giles, A&N Islands, India Dr. E. Hagelberg, Norway Prof. L. Icke-Schwalbe, Germany Dr. V.K. Kashyap, India Mrs. B. Lehmann, England Dr. H. Leigh-Theisen, Austria Mrs. B. de Machula, The Netherlands Prof. T. N. Pandit, India Mr. Gil Reeser, USA Prof. S. Sen, USA Prof. S. Venkateswar, New Zealand and India Prof. J. Wilson, Scotland |
The aims
The Association aims to further the scientific study of all aspects of the Andamanese Negrito and of all other remnant people in Asia and elsewhere and their possible relationships, their present situation, ethnology, anthropology, genetics, languages, archaeology, history, prehistory and geography as well as their place in the origins and development of the human race.
During the 1990s it became clear that the Andamanese Negrito were quite possibly a link to one of the earliest migrations into Asia, Australia and the Americas by anatomically modern humans.
At the same time, the shabby and incompetent treatment the few surviving Andamanese have received and in parts still receive at the hands of the political and scientific authorities (both British to 1947 and Indian after 1947) gave us the energy of outtrage. We are happy to say, however, that the situation has been much improved recently - not least because of the administrative upheaval in the islands in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami and - we hope - a little also because of our friends and members in the islands.
The Andaman Association fosters contacts between individual scientists, institutions and lay people of all walks of life working and interested in the subject in all conceivable fields. In return the Association collects and distributes information on any results, ongoing research, new publications and future projects to its members. It also runs this web-site to publicise the scientific and humaniatrian aspects of the situation.
Membership of the Association is on an individual basis. Any financial support would be most welcome since our work is all done unpaid.
For questions or for other reasons you can contact us.
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Would those readers who worry about the term "Negrito" please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions ("Are the terms 'Negrito' and 'Pygmies' acceptable"?). |
The projects
What the Andaman Association is trying to do with this web-site is first and foremost to attempt to raise world-wide awareness of the Andamanese and their unique humanitarian as well as scientific position. What does this mean?
It means that the Andamanese are Indian citizens - on paper at least, in real life they have no concept of a nation state and would not have the slightest idea of what citizenship meant. India is unquestionably responsible for them, their welfare and their survival. In addition, however, the Andamanese are also of the greatest importance to humanity in general. They are no less than the nearest living relatives to our common human ancestors of 50,000 to 100,000 or more years ago. They are not just dry bones from an excavation to be studied in a laboratory, but are living, human beings. That such a culture should be still be alive (if only just) in our world of data highways, space probes and genetic engineering is nothing short of miraculous. The Andamanese are not just awkward people to be discreetly pacified, social-workered and acculturized - not even with the best of intentions - into Indian society. Their decline and extinction may be inevitable but we have no excuse for not trying to make their survival possible in their own present culture.
The focus of our projects is on the data-gathering, scientific side. None of us here is of the placard-carrying, tomato-throwing, slogan-shouting, demonstrating kind (although some activities of the Indian authorities do tempt even us sometimes...). There are plenty of people who can demonstrate and pressurize politicians better than we can.
What we do is collect information, correlate data, and then try to make sense of it. As regards the Andamanese, collecting information is not easy - the Indian authorities with their (justified) feeling of guilt , do their best to cover up what they are doing and have done. In the Andamans, our focus is on the Andamanese aborigines. The refugees, settlers and other people of mostly India origin are mentioned only insofar as theyinteract with the Andamanese.
Consequently, the terminology used here is one that reflects history and the aboriginal point of view. The term "native" is not used outside direct quotations because of its vagueness and ambiguity in the Andamanese context. The term "Andamanese" always denotes the aboriginal people - the sole inhabitants of the islands until 1858. "Outsider" means anybody who is not Andamanese. Among outsiders, "British" is any person of British origin. "Indian" are all people from the Indian mainland (sometimes on historical grounds taken to include Burma) as well as the institutions and authorities of the Union of India. The latter has exercised full sovereignty over the islands since independence 1947.
We started in the mid-1990s with essentially only one project: anything to do with the Andaman islands. The prehistoric affilations of the Andamanese and their close relatives on the Asian mainland have long been suspected, but they have only very recently been confirmed by genetic data. Much more datai n this direction is expected to be produced in the near future. With anew information flooding in and even such remote people as the Fuegians of South America being suspected of a relationship with the Negrito, we have to spread outselves ever further afield. Intersting, fascinating - but demanding and time-consuming. We have to reorganize ourselves almost on Maoist principles of the "permanent revolution". At the moment we try to keep our head above the data water in the following 6 major projects:
... the project Out-of-Africa (also known as the "Great Migration") which takes an interest in the migration out of Africa around 60-100,000 years ago by anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens). We are interested in the search for traces of all kinds (archaeological, linguistic, genetic, cultural, etc) that may give a hint of "when what happened where why and how" - and what role the Negrito ancestors played in this major drama.
Please also refer to our Frequently Asked Questions.
We hope and trust you will have at the very least a good read on our web site and that you will find the information you are looking for. If not, why not become a member of the Association or sponsor us and be on the inside track of the race for knowledge.
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Last changed 1 March 2006