The Jarawa’s

Integration is arrogance
It makes no sense at all
The indigenous people are independent
Eternity on call
A massive ancestral background
Though their habitat is being
Carved up by the poaching clans
Who really are all seeing

Tourists have a road through their reserve
And people come
to take Way their turtles
And their wild pigs stealing some
Out of the mouths of the Jarawa’s

And supplying them with booze
And with marijuana
Which is bloody awful news

They are innocent jungle people
Not streetwise in that way
They are a simple natural people
Gatherers lets say
The poaching class are evil
Darkly souls who do
Pollute and bring corruption
And sex into their lives
Diseases too can run rife
And its really who survives
This onslaught from the outside world
This disconnectedness
Their separateness is essential
Its brings its share of stress

An unraveling of culture
And the knowledge of day to day
Hunting with their meagre tools
And the wood from far away
And the honey from the lofty trees
And the special leaves they chew
As a repellant against the stinging
Who do what they must do

Save the hive and the colony
From the ravages of man
They have this passed down knowledge
Within their worldly plan
Don’t talk of them as primitives
In the jungle they all know
159 plants each one intimate
And on show
And animals And insects
And tubers they can eat
They are self sufficient
Eating their wild meat

Outsiders come of course they do
Its paradise is real
But the paradise is hard to find
Only the Jarawa’s feel
The value of their surroundings
They harness the energy
They have perfect commitment
In their own way they are free

To bring them into the Indian scene
Is arrogance gone wrong
Its a totally ignorant point of view
Which just does not belong
It will scatter them every which way
Driving them insane
They are happy with their paradise
For them its not in vain

They understand completeness
An ensemble of the whole
Their university is life
They really do have soul
Their collective panorama
Is a simple warm embrace
With the natural world around them
And the pictures on their face

Unlike the foreign visitor
They realise the worth
They do not take what they don’t want
From great Mother earth
They do not hoard they share the gifts
The earth gives them each day
They understand their place on earth
For really thats the way

The outside world must stop this
Leave them well alone
Protect them their survival
Had well and truly shown
From their initial beginning
They have the where for all
They can manage the forests
They are permanently on call

Survival is their vitality
Integration will
Kill the ancientness that they all have
And can have still
It makes no sense to do this
They must remain in time
Where they are in their scheme of things
For they are on an upward climb
To paradise and beyond my friends
Where outsiders cannot go
Not in a month of sundays
Will any of us know