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This page makes available
information about the Tasaday, a small group of former hunter-gatherers
who live in the rain forests of South Cotabato, in Mindanao, Philippines.
When first reports were made of these people in 1971, they were
living in rock shelters and had had very limited contact with outsiders.
Although many have claimed that the Tasaday are a hoax, noone who
has made the effort to live with the group and to interact with
them in their own language is in any doubt about their existence,
or of the veracity of the claims that they still maintain about
their past. The materials presented here document my efforts to
determine, as far as is possible from examining their language,
what their condition was prior to their first major contact with
outsiders. Included here are three papers that I have presented
at linguistics conferences, transcriptions and translations of audio
tapes that were made of the Tasaday shortly after their first contact,
a set of images of the Tasaday then and now, and a fairly comprehensive
bibliography of writings about them (still in preparation).
There are a number of other websites
that offer commentary on the Tasaday. Some of these sites have
accepted uncritically the hoax claims that have appeared in the
literature. Others have attempted to provide a neutral stance
on the issues involved. This is the only site that provides evidence
to support the claim for Tasaday authenticity. |
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