[LUM#21] Kings Without a Forest
Part of the Baka people lives in the dense forest of southern Cameroon. Since the 1950s, forced resettlement and restrictions on access to the forest have gradually cut these communities off from their means of subsistence and the practices that define their identity, foremost among which is hunting.
They are the misnamed. Known by the pejorative term “Pygmies”—meaning “a cubit tall” in ancient Greek—this people lived, until the 1950s, in nomadic settlements deep within the equatorial forests spanning Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, and the Congo. In old engravings dating back to the colonial era, they are often depicted, spear in hand, facing an elephant almost as immense as they appear frail. “For the Bakas, elephant hunting was a rite of passage, a trial allowing young men to become Tūmā—that is, master hunters,” explains Laurence Boutinot, an anthropologist at the Forests and Societies Laboratory1.
In Cameroon, the Bakas’ way of life revolves around this hunting practice, as the researcher points out: “Hunting is a collective activity; it is part of a way of life, of socialization, and of passing down knowledge.” It is also a defining aspect of the Bakas’ identity, in contrast to their Bantu neighbors, with whom they have always maintained close and complex ties. “They are, in a way, the kings of the forest and the night, whereas the sedentary Bantu are more familiar with the daytime practices of agriculture.”
Silent Resistance
Today, these nomadic camps are more discreet, fewer in number, and set up in the forest for shorter periods. The rest of the year, the Bakas camp along trails near villages. “Victims of exclusion and racism, deprived of hunting and the forest, with limited access to education and the job market, the Bakas find themselves in a state of idleness. Some spend the little money they have on small bags of alcohol that motorcycle vendors sell them at low prices,” laments the anthropologist. To understand this tragic development, one must, as is often the case in Africa, go back to the colonial era.
As colonizers, missionaries, and administrators arrived on African soil and required large quantities of food, Westerners gradually granted themselves exclusive hunting rights in forested areas. “Since wildlife was also hunted for trophies—which were highly prized on international markets at the time—Westerners established rules that excluded indigenous peoples. From being subsistence hunters, the latter found themselves accused of poaching2 ” (Surveilling Without Punishing: A Common Ground of Resistance Through“Poaching” in Cameroonian Forests). This marked the beginning of the Bakas’ silent resistance; without expressing overt opposition, they never ceased going into the forest to hunt, thereby exposing themselves to repression (A Journey of Silent Resistance in the Forests of Cameroon).
Enclosure installation
At the same time, the colonial administration divided the territory into administrative units and recognized only the already sedentary Bantu village chiefs as having rights to the land. The Bakas’ nomadic lifestyle meant they were largely overlooked in this distribution. When, in the 1950s, the same administration required all indigenous people to settle down in order to collect taxes and requisition labor, “they found themselves landless, forced to settle along the roadsides. But even then, the clans continued to gather in the forest during the right season to hunt, under the radar of the authorities,” the researcher continues.
With decolonization, the Bakas did not regain free access to the forest. On the contrary, the creation of wildlife reserves and national parks for tourism, along with the expansion of forest management units for timber harvesting—historically owned by French companies—continues to increasingly restrict access to hunting grounds (The Rights of Local and Indigenous Peoples in Light of Forestry and Conservation Policies). “Today, the forest is fragmented and monopolized on all sides. Forests are being fenced off to exclude farmers and hunters from using these public resources. Community forests, which the law leaves under village management, are already degraded areas, stripped of their wildlife and even their valuable tree species; the caterpillars prized in the markets are no longer found there because the trees have been cut down.”
Three Villains3 rabbits
As for hunting, the increasingly complex regulations have not worked in the Bakas’ favor. While they are still permitted to use the traditional spear, the game that this weapon is intended for is no longer allowed. “This weapon is designed to kill large game, not rabbits or nutria, but large game is now protected by the IUCN, which doesn’t stop big-time poachers from doing their thing. ” Firearms are permitted, but only if one has a permit to carry a weapon—meaning identification papers —“which means money! It’s a whole process that excludes them, ” notes Laurence Boutinot.
With no land to farm and no access to the forest, the Bakas sometimes work in the fields for the Bantu in exchange for a few CFA francs—when they aren’t being exploited for free. “The most cynical part is that logging companies now hire them to patrol the forests from which they’ve been driven out and to report poachers, who are sometimes their own brothers.” The anthropologist recounts his arrival in the village of Mindourou during his last mission to Cameroon in 2018: “Next to the gendarmerie hut was a fenced-in area where a Baka man had been locked up for several months. He had been caught with three ‘naughty’ rabbits in his bag.”
UM podcasts are now available on your favorite platform (Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, etc.).
- The Bantu group comprises various ethnic groups, such as the Badjoué and Bayélé, who speak Bantu languages shared by many societies in Central Africa, including the Aka groups of the Central African Republic. The Bakas of Cameroon speak an Oubangian language. See Bahuchet, S., 1989, The Aka and Baka Pygmies. A Contribution of Ethnolinguistics to the History of the Forest Populations of Central Africa. Doctoral dissertation, René Descartes University, Paris V. ↩︎
- See P-A Roulet, 2004, *White Hunter, Black Heart? Sport Hunting in Central Africa*, doctoral dissertation in geography, University of Orléans, 563 pp. ↩︎
- From Gaston Couté’s song “Chanson de braconnier” in *La chanson d’un gâs qu’a mal tourné*, *Œuvres complètes*, Volume 1, Saint-Denis: Le Vent du Ch’min, 1976, p. 131, cited by Mayaux J-L, 2006, p. 25. ↩︎