Enclaved knowledge: Indigent and indignant representations of environmental management and development among the Kalasha of Pakistan

It has been noted that a main problem faced is that actions taken are above people's heads, without asking the people: for example, when well-wishing foreigners create their own NGOs for the 'protection' of a country's people and valleys... These outsiders just involve a few people in their projects, so the rest of the people stay away. They just say: "There is an NGO at work, so why should we do anything for nothing?" Or when political groups or factions are involved in a project, they say: "We don't belong to that party, so why should we do it?" So the unity is gone... in this way, the people stop working together. (Saifullah Jan n.d)

Saifullah Jan is an indigenous activist and spokesman for four thousand non-Muslim Kalasha ('Kalash Kafirs') inhabiting three mountain valleys in the Chitral District of northern Pakistan. His statement opened a polemical speech to regional specialists attending a session on Developmental and Environmental Issues at the Third International Hindu Kush Cultural Conference, held at Chitral in August 1995. After criticizing several projects for needlessly interfering with Kalasha religious culture, Saifullah Jan targeted a range of related 'well-wishing' programmes aimed at local education in the Kalasha language on topical issues of hygiene, local medicine, indigenous tradition, and environmental understanding. His wry rejoinder was again: "We don't need to be told what we already know ourselves! We don't need to be shown pictures of what we can see every day! We need no more NGOs!"

The Kalasha have indeed suffered a surfeit of projects and programmes for their cultural protection or economic improvement, which have recently concentrated on issues of local environmental management.