Opinion: Time to ditch the harmful myth of the ’noble’ hunter-gatherer

Instead of fetishising them, we should be listening to how environmental destruction is acutely damaging the lives of hunter-gatherer communities, writes Dr Alice Rudge (UCL Institute for Advanced Studies). A boatload of tourists arrives at the homes of Batek hunter-gatherers in Malaysia. At the request of the non-Batek tour guides, Batek people hurriedly hide their televisions, radios and mobile phones. "Tourists don't like to see these," they explain. As an anthropologist who has conducted field research with Batek people for many years, I have become familiar with these common expectations placed on hunter-gatherers. It's difficult to say exactly how many hunter-gatherers there are in the world. There is a general lack of demographic data, and the boundary between who is and isn't considered a hunter-gatherer isn't always neat.