Rising in the Forest: A Documentary on Hunter-Gatherer Childhood

Описание: How do hunter-gatherer children learn to survive in the rainforest?

In this short film, I document the daily lives of BaYaka hunter-gatherer toddlers and children in the Congo rainforest, exploring how they acquire complex foraging skills through imitation, practice, and play.

I have worked with the BaYaka community for over a decade as an evolutionary anthropologist, and for this participatory filmmaking project, I teamed up with my friend, social anthropologist and trained photojournalist Selcen Küçüküstel. Together, we guided willing BaYaka children in using video cameras to capture their own perspectives on daily life.

The film is a compilation of footage from both the children’s and our cameras, highlighting the children's activities during the February fishing season—a time when the community moves deeper into the rainforest to set up riverside camps for dam fishing. It also includes past footage of the same children across different seasons, showing their skill progression in foraging activities like caterpillar collection and yam digging.

Through this film, I hope to showcase the remarkable autonomy of BaYaka children and the way childcare, learning, and play intertwine in a contemporary hunter-gatherer community. It’s especially relevant for those interested in education, child development, anthropology, and alternative child-rearing practices. It also opens discussions on participatory documentation techniques and the importance of capturing childhood through the children's own eyes.

Camera: Gül Deniz Salalı & Selcen Küçüküstel
Script: Gül Deniz Salalı
Editing: Aslı Ertürk

📚 Read our research papers on hunter-gatherer childhoods:

Patterns of physical activity in hunter-gatherer children compared with US and UK children:
https://rdcu.be/ebwNf

BaYaka children’s learning:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159...

BaYaka parenting:
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024...

BaYaka children's close proximity networks:
https://bit.ly/3TgJayW

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#BaYaka #HunterGatherers #ChildDevelopment #Foraging #CongoBasin #Anthropology #EthnographicFilm