Kings of the Forest: The Cultural Resilience of Himalayan Hunter-Gatherers
Author: Jana Fortier
Category: Nepal   
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About  .

The Book

“Jana Fortier has made an important and original contribution to the ethnography of Nepal that focuses our attention on one of that country’s least known ethnic groups, the foraging people known as the Raute; indeed, her book is one of only a small handful of monographic-length treatments of foraging peoples in South Asia since Seligmann’s work on the Veddahs of Sri Lanka. In exploring the way the nomadic Raute have managed to resist the pressure of the wider world around them to settle down and to heed the seduc-tive overtures of ‘development,’ Fortier makes a compelling case for respecting the auton-omy of foraging people and learning from a vanishing way of life. This is an exemplary work of scholarship based on meticulous and difficult fieldwork. Fortier’s prose is lucid, engaging and accessible, and this book will be an ideal text for undergraduate classes.”
—ARJUN GUNERATNE, Macalester College
“A beautifully crafted description and analysis of one of the few societies in the world still living by nomadic hunting and gathering supplemented by trade. This book can be read at many levels: as a very readable description of a fascinating and exotic society in a part of the world that is little known to Westerners; as a thorough, balanced anthropological study of one of the world’s last functioning hunting and gathering societies; and as a plea for the right of indigenous minorities to maintain their preferred ways of life in the face of the powerful homogenizing forces of development and globalization.”
—KIRK ENDICOTT, Dartmouth College

“Dr. Fortier has done an excellent job of combining insightful ethnographic analysis with personal experiences in her study of one of the world’s last nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Her work is all the more impressive for having been conducted under such difficult field conditions. ἀis pioneering study will likely never be surpassed as long as the Raute tribe keep to their nomadic lifestyle.”
—JOHAN REINHARD, Explorer-in-Residence National Geographic Society


JANA FORTIER has been a lecturer at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and a
cultural resource management consultant since 2005. She was a tenured associate professor of
anthropology at Southwest Minnesota State University from 1996–2004.

Cover photos: Elder Man Bahadur Raute served as a spokesperson to outsiders for three decades. He is shown here against a backdrop of the Challekhola River Valley in western Jajarkot District, Nepal.
Cover design: Julie Matsuo-Chun