The hunter and the herdsman: not all nomads are the same

There are different kinds of settled people. Not all of us are urbanites. Small towns are settlements too, and so are farmers. Settlement is a huge category that underlies many different lifestyles.

The same is true for nomadism. The textbook Peoples on the Move, which I highly recommend, describes three distinct forms of nomadism. These are: pastoralists, hunter/gatherers and commercial nomads.

The pastoralists are probably the most iconic nomads. These are the herdsmen, their life centres on their livestock. Around the world the animal changes and the distances vary, from the reindeer in the Arctic, the desert's camels, and the llamas in the Andes.

But not all nomadic communities herd animals. Some follow huge wild herds as hunters. In North America for example, nobody bothered to domesticate the Bison, it made more sense to let them graze themselves. The problem at hand was knowing where, when and how to get what you needed from wild herds. The same is true for the caribou on the American side. I've tried to get more details on the differences between caribou and reindeer, remembering that there are more than one breed of each. What is certain is that caribou are larger and have never been domesticated. It's a bit of a chicken and the egg question though because the people groups in Northern Canada and Alaska are not pastoralists. They are traditionally nomadic but that doesn't make them herdsmen. There are some really interesting stories about different attempts to provide herds for these nomadic people, leaving so many well intentioned people flummoxed when it fails. The Soviets tried it too, assuming that if the Nenets thrived with huge herds that the Nganasan could too. But, the Nenets are pastoralists and the Nganasan are hunters. Not that people can't learn, it's just about as sensible for them as farming, they have to start from scratch in terms of knowledge of that way of life.

I've already talked about the misconception that nomadism is a less-evolved way of life. It's not. In a similar way it has been assumed that hunting is somehow less than herding. Also not true. Geography changes everything, so does culture. Sometimes the distinction between hunter and herdsmen is determined by the animal; nobody thinks herding whales would be much of an idea. But, sometimes it's more complicated than that and the distinction is formed by culture, by this I mean a whole system of knowledge and practice developed over generations. But, either way it's almost never a progression.

I once heard tell that some Canadian muskox were being brought to Siberia to see if the Evenki could domesticate and herd them. I never herd how that worked out but it's intriguing.

The third category of nomads are the commercial nomads. I'm written about them before here. Their lifestyle, though also mobile, is pretty different from both the herdsmen or the hunters.

I guess what I'm getting at is that any life change, going from nomadic to settled, or the other way in theory, is a difficult thing to attempt. But, so are the different kinds of nomadism, those too are not simple changes.

What are the big changes you're facing right now? It's ok if change is a struggle. It might be more significant than others think it is.

P.S. I'm still frustrated in my slow progress to understanding how nomadism works here in Indigenous contexts in Australia. There's not much in the way of domesticated herds. So, likely more like hunter/gatherers. But, I'm not naive enough to assume I know how it works!