THE FIGHT OF THEIR LIVES.

In a modern world trying to overrun them, indigenous people are rallying around their ancient ways

They've been around since the Ice Age, but their time may be running out. The world's indigenous tribes, who existed for centuries before other peoples took their lands or drew arbitrary borders across them, still number 300 million people in 70 countries spread across six continents. But they all face the same dilemma: how to preserve their ancient traditions and culture, while confronting the lure of the modern world. Here are reports on how two tribes from opposite corners of the earth--the Stone-Age Dani of Indonesia and the reindeer-herding Samis of northernmost Europe--are fighting for their survival.

INDONESIA'S MODERN STONE-AGE FAMILIES TRADITION LOSES OUT TO RELIGION AND POKEMON 

BY CALVIN SIMS

When the first Western explorers came to the lush Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya, Indonesia's most remote province, in the late 1930s, Mayok Mabel was just a young boy at play in the ancient farming village of Anemaugi.

Back then, his tribe, the Dani--the largest ethnic group in the valley--lived in thatched huts and bathed in the river. Men wore one piece of clothing, a gourd called a koteka, over their genitals. Women wore only grass skirts. Their tools were the stone ax, bow and arrow, and spear.

Six decades later, things haven't changed much. Dani women still do most of the work--tending the fields, raising the children, and watching over the tribe's most prized possession: pigs, a symbol of wealth. The men continue to practice polygamy, the custom of taking several wives. Mabel, who is now blind and retired as village chief, boasts that his clan lives as their ancestors did, in one of the world's last vestiges of the Stone Age.

But change is on the horizon. Tribal leaders and anthropologists say that a growing number of Dani young people are abandoning traditions for modern conveniences and Christianity. Mounting pressure from the Indonesian government and from missionaries is to blame, as well as foreign tourists and a recent influx of migrants from other parts of Indonesia. If the trend continues, within a generation Dani customs could truly become relics.

"Once the Dani convert to Christianity or go to school and become educated, most of them want nothing to do with the old ways," says Mince Rumbiak, an anthropologist at the University of Cenderawasih in Indonesia. "The Dani are being taught that these customs are sinful, or that they are uncivilized and an embarrassment."

Already, many Dani feel trapped between two Worlds. In the valley's capital, Wamena, where the Dani go to sell their pigs and vegetables, it is not uncommon to see tribesmen wearing the traditional koteka while listening to a Walkman and begging from visitors, who take their pictures for a few rupiah, less than a U.S. penny.

Although most Anemaugi villagers dress in traditional clothing, Mabel's toddler grandchildren run around the village wearing red-and-blue Pokemon outfits. Clad in a burgundy polo shirt khaki shorts, Mabel's 21-year-old grandson, Natalis, who may one day be chief, says he likes both traditional and modern clothing. But his friends say they can't remember the last time he donned a koteka, and on this recent day he looked more Abercrombie & Fitch.

Mabel's son, Jalee, 46, who recently succeeded Mabel as village chief, tries to have it both ways: "I'm a Christian, but I wear my koteka to church."

Some Anemaugi women say that while they prefer western clothing, they can't afford it. Other village women say it's more comfortable to go bare-breasted and wear fiber or grass skirts, which require little maintenance, especially for work in the fields.

ADDICTION TO TRADITION

But the government and missionaries have yet to wipe out the Dani culture. In the 1970s, the government failed in a military-style campaign to eradicate the koteka. The government has also built numerous schools, community health centers, and hospitals, and introduced new farming methods, but the valley remains mostly undeveloped.

Though the youngest generation is being drawn to the modern world, many Dani traditions remain strong. Tribe members still grease their hair and bodies with pig fat to style corn-rows and keep warm. "Who needs a coat when this pig grease has worked just fine for centuries?" Mabel asks.

Although it is outlawed by the government, many Dani women continue to follow an ancient ritual of amputating one or two joints of a finger when a relative dies, to placate the ancestral ghosts. Some women in Dani villages have only four stubs and a thumb on each hand. And after a child is born, Dani couples abstain from sex for as long as five years, allowing the woman to concentrate her efforts on raising the child, a practice That contributes to polygamy.

"These traditions are who we are," says Jalee, "and we plan to maintain them for as long as we can."

CALVIN SIMS is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, based in Jakarta.

EUROPE'S LAST TRIBE ON TOP OF THE WORLD

NORWAY FINALLY LISTENS AS SAMIS TAKE A STAND

BY WARREN HOGE 

Just try standing in northern Norway for several wintry seconds, let alone surviving for centuries. On a morning this past February, the temperature from a sun that just barely made it over the horizon was 40 degrees below zero, icy enough to start your nose bleeding, freeze your face, and suck any feeling from your feet. You have to keep moving and keep warm in the natural thermal underwear of reindeer hides.

The Samis have persevered through countless winters to become the last indigenous tribe in Europe, laying claim to the expanse across the continent's roof. They believe they were there before the Swedish, Finnish, or even Viking culture had developed, and that this land of reindeer, long classified by Norway as "ownerless" because of the Samis' nomadic ways, is rightfully theirs.

Now, a Norwegian law recognizes this ethnic minority. A new wood-and-steel tepee, called a lavvu, rises out of the snow as part of a larger building in Karasjok, Norway, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It houses the Sami Parliament, which Norway has set up in support of the Samis' right to cultural protection.

"When Norway built this building," says Johann Mikkal Sara, a Parliament member, "they accepted the Samis as people, and that's supremely important to us."

So far, the assembly's power is limited to Counseling the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo on important Sami issues, like education, conservation, farming, and reindeer herding, the profession that still occupies 10 percent of Samis. But the Samis can now raise their voices to be heard by the people who live below.

HOLDING THEIR TONGUE

Long known as Lapps, a term they now disdain as colonial, the Samis number about: 80,000, with more than half in Norway and the rest in Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Norway; has made efforts, some well-intentioned, to assimilate them into its culture.

Physically, it's easy for Samis to blend in. Their skin color and facial features don't stand out from Norwegians'. What defines and sustains their culture most is the Sami language, related to Finnish and Estonian. An, official policy of assimilation that gained force in the 19th century even went so far as to make it illegal to speak that language.

Over the years, many Samis did join mainstream Norway. "In some ways, our looks and appearances were a curse for us, because they enabled Samis to stay hidden," says Tove Anti, a staff officer with the Sami Parliament. "If we looked different, it would have been easier for us to win back the people we lost through assimilation. It would have been easier to band together."

But Samis, peaceful by nature, didn't take a stand against the government until 1979. Then, a youth movement opposed a Norwegian dam project that would have flooded a Sami town and hurt prime reindeer areas. For three years, in a major assertion of cultural identity, Samis picketed the site and the national Parliament.

It made a difference. A 1984 commission concluded that the Samis were "a people, with a people's special history, language, culture, and visions of the future." It recommended a Sami Parliament be created, saying, "The state of Norway was formed on the territory of not one, but two peoples: Norwegians and Samis."

FINDING THEIR VOICE

Now the assembly is a model for Sami autonomy within the Norwegian state. Despite the advances, though, the issue of who owns the land, the Samis or Norway, remains unresolved. It's a fight that continues, but for now the Samis are enjoying a cultural revival. There are Sami book publishers, newspapers, radio stations, television channels, and recordings of yoiks--poetic chants that Samis associate with healing and travel to spiritual realms.

"People come up to me and take my hand and say, `Thank you for what you have done,'" says Ole Henrik Magga, the Sami Parliament's first President. "It has to do with a deep-rooted negative thing that governed them for so long, and made them unable to stand up and say, `I am a Sami.'"

The Tribes have Spoken

Some 300 million indigenous people, belonging to more than 5,000 distinct cultural groups, live in 70 countries around the world. Here's a look at just a few of those tribes.

About 250,000 strong, the NAVAJO are the largest of 558 federally recognized Native American tribes. Living mostly in Arizona, they, like many tribes, suffer from high rates of poverty and alcohol abuse.

One million TUAREG, traditionally camel and goat herders, live in the western Sahara desert. Droughts have forced many to settle in villages.

Just 8,500 YANOMAMI still live in the rain forest along the Brazil-Venezuela border. Their culture--part farming, part hunting-gathering--remained untouched until the early 1990s, when a gold rush brought prospectors and disease.

Some 250,000 MASAI, mainly warriors and cattle herders, live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania.

About 257,000 ABORIGINES, Australia's native inhabitants, remain, but suffer from discrimination, poor health, and the slow death of their culture.

The Fight of Their Lives

FOCUS: The Modern World Closes in on 300 Million Indigenous People in 70 Nations

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the struggles indigenous people face as they try to maintain their cultures and languages amid the encroachments of the modern world.

Discussion Questions:

Do governments or religions groups have an obligation to bring people like the Dani into the modern world?

* How do different generations of Dani react differently to the clash of traditional and modern cultures?

* Suppose you were a United Nations official in charge of planning a celebration of indigenous people. What would be an appropriate way to bring public recognition to the needs of indigenous people?

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Note: The UN has proclaimed 1995 to 2004 as the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People.

Cooperative Learning/Role-play: After students finish reading both articles, assign them to draft their own "Convention on the Rights of Indigenous People." Ask them to review the questions below and discuss the pros and cons of incorporating rights addressed there into a Declaration Of the Rights of Indigenous People.

* Education: Should indigenous people be required to attend schools administered by the dominant group in the country?

* Language: Should people like the Dani and Samis be required to learn and use the national language of their countries? What accommodation, if any, should governments make to recognize the languages of indigenous people?

* Land: Should governments compensate indigenous people for lands that may have been taken from their ancestors in the past? What rights should indigenous people have to land their ancestors have lived on for centuries? Some American Indian tribes have been granted lands that were once taken from their ancestors. Is this a good model for people like the Dani and Samis?

* Law: How should government react when indigenous people's customs, such as hunting endangered species or, in the case of the Dani, amputating women's fingers, violate the law? Should indigenous people be allowed to govern themselves under their own laws?

For more information on indigenous people, see an Upfront Online Special Report at nytimes.com/upfront.

WARREN HOGE is the London bureau chief of The New York Times.