The petition
* Pygmy is a word used to classify populations of black people in which the average height of adult males is less than 5 feet.
* In the early 1900s, an article in the magazine Scientific American described Pygmies as "ape-like, elfish creatures." Another article in the same publication stated: "Even today, ape-like Negroes are found in the gloomy forests, who are doubtless direct descendants of these early types of man"
* A Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga was taken from the Belgian Congo in 1904 and displayed at St. Louis World's Fair in the anthropology exhibit as a "savage." He was later moved to the Bronx Zoo where he was exhibited in a cage with a parrot and an orangutan.
*The 'Pygmy' peoples are forest dwellers, and know the forest, its plants and its animals intimately. They live by hunting animals such as antelopes, pigs and monkeys, fishing, and gathering honey, wild yams, berries and other plants. For them, the forest is a kindly personal god, who provides for their needs.
*'Pygmy' peoples see their rain forest homes threatened by logging, and are driven out by settlers. In some places they have been evicted and their land has been designated as national parks. They are routinely deprived of their rights by governments, which do not see these forest-dwellers as equal citizens. In Cameroon, the life of the Bagyeli is being disrupted by a World Bank-sponsored oil pipeline which is to be built through their land. The Batwa of eastern DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have seen nearly all their forest destroyed, and barely survive as laborers and beggars.
Without our help, the pygmies will lose their homes, their land, and their culture. We must make every attempt to represent the pygmies in their governments in order to help protect their indigenous culture and way of life.
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