Is all so rosy with the Petra Bedouin?
This is what I asked myself and found some answers at the Cultural Survival website.
The 2010 article by Steven Simms, Professor of Anthropology at Utah State University, and archaeologist Deborah Kooring sheds a little light on the true situation for the Bedul bedouin of Petra.
These two experts consider the Bedul bedouin's fate to be "uncertain". In 1923, Bedul Sheikhs agreed to government trusteeship of the land at Petra, in order to secure a traditional claim to "occupation and use".
Conflict with a rival tribe, the Liyathanah bedouin has been a source of distress for the Bedul who suffer from diminished ethnic status. The Liyathanah settled in a neighbouring town and by a twist of fate were able to benefit from extraordinary tourism growth and construction in the area. As a consequence they dominate the high end of the tourism industry at Petra.
Another source of problems for the Bedul was the relocation to the bedouin village "Umm Siehoun". Simms and Kooring describe this event as a "mixed blessing" as there was certainly better access established to health care and education, but distance was created from farming lands and the tourism economy. Many bedouin refused to leave the caves of Petra and were pressured to move in the late eighties. The new road from the village to Petra has improved things, but has had a significant impact in the site itself.
There is an increasing reliance by Bedul on the tourist trade, as pressure on pastoral lands adversely affects goat keeping and farming.
According to Simms and Kooring, most Bedul "desire to have some kind of participation in future tourism developments, but not if pursued at all costs", for example relinquishing tribal lands and herding.
Unfortunately, the interests of the Bedul in management and planning schemes have the hollow ring of empty rhetoric. They are under-represented at planning meetings and workshops, in spite of their increasing expertise in a number of business and academic areas.
The possibility of another move looms with plans to turn Umm Siehan into a tourist village. Simms and Kooring believe that the impact of this on Bedul has not been clearly envisaged or prepared for.
They state, "It is the Bedul - let it be remembered - who hold traditional rights to the area. Yet, their presence was in the past and is now seen as inconsistent with both conservation and tourism. Once they are conceived as an obstacle to development, their fate is tenuous no matter how sympathetic the rhetoric. After all, another relocation of the Bedul which will have to be considerable in distance, considering the planned extent of the National Park, shows little sympathy for traditional organization of Bedul society, and less knowledge about it."
Simms and Kooring propose a model for the Bedul bedouin based on models of parks that have planned their tourism economy based on indigenous rights, and cite various example including Native American lands in the United States.
Their nine point plan for addressing the Bedul bedouin situation can be perused here.
