To The Student Anthropologists Who Seeks To Understand Subsistence Strategies

To the student anthropologists who seeks to understand subsistence strategies of the modern world. Welcome, to the Aeta Negrito tribe as your journey awaits the adventure of the cultural understanding of my people.

The Aeta Negrito community is a nomadic tribe in the mountains of the Philippines, located in Region 6 of the Panay Island. My nomadic people are the most skilled hunting and gathering tribe that has been following its traditional way of life for many years. The Aeta Negrito tribe has sustained survival within forest regions through subsistence behaviors. Subsistence behaviors are patterns in which a culture can sustain survival through "cultivation methods" (Kottak, 2006 p. 158-161). The Aeta's are foragers that gather in small family "bands which are groups of fewer than a hundred people, all related by kinship or marriage" (Kottak, 2006 p. 155) with an informal organization of leadership.

The Aeta's could be described as mountainous people that are dark skinned, short, small in frame, and have big black eyes. Their traditional clothing is very simple. The young women wear skirts that wrap around their waist. An elder woman wears a "bark cloth" strip which passes between the legs; and is attached with a string around their waist. While elder men wear "loincloths" tied to their waist. The Aeta tribe practices body art that consist of "Scarification" (National Geographic, 2004 para. 9) which is a method of permanently scaring the skin to create a visual art. They wound their skins on their backs, arms, legs, hands, calves, abdomen, and then irritating the wounds with fire to create a visible scar. The Aeta's are skillful in arts and crafts particularly in body art to decorate themselves with body ornaments typical of people living in subsistence "economies" (Kottak, 2006 p. 162). Their ornaments are handmade such as girdles, necklaces and neckbands of