In Bhutan, hunter-gatherer Oleps group banks on smoked fish tradition to sustain way of life

The Oleps, the last remaining hunter-gatherers living within Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park, take pride in their ancestry as Bhutan’s first inhabitants. With the kingdom’s modernisation in the 1960s, these nomadic hunters, once practicing slash-and-burn cultivation in the Jowo Durshing (Black Mountain) area, settled permanently in the Rukha Valley in the 1970s, in the southern part of Wangdue Phodrang district. They brought with them the tradition of Nya Dosem, a specially prepared smoked fish made from snowtrout (Schizothorax genus).

The Olep lifestyle is fading, with only 20 households remaining in Rukha and nearby Lawa-Lamga. They live near the mighty Black Mountain range within whose huge black boulders of primitive rocks, misty and verdant forest, they believe, are the fortresses of their protective deities. They share their home with charismatic species like the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), Gee’s golden langur (Trachypithecus geei), musk deer (Moschus moschiferus), snow leopards (Panthera uncia) and red pandas (Ailurus fulgens).

Despite regulations against fishing without a licence, the Harachhu Captured Fisheries Management Group, Bhutan’s first formalised fishery community mostly made up of Olep people, receives special government permits. According to Tashi Dorji, the group’s chairperson, the king of Bhutan encouraged the Oleps to settle and benefit from development projects. The fishing permit, which helps the Oleps adjust to settled life, is renewed...

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