Buzzing With Life
One of the most breathtaking experiences, Long says, was filming in the rain forests of Borneo.
"At dusk, the insects make so much noise that it's louder than standing on the street corner in Manhattan," he said. "You have this sense that there is so much life around you."
At one point the filmmakers went looking for proboscis monkeys, famous for their huge noses and potbellies. Traveling in two canoes tied together with a ladder that held the camera at treetop level, the crew was startled when a group of monkeys suddenly started jumping out of the trees, across the river. It's one of the most spectacular scenes in the film.
Between each segment on an indigenous culture is time-lapse footage of modern city life and speeding traffic.
"We wanted to juxtapose the images of modern cultures with the traditional cultures," Long said. "But this is not to make a statement that modern society is bad compared to traditional cultures. The pictures of modern culture are not necessarily ugly pictures."
Still, Long believes indigenous cultures are disappearing because modern society and industry are encroaching on them through pollution, urban expansion, and environmental degradation. At the same time, traditional cultures may also be drawn to modern society.
"We found this to be especially true with the younger people," Long said. "In some indigenous villages that we visited, there were only elders left. These older generations are sometimes the last people who will live a traditional way. This is a time in history when there are few traditional cultures left."
Going Extinct
To illustrate how fast indigenous cultures are disappearing, consider the rapid loss of languages. At least 2,500 of the world's 4,000 indigenous languages are in danger of immediate extinction.
"You can't sequester a tribal people in a zoo, but what you can do is change the way the world in general honors and respects the place of different cultural voices in the patrimony of humanity," Wade Davis, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and expert on struggling cultures, said in a recent interview.
"The best way to do this is through storytelling … to celebrate these cultural practices," Davis added. "Just to know [these cultures] is to be dazzled."
Long says indigenous cultures can teach modern society important lessons about belonging.
"Indigenous people talk about community, family, and a feeling of place," he said. "In modern life, you can have that feeling of community if you live in a place where you can actually walk to the places you need to go. Building communities that allow us to live our lives without getting into a car every time we leave our house is just one way that we can apply this [traditional] philosophy in a modern way."
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