Helms, Mary W. *Asnag: Adaptations to Culture Change in a
Miskito Community in Eastern Nicaragua* University Presses of
Florida, 1970.
Helms, Mary W. "Matrilocality and Maintenance of Ethnic Identity:
The Miskito Indians of Eastern Nicaragua and Honduras," *Proceed-
ings of the 38th International Congress of Americanists, Munich, 1
968*, vol. 2, pp. 459-464. 1970
Helms is an anthropologist who has thoroughly researched Miskito
history and the effects of economic and political change on their
culture. A *hot* current topic is the plight of the Shiites in
southern Iraq. They are also known as the Marsh Arabs. What is not
generally known is that Iraq spent billions in the 1950s and 1960s
on an elaborate irrigation scheme on the lower Euphrates River that
was a disaster. The engineers neglected to put in canals to drain
excess water from the fields, leaving vast deposits of salts after
the water evaporated and making the land useless for agriculture.
With the current political repression, due to the suspicion that
these Shiites are loyal to Iran, you would have an interesting
"ethnicity problem." I can give you two references of the Marsh
Arabs:
Thesiger, Wilfred. *Marsh Arabs* Penguin reprint, 1983.
Fernea, Robert A. *Shaykh and Effendi: Changing Patterns
of Authority Among the El Shabana of Southern Iraq* Harvard
Univ. Press, 1970.
Grosvenor Pollard
via Elizabeth B. Pollard
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