BBC - Travel - Japan’s forgotten indigenous people
▻http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200519-japans-forgotten-indigenous-people
Forced into agriculture, they were no longer able to fish for salmon in their rivers and hunt deer on their land, Yoshida said. They were required to adopt Japanese names, speak the Japanese language and were slowly stripped of their culture and traditions, including their beloved bear ceremony. Due to the wide stigmatisation, many Ainu hid their ancestry. And the long-term effects are clear to see today, with much of the Ainu population remaining poor and politically disenfranchised, with much of their ancestral knowledge lost.
Among other nefarious practices, Japanese researchers ransacked Ainu graves from the late 19th Century to the 1960s, amassing huge collections of Ainu remains for their study and never returning the bones.