“Over 500 years ago, my tribe arrived on the shores of India from Africa,” says the social worker narrator of Asha Stuart’s Lost Tribe of Africa. His ancestors fled enslavement, escaping into the forest in the Indian state of Karnataka where they live today, most of them Hindu converts. India’s 35,000 descendants of slaves from Africa’s Bantu Region are members of the Siddi tribe. Siddi means “enlightened one,” but the Siddi are “Untouchables” in India’s caste system. “How do you empower the youth in a world whose people think they’re less than human?” asks the narrator, whose life mission is to do just that.
