Here I argue that negrito cultural resilience has much to do with how they
“play” with the broader world, alternately moving toward and away from it. There
are two strategies of adaptation: mobility, and exchange relationships with agricultural
populations. While mobility—the skill to disperse widely over land-extensive
territories—allows them to move away from threats and resist encapsulation, their
maintenance of ties with surrounding agricultural populations may lead to greater
dependency and exploitation. It is in the tension between these opposing dynamics
that, paradoxically, lies the key to their capacity for resilience.