Peaceful Societies

At a public meeting last Wednesday in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh, state legislators alleged that the Yanadi suffer from abject poverty due, in part, to the negligence of government officials.

Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), the lower house of the state legislature, and members of the Legislative Council, the upper house, criticized the agency of the district government charged with administering rural areas of Nellore. The legislators argued that the agency, called the Zilla Parishad, had failed to improve Yanadi health and welfare.

The legislators, according to a news report last week, were especially critical of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (IDTA) and its Project Officer, K. Ramesh, who had not adequately informed the representatives about agency activities and had not generated proper publicity about its welfare programs.

The Nellore District IDTA is responsible for three additional districts in addition to Nellore. Out of the 550,000 tribal people who live in the four districts, 379,000 are Yanadis.

Beeda Masan Rao, a Member of the Legislative Assembly, indicated he resented the ITDA Project Officer not inviting legislators and other appropriate officials to meetings. He argued that better communication might allow legislators to alert administrators about local problems, and he blamed underdevelopment on the official negligence.

Representatives to the Zilla Parishad complained that tribal students lack adequate classrooms, kitchens, and toilets in the schools run by the district. Some schools are quite dilapidated and need to be replaced.

The chairman of the Zilla Parishad, Kakani Goverdhan Reddy, responding to the complaints, directed the Project Officer of the ITDA to invite legislators in the future to government body meetings and to provide adequate information to them ahead of time. The news story does not indicate if anyone is going to investigate the inadequate schools, much less other causes of their poverty.

Not only are the Mbuti threatened by roving bands of armed men, as described in recent news reports, but the people who remain in the Ituri Forest are destroying the fauna on which they subsist. A feature story from the Associated Press on Saturday describes the way populations of numerous mammals, primarily forest antelopes such as duikers, are being decimated by the Mbuti when they hunt for meat to sell to Bantu traders.

An AP reporter, Todd Pitman, visited the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in March 2010 to get a sense of the devastating effects of the bushmeat trade. He points out that Africans such as the Mbuti have consumed wild animals—bushmeat—for millennia, but commercial exploitation and over-harvesting is more recent, and totally unsustainable. Antelopes and monkeys amounting to over 1 million metric tons are taken annually in the Congo River basin alone, according to the World Wildlife Fund. As a result, the forests are becoming devoid of animals. Some species have lost 90 percent of their numbers, forcing hunters at times to eat their hunting dogs to survive.

The bushmeat trade has penetrated one of Africa’s foremost nature preserves. When the Okapi Wildlife Reserve was created in 1992 in the forests around the village of Epulu, the nomadic, forest-dwelling Mbuti—and their neighboring Bantu villagers—were allowed to stay and keep hunting non-endangered animals. Epulu was founded in 1928 by the American ethnographer Patrick Putnam, who later married the American artist Anne Eisner. The area became famous in 1961 when the book The Forest People about the Mbuti, by the visiting American anthropologist Colin Turnbull, became a worldwide best seller. Turnbull eloquently described Mbuti hunting practices, and their peaceful lifestyle, in his writings.

The AP reporter participated in a net hunting expedition in the forest. He accompanied Zaire Njikali, an elderly Mbuti man, and other hunters while they waited for the women of the band to drive animals into their outstretched nets—as they have been doing for countless generations. He doesn’t say if he waited long enough to actually see the hunters killing the animals, but he does write that, on a successful day, they might harvest up to 15 forest antelopes.

The band the author visited included 20 Mbuti couples and their children, but, unfortunately, it also included 14 Bantu traders, the new element in the bushmeat equation. In the past, the hunters might have sold half the meat they took in the forest, but now they sell almost all of it, saving only choice parts for their own consumption. The hunting is now a commercial business, not a subsistence activity.

The Wildlife Conservation Society conducted surveys of the animals in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in 1995 and again in 2006, and it found that the numbers of all three species of duikers had dropped significantly. Yellow-backed duikers had dropped 59 percent, red duikers 42 percent, and blue duikers 26 percent. The primary reason for the radical increase in the bushmeat trade has been the rebuilding of a dirt road across Congo, which goes right through the Epulu area.

Due to the incessant wars in the country, the road had become nearly impassible, even for truck traffic. But the Chinese rebuilt it a couple years ago. Instead of a couple vehicles per month getting through, truck traffic has increased to over 1,000 per month. Bushmeat traders now have easy access to the Ituri Forest. Conrad Aveling, a British environmental consultant with long-term experience in the country, says that “the forest just doesn’t produce enough to meet the demand.” He adds that, by devastating their food supply for monetary profits, the Mbuti “are sawing off the branch on which they’re sitting.”

Terese Hart, who along with her husband John Hart, helped the Congolese people establish the Okapi Reserve and fostered the scientific work that has distinguished the facility, also weighed in about the over harvesting of bushmeat by the Mbuti: “They’re overexploiting the forest in a way that’s making their own way of living impossible.”

The bushmeat trade is giving the Mbuti access to the benefits of modern civilization: wine, trinkets, watches, radios, used clothing, and all the rest of it. A trader buys a blue duiker from an Mbuti hunter for the equivalent of $5.00 and resells it outside the reserve for three times that. He then has enough money, from his profits, to feed his family and perhaps provide an education for his kids. Everyone benefits—until the animals are gone, of course.

The author points out that the forest, and the lives of its inhabitants, are changing rapidly. Areas that used to have abundant forest vegetation to the east of Epulu are now bare of trees and of wildlife. John Hart told Pitman that the Mbuti have been forced into marginalized conditions as day laborers on the edges of towns.

Mr. Pitman, wanting a discussion of the changes invading the lives of the Mbuti, does not get it from Mr. Njikali, the Mbuti hunter. “The forest will always be there,” he tells the author. “For the forest to disappear, for the animals to disappear, the world would have to end first.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Pitman felt compelled to use some overwrought prose in an otherwise quite interesting article: “The Pygmies living here have never heard of Barack Obama or the Internet or the war in Afghanistan. But the future is coming, on a tidal wave of demand for game meat that’s pushing an army of tall Bantu traders ever deeper into Africa’s primordial vine-slung jungles.”

The AP story includes a slide show with 15 photos of the Mbuti and the environs of Epulu.

Societies with Western roots—the Hutterites, Amish and Tristan Islanders—tend to use corporal punishment on their children more than other peaceful societies, which are often much more permissive. However, some Hutterites are changing their approaches to child rearing, according to a recent journal article by Suzanne R. Smith and Bron Ingoldsby.

The authors describe the traditional, punishment-based, strategies which were laid down by a Hutterite leader of the mid-sixteenth century, Peter Riedemann. Riedemann wrote that children must be taught obedience, not ideas. Children are considered to be self-centered and weak—they must have constant discipline in order to overcome their selfish tendencies. Though corporal punishment has never been the sole, or even the primary, instrument of raising children in Hutterite society, young people have traditionally been required to conquer their selfish wants and to obey God, parents, and authority figures.

The Hutterites are a communal society, but they allow infants and toddlers to be cared for by their parents. In the traditional Hutterite home, discipline is firm, though loving. It is essential for parents to break their children’s wills. While Hutterites believe that children are born sinful, they feel they can be saved by being submissive to God. Corporal punishment may be frequent in some traditional homes.

Smith and Ingoldsby emphasize the Hutterite belief that it is much more important to teach children to behave correctly than it is for them to learn to think effectively. Children are not taught to grow intellectually or morally, and self-discipline is not important to them. It is not up to the child to figure out right from wrong. They must accept the given truths, without question.

Those beliefs, instructed in the homes, are also taught in the schools. Children start going to kindergarten at age three, which they attend all day, six days of the week, except during the summer. They are cared for in the kindergartens by several women of the colony, who continue to enforce control and discipline. Young children learn to be respectful and obedient while they eat, nap, sing, and memorize lessons together. They grow up identifying with their age groups.

Between ages six and fifteen, they attend the English school on the colony grounds, where they learn the English language and other subjects in a curriculum that provincial or state officials and the colony have approved. Children also attend classes in the German school at the colony each day, where they study the German language plus their own society and culture.

The authors base their impressions of Hutterite child raising—and the way it is gradually changing—on their decades of participant observations in numerous colonies. While corporal punishment is still common, it is being used less and less, particularly by younger parents. Parents may slap a child on the bottom with an open hand, a small strap, or a wooden switch. While children will cry when punished, they may wink at one another to communicate that it doesn’t really hurt all that much.

Use of the strap is particularly threatening, and Hutterite children are aware that certain types of behaviors, such as showing disrespect to adults, will inevitably result in a strapping. As a result, the authors claim, the strap is always a threat—a symbol of authority. While parents and teachers have the right to physically discipline children, older siblings, who often care for them, do not.

The authors argue that strapping, though often talked about, is really rare among the Hutterites. Spanking is more common, but probably no more so than outside the colonies. Hutterite adults are discriminating: they judge the appropriateness of different forms of discipline depending on the child. One mother told the authors that she has to spank her oldest child—nothing else seems to work—but she just sits down and talks with her youngest, since spanking would be too devastating for him.

Smith, who had the easier access to the women in the colonies she visited, frequently asked mothers how their discipline practices have been changing in recent decades. Most would admit that, while they themselves experienced frequent physical punishment as children, things are different today. Spanking is becoming rare. “We are much more creative in our discipline today,” one woman told the author (p.292). Another woman, a grandmother, also admitted that things were changing. “My daughter will try many things with her kids before strapping or spanking them, and just having the threat of the strap seems to be enough for these kids today (p.292).”

The change is usually related to the age of the parents—younger ones are much less inclined to use corporal punishment. Influenced by their own schooling and the trends in the broader society, they feel that there are more effective ways of raising kids. One young woman, a substitute teacher, told the authors that she would never strike a child—“we have kinder ways now (p.293).”

While the Hutterite parents still accept the basic beliefs of their society about raising children to be subject to the will of God, the methods they practice are clearly changing. Parents are much more likely to spoil their infants and toddlers than they would have done several decades ago. Overall, while people still trust the wisdom of the colony to make decisions about raising their children, individual parents may sometimes undermine community control by giving them more freedom than the colony itself might allow.

Hutterite parents are increasingly trying to strike a balance between fostering too permissive and too authoritarian an environment. Without question, the authors maintain, parents still are very generous and genuine in their love for their children, as they have always been. It is the need for physical discipline that seems to be diminishing.

Smith, Suzanne R. and Bron Ingoldsby. 2009. “The Role of Discipline in Hutterite Child Rearing.” Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal 37: 284-297

The Peaceful Societies website entered the social world of Facebook on May 27th. Recent visitors to this website may have noticed the Facebook logo and a link to the new “Fan Page.” Each week, the Facebook Peaceful Societies page will carry links to news and reviews as soon as they are posted here in this website.

Other news and information relating to the concept of building peacefulness in contemporary communities is also being covered in Facebook. Members of Facebook can indicate that they “like” the new page and receive notices whenever anything new is posted there.

The fundamental beliefs, social structures, psychological constructs, and daily habits of peaceful societies of course vary. Religious backgrounds, histories, and environmental conditions differ from one community to the next. But each in its own way demonstrates that peacefulness is an attainable goal.

Many argue that peace can only be achieved through coercion, force, and violence. The examples of the peaceful societies, both the ones portrayed in this website and others around the world, suggest the opposite: that the best way to build social harmony is through quiet, gentle means. The development of more peaceful societies, particularly in major nation states, will not happen overnight, but all of us can be inspired by the examples of peoples who have already learned how to live more or less without violence.

The purpose of this website since December 2004 has been to review the scholarship, and follow the news, about a selection of societies that scholars have suggested are, or were until recently, nonviolent. More broadly, the website has also covered research about conditions that foster peacefulness. While the website will retain its serious, scholarly orientation, our presence on Facebook should broaden the discussion.

The Facebook page allows—encourages, in fact—posts and ideas from others. Links to news, reviews, and miscellaneous information about building peaceful societies from whatever sources are welcome. Discussions about building peaceful communities are important, as long as they are respectful of the opinions of others.

Conversations about international issues, contentious events, or broader peace issues, important as they certainly are, should be confined to blogs and websites that focus on them. The Peace and Justice Studies Association fan page in Facebook is an excellent place for discussions about those broader issues. Hopefully, fans of the new Peaceful Societies page in Facebook will inspire others to build more harmonious communities and societies.

Governor Andrew Gurr of St. Helena announced last week that Conrad Glass, police officer on Tristan da Cunha for 21 years, has been named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Mr. Gurr, the Governor of both St. Helena and Tristan, made the announcement at a celebration for the Queen’s Birthday, held at the Governor’s mansion on St. Helena. Mr. Glass has also been Chief Islander on Tristan from 2007 through 2010.

Conrad Glass According to a story in the Tristan Times, Mr. Glass provided many years of “loyal and dedicated service to the Tristanian community” as policeman, politician, and sometimes as Acting Administrator. Juanita Brock, author of the press report, indicates that he is well known, not just for his effective way of carrying out his duties, but also for “his ability to resolve issues in a fair and consistent manner.” His work has earned him the respect of his fellow citizens.

An article about him in The Guardian back in January gave a more detailed portrait of his abilities. It described the ways he quietly resolves problems and helps maintain the normal peacefulness among the Tristan Islanders. It sounds as if he richly deserves the recent British honor.

A faith healer who has gained a significant following in East Africa over the past 20 years won an important court victory last week in Sumbawanga, the major city of the Rukwa Region of Tanzania. Roman Catholic evangelization in the Rukwa Region and the surrounding areas of southwestern Tanzania have had a major impact on the Fipa people of the area for over a hundred years, according to a book by Smyth published four years ago.

Although the church is a significant force in Fipa society, Smythe argues that the people are well known for retaining some of their traditional beliefs as well. It is not surprising that the diocese in Sumbawanga has been leading the fight against a cult and its leader that the church has officially banned and excommunicated.

Father Felician Nkwera The story goes back to a young priest named Felician Venant Nkwera, who came from the Iringa Region of southwestern Tanzania, near Lake Malawi, south of the traditional Fipa territory. Born in 1936, he entered the priesthood in 1968 in a southern town, but was soon assigned to Madunda Parish, in northern Tanzania. He baptized a sick infant, who had almost been pronounced dead, and when he poured water on the infant, the child miraculously seemed to be restored to full health.

The young priest reported the incident to his superior, but it was passed off as a minor work of God. The healing continued through his hands. In May 1969, Fr. Nkwera started openly praying for spiritual healing and performing acts of exorcism. His reputation quickly spread, and he opened what he calls the Marian Faith Healing Centre, which is attended by people known as “Wanamaombi,” or people who pray. Fr. Nkwera credits the healing to his visions of Mother Mary.

An unnamed individual from Uganda (unnamed because the group has been banned, so anyone who participated in their rituals would risk being excommunicated) attended one of the services and described the proceedings. “This celebration, like any other ‘liturgical’ observance, at this already marvelous centre, left an indelible memory in my mind. Co-celebrated by three priests, two hailing from Uganda, while the other was from Kenya, it was a ‘fervent mass’ whose … elaborate ‘liturgical’ particulars and willfully active participation of the congregation are still very vivid.”

The story, oddly enough, appeared in a Catholic Church magazine, published in Uganda in February 2009. The editors of the magazine inserted quotation marks around every phrase by the anonymous author that the church would take issue with.

The author’s description of the religious service continued, “The choir intoned Christmas and Marian hymns, some of which were common English tunes I know. But, in Kiswahili, I was left mesmerized and lost in utter awe. Everybody, child and adult alike, seemed to know the reason why he or she had gone to the centre.”

He stayed at the Marian Faith Healing Centre for two weeks, observing people attending, praying, expressing their devotion, reciting the rosary, and participating in masses. The center holds monthly vigil masses, and “water services,” during which Fr. Nkwera blesses water which is sprinkled on all who have come for healing. Nkwera argues that the water has the same purposes as the healing waters used at Lourdes, in France. The faithful come from other countries in Africa, such as Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Sudan, as well as from outside Africa.

The church hierarchy reacted in February 1990 by ordering Fr. Nkwera to immediately stop performing his functions as a priest and to return to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. They then decided to ban his activities completely, accusing him of placing Mary above God. The church also objected to contests with the Devil that occurred during his services, when people would shout out, from a trance, “we hate you”—meaning the devils around them.

The story does not end with the excommunication of the priest, however. The church, and the Wanamaombi, took their disagreement into the courts. According to church officials, the defrocked priest and his followers persisted in going into churches and shouting their devotions, disturbing and interfering with the masses. The dissidents insisted that they had the right to enter and worship as they wished, and denied that they had disturbed the worshipers.

In May 2003, the Resident Magistrate Court in Rukwa agreed with the church hierarchy, that the excommunication had been fair and proper. It directed each side of the dispute to worship in different buildings and to follow whatever procedures they wished on their separate premises. Fr. Nkwera and his group appealed the decision to the High Court of Tanzania, but that body dismissed the appeal because an overly long period of time had elapsed.

The Marian group decided to appeal that decision to the Court of Appeals, which ruled last week in its favor. The three judges on the Court of Appeals, January Msoffe, Nathalia Kimaro and Bernard Luanda, ruled that the High Court had erred in deciding that too much time had elapsed in filing the original appeal. That appeal had been legitimately delayed, it said, not due to any fault of the appellants. Fr. Nkwera and his followers were free to continue their appeals of the original Sumbawanga Court decision against them.

When the court deputy registrar read out the decision in the courtroom, Father Nkwera led about 20 followers in an immediate, impromptu prayer session right then and there. A photographer captured the moment. It is not clear from the news stories on the controversy how many Fipa themselves are actively involved in the breakaway group, or whether the church diocese in Sumbawanga just happens to be the focus of church opposition to the movement. Along with recent stories about witchcraft practices and traditional healing among the Fipa, this saga about spiritual healing provides another glimpse into their current religious beliefs.

The Chief Minister of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, traveled to Leh on Saturday to open the annual Sindhu Darshan festival, which celebrates the peaceful, multi-cultural identity of Ladakh and modern India. The three-day annual festival, held at the time of the full moon in June, was first organized in 1997.

Sindhu is the Indian name for one of Asia’s longer rivers, known by the rest of the world as the Indus. It has its origin in the Chang Tang region of southwestern Tibet, and flows to the northwest into Ladakh. It continues to the northwest past the Line of Control into Pakistan, where it ultimately turns south and flows into the Arabian Sea.

Darshan is a Sanskrit word for “sight,” but it has larger connotations. The word often suggests visions of the divine, glimpses of a holy person, or, the reverse, being viewed, being visited, or receiving a blessing from a holy person or divinity—an event called a darshana. In other words, “darshan” suggests both perceiving, and being perceived by, holiness or divinity. Sindhu Darshan thus implies being in the presence of the holy river Indus, and giving and receiving blessing from the water.

The Sindhu Darshan festival, held in Ladakh and timed, of course, to coincide with the tourist season, celebrates the Indus River as a symbol of communal harmony in India. Participants from all over the country bring pottery vessels containing water from rivers in their own states. The opening ceremonies are held on the banks of the Indus at Shey, near the Ladakhi capital of Leh. During the ceremonies, everyone mixes their waters into the river, symbolizing the human mingling and the multi-dimensional harmony of the nation.

The reception ceremony is managed each year by a consortium of all the major religious organizations in Ladakh: the Ladakh Buddhist Association, the Shia Mailis, the Sunni Anjuman, the Moravian church, the Hindu Trust, and the Sikh Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee. Then, 50 Buddhist lamas hold a prayer service on the river bank. The rest of the day, for visitors, is filled with cultural events imported from all parts of India, plus sightseeing tours of the sights of Leh. The following day, organizers hold a puja, a Hindu religious service.

While the festival primarily symbolizes the cultural harmony and the peaceful co-existence of Ladakh and more broadly, of India as a whole, it also is meant to commemorate the armed forces of the country. Other officials present for the opening of the festival included Nawang Rigzin Jora, Minister of Tourism and Culture, Nasir Aslam Wani, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, and Tsering Dorji, Chief Executive Officer of the Ladakh Hill Development Council.

There is a Sindhu Darshan community page in Facebook.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia visited the Ju/’hoansi town of Tsumkwe recently to investigate the controversial invasion of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy lands by farmers from nearby Gam. The Tsumkwe councilor, Moses Coma, evidently didn’t mince his words when he discussed the Ju/’hoansi problems with Marco Hausiku, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Mr. Coma indicated that the difficulties the Ju/’hoansi are having with the invaders are getting worse every day. There are over 300 outsiders now living in Tsumkwe, and they are causing severe problems due to a lack of enough water and an inadequate sanitation system. They are also engaged in illegal hunting in the reserve. Mr. Coma made a special point of thanking the Deputy Prime Minister for supporting some infrastructure development projects. But some of the improvements will be threatened by the invaders, he maintained.

He also mentioned to the official other problems that are unrelated to the Herero invasion. For one thing, some orphans, disabled people, and elderly individuals lack proper identification papers, so they are unable to qualify for government grants. The people apply for the proper registration papers, but the documents then do not make it out of the Home Affairs office.

The traditional chief of the Ju/’hoansi, Bobo Tsamkxao, also spoke with the distinguished visitor. He complained that the Herero invaders were now threatening to take the law into their own hands and kill some of the indigenous residents of the reserve, which was established by Namibia as a protected area for the Ju/’hoansi to live on and manage.

Mr. Hausiku urged everyone to abide by the laws, and to not move about like animals, invading other people’s lands. He said that Tsumkwe needed to urge the Gam farmers to leave and go back to their homes, where the government had established facilities—a school and a clinic—to help them. “It is a pity that people are not realising that what they did was wrong and what we need to do is to support the Chief to tell them to go back because that is the only sensible thing we can do,” he said.

He went on to emphasize that their invasion last year—cutting the veterinary fence along the conservancy boundary—was completely wrong, especially since it put the nation’s beef industry, and perhaps the entire economy of the country, in jeopardy. He repeated that the invasion was illegal, and everyone needed to obey the laws. The New Era, the Namibian newspaper that carried the story, did not report if he made any definitive statements about actions the government might take to remove the invaders from the community they had moved into—illegally.

The news report did indicate that the Namibian courts have not yet been able to resolve the mess. A court case has been postponed three times. The Herero farmers are demanding that the government give back their cattle, which were condemned due to the fear of their being infected with foot and mouth disease. They also demand compensation for their losses. The Ju/’hoansi are asking for the invaders to be removed. Nothing appears to be happening, other than visits from politicians.

Many music critics claim that Led Zeppelin’s 1971 “Stairway to Heaven” was one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The lyrics, written by the band’s vocalist, Roger Plant, were apparently inspired by his readings in Lewis Spence’s Magic Arts in Celtic Britain and not by the Lepcha myth with the same title.

A stairway, or a tower, to heaven may be a familiar theme—Jacob’s Ladder or the Tower of Babel in Genesis—but the government of Sikkim, in India, wants to use it to promote tourism in the western part of the state. The village of Daramdin is the supposed location where a “stairway to heaven” was built in ancient times. Why not build a reconstructed Stairway to Heaven there again, along with a Lepcha museum. Attract tourists, who will spend their money.

Lepcha Stairway to Heaven The idea of such a reconstruction floated around for years in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim. A foundation stone had been laid by the Chief Minister for the state in 1995, but the project got nowhere due to a lack of funds. The estimated cost—Rs 300 crore ($US 63,700,000)—was much too high. In August 2009, the Roads and Bridges minister, R.B. Subba, announced that the proposed project had been revived and approved by the state government at a cost of Rs 3.48 crore ($US 739,000).

The Sikkim Department of Cultural Affairs and Heritage, along with the Building and Housing Department, announced last week that they have adopted the project and commissioned an Indian construction and engineering company to prepare a detailed feasibility report. State officials, members of the Sikkim Lepcha Association, and others were scheduled to visit the site on June 5.

The basis of the project is the Lepcha legend that their ancestors tried to build a stairway to heaven out of pottery. The best scholarly description of the legend is by Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1953), which appeared in the journal Anthropos. The author describes several versions of the legend, a very ancient story about the origins of the Lepcha people. The one accepted by most Lepchas is that the first people lived in the glacial ice on their sacred mountain, Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest peak, located on the western border of the state with Nepal. The legend bears remarkable similarities to the Tower of Babel story in Genesis.

When the original people descended from Kanchenjunga to the plain of Daramdin, they decided to build a tower to heaven out of pottery. They wanted to grab the sky with a hook and pull it down. They formed themselves into three groups, one to make the pots, another to carry them to the building site, and a third to build the tower itself.

When the builders got right up close to the sky, the ones at the top realized they were quite close to their goal. If only they had a hook, they could pull the sky down. So they called to those below to hand them a forked stick, but the request got confused in transmission, and the people below heard the order to tear down the tower. The folks at the bottom could not believe what they heard, so they asked for clarification. The order was repeated, they thought—tear it all down.

So the people at the bottom, with all their tools at hand, began smashing the foundation layer of pots. Suddenly, the entire tower came crashing down, crushing almost everyone on the ground in the vicinity, plus the workers who had been on the tower. The people who survived the tragedy could no longer communicate with one another. They left, scattered in all directions, all speaking different languages.

Other versions of the legend differed in details, such as which tribal groups were involved, but they told more or less the same story. Nebesky-Wojkowitz discusses the possibility that the pottery fragments found at Daramdin may in fact have been from an ancient tower construction. His conclusion is ambiguous. He points out that other tribes lived in the area and they may, in fact, have been the ones who built the legendary tower. He writes that the plain of Daramdin is now (as of 1953) composed mostly of fertile rice farms, only a small portion of the area is untilled, and pottery shards that are constantly being discovered are probably not funerary in origin.

The local people ascribe them to the legendary tower, and they just pitch them away. He suspects that the plentiful shards started turning up when the area began to be farmed more intensively in the mid-nineteenth century, and that the discovery of the pieces of pottery led to the legend being ascribed to that area. Only an intensive archaeological investigation would allow the question to be settled more definitively, he argued.

Other scholars continue to work on the legend and the possibility that Daramdin is the real locality in western Sikkim where the original Lepchas tried to build their tower. Perhaps the museum and the tourist facility to be erected there will promote further popular interest, and even more scholarship, about the culture of the Lepchas. One can doubt if this new stairway to heaven will ever have the universal reach of the famous song, however.

Nebesky-Wojkowitz, René. 1953. “The Lepcha Legend of the Building of the Tower.” Anthropos 48: 889-897

The G/wi and G//ana San peoples of the Kalahari Desert are going to appeal again to the High Court of their country for relief from persecution by Botswana’s national government. The San won their suit against the government in the High Court in 2006, which gave them the right to return to their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

The government had expelled them from the CKGR and forced them into resettlement camps in 2002, claiming it was for their own good, or that it was for the protection of the wildlife. The real reasons were that the government wanted to make sure royalties from proposed diamond mining in the CKGR would all go into government coffers, not to the indigenous minority people who already lived there. The court’s two to one decision four years ago agreed with the San position.

But the government of Botswana hassled them as soon as they started moving back, requiring them to obtain hunting licenses before they could hunt for meat, then refusing to issue the licenses; requiring them to obtain water from outside the reserve, then prohibiting them from using large holding tanks and refusing them the right to reopen a borehole that had provided them ample clean water before it was closed in 2002.

Meanwhile, a diamond company opened a mining operation, and another firm opened a wilderness lodge for tourists. The government allowed both companies to drill for water, while the nearby, indigenous minority settlements were denied the same right. The companies were even prohibited from sharing their water with the San.

The San groups have engaged the same British attorney, Gordon Bennett, who represented them in the earlier case. He was to fly to Botswana to represent them before the High Court starting yesterday, Wednesday, in Lobatse, Botswana. Justice Singh Walia will hear the case. Mr. Bennett blasted the government for acting unconstitutionally in denying the people the right to use the borehole, and he denied that there is any logical action for its refusal. “The eviction took place in 2002, when the borehole was capped and the pump removed. Since then the borehole sat idle and of no use to man or beast. It is [a] cause of huge importance to the Bushmen,” he said.

Survival International is backing the latest court suit. According to Fiona Watson, a spokesperson for the group, the government is arguing “that it’s government land there, and the Bushmen have no rights over it. It’s incredibly petty, and shows once again that the government has no interest in abiding by the 2006 ruling, which had already clearly stated that their actions evicting the Bushmen were illegal.”

The San people who have returned to the CKGR are forced to travel 450 km, round trip, to obtain water outside the reserve for their needs. They claim that one member of their community has died due to dehydration.

Jumanda Gakelebone, speaking for the San people, argued that the decision of the High Court, requiring the government to allow them to live in their ancestral homes in the reserve, surely included the right to have the drinking water they had access to before they were forcibly exiled. Mr. Gakelebone elaborated: “Especially the old people and the young are suffering from lack of water. It pains us that the animals and tourists on our land can drink our water to their heart’s content yet we go thirsty. We pray that the court will give us back our water.”

The 2010 suit is being led by Matsipane Mosetlhanyane and Gakenyatsiwe Matsipane. Mr. Matsipane said he is one of the original applicants to the court which led up to the 2006 decision. He is asking the High Court to rule on whether the CKGR residents must expose themselves, and the lives of their children, to the risks of not having safe, reliable water, especially when it would be available at no cost to the government.

Trevor Mmopelwa, Director of Wildlife and National Parks for Botswana, argued in response that the San people chose to live in a place without water—it is their choice. “I can therefore aver that whatever hardships the Applicants are likely to face in the exercise of their choice, such hardships are of the applicant’s own making,” he said. The official admitted that the San people had requested permission to deepen or use another borehole, but he claimed the Attorney General had said he did not have the authority to grant such permission.

He also stated that bringing holding tanks for water storage into the CKGR would have a deleterious effect on its wildlife purposes—it would change it into a place of human habitation, rather than a wildlife reserve. An article in the Botswana Gazette did not indicate if he had discussed why the tourist lodge and the mining company had been allowed to drill boreholes while the San had been denied a similar permission.

Although Survival International and Mr. Bennett are supporting the San cause, apparently the European governments are not. The European Commission has agreed to donate 60 million Euros to help Botswana develop its “human resources.” While the negotiations about the grant were taking place in Brussels, Survival International announced that the government of Botswana had just sent truckloads of soldiers and police into the CKGR, presumably to further persecute or intimidate the San people.

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