Peaceful Societies

A new study by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) singles out the Yanadi as an example of an indigenous society with traditional knowledge that needs to be preserved. The IIED released its work on the Yanadi last week, along with studies on other traditional societies in India, Peru, Panama, China, and Kenya. Those publications are the culmination of research that anticipates a major, upcoming meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) titled “Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues,” which will be held in Geneva July 13 – 14.

The institute, a respected non-profit research organization based in London, describes WIPO as one of the major threats to Yanadi knowledge. According to the WIPO website, it is “a specialized agency of the United Nations … dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property (IP) system, which rewards creativity, stimulates innovation and contributes to economic development while safeguarding the public interest.”

Judging by a press report, it appears as if the Yanadi study recognizes the importance of biodiversity in the region of Andhra Pradesh where they live. The study says that the Yanadi “have developed extensive knowledge of bio-resources, medicinal and aromatic plants and wild foods—including unique remedies for snake bite, paralysis, [and] skin diseases,” due to their intense involvement in their forests. The people play a major role in understanding, utilizing, and preserving those forest resources.

The study charges that when the Yanadi were relocated away from their forests, they became isolated from the sources of their livelihood. They had to subsist on wage labor and the collection of minor, non-timber forest resources. The traditional knowledge of the people, the study says, is “on the verge of extinction. The youth are not interested in learning it, and the status of elders is weakening due to the extension of government control.”

The focus of the report is on Yanadi knowledge of plants that can be used for medicinal purposes. That knowledge is not recognized by official agencies, and it is labeled by bureaucrats, in the words of the study, as the “superstitious knowledge of illiterates.” This attitude makes the people fearful of openly discussing what they know.

A 1995 ethnography of the Yanadi by Stanley Jaya Kumar briefly discusses some of these same issues. The author mentions forest resources used by the Yanadi at the time of his investigation—flowers, fruits, bark, tubers, edible roots—and he provides a table listing some of them. Stanley Jaya Kumar indicates that the Yanadi did not reveal the names of medicinal plants; they preferred to use the plant medicines personally, and to keep their knowledge to themselves.

The IIED study points out that the Yanadi harvest wild plants and use them in specialized rituals held in sacred forests. They transmit their medicinal knowledge through rituals as well. They believe that cultivating plants will destroy their potency. The study asserts that traditional people like the Yanadi must retain access to their forests in order to maintain their knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants. The Yanadi continue to visit forestlands to worship forest deities, revere plants, and show respect to their ancestors.

An essential element in the IIED argument is that the Yanadi consider forest resources to be communal property. That approach differs from that of WIPO and the rest of the developed world, which seeks to protect individual and corporate intellectual property rights. The point of the study is to challenge the WIPO way of thinking, which, in this upcoming meeting, will seek to reconcile the difference between the intellectual property standards of the world and the approaches of traditional societies that emphasize communally-shared knowledge. Many other traditional societies not identified by the IIED, such as the Piaroa, also try to protect their customary plant knowledge.

According to the IIED, WIPO’s attempt to find common elements among traditional knowledge systems and the worldwide standards is fundamentally flawed. International standards have been developed to protect Western commercial uses of drugs, which are developed by private companies for the profits of their owners. Traditional societies such as the Yanadi, on the other hand, do not privatize their knowledge—they have no such thing as patent or copyright protection.

The IIED argues that traditional societies like the Yanadi also protect biodiversity by approaching nature as a public resource. Furthermore, the growing inability of traditional communities to share their knowledge of plants and their possible uses could hinder human responses to major worldwide problems, such as global climate change.

The institute urges policymakers to accept several key arguments: the importance of collective ownership and rights to knowledge in traditional contexts; the need to develop viable ways of sharing benefits with traditional societies; the value of acknowledging customary rights to genetic resources; and the significance of managing external uses of traditional knowledge fairly, but within the protocols of the traditional communities.

The IIED also issued a four-page briefing paper at the same time it released its detailed studies to the press. The paper, “Protecting Traditional Knowledge from the Grassroots Up,” reiterates and clarifies the arguments. It points out that “the rights of people holding traditional knowledge are increasingly violated by unfair patents and the extension of Western intellectual property rights ….” Legally binding treaties protect inventors in the industrial countries, it says, but there are no such protections for the traditional knowledge of pre-industrial societies.

This lack limits the protection of biodiversity. Furthermore, in the current system, “indigenous communities in rural areas rely profoundly on healthy ecosystems for their survival, so protecting and conserving biodiversity is integral to their cultures.” The briefing paper emphasizes the importance of protecting customary knowledge for all of humanity.

According to a press report last Friday, the Starlite Hutterite Colony, near Starbuck, Manitoba, held an open house to show off its new sewage lagoon cover. The 200 by 350 foot cover has been designed to hold in the intense smells given off by the hog manure and other animal wastes held in the lagoon.

At an open house, colony boss Jacob Hofer and the representative of the Canadian company that fabricated the low linear polyethylene (LLP) cover, Roy Farrow, discussed the fact that the colony has been receiving complaints from local people about the stench from the manure lagoon. “This is about trying to get some goodwill going,” said Mr. Farrow.

When they walked on the cover to demonstrate its strength—the lagoon is 20 feet deep—Hofer joked that he was walking on water, a brave statement considering the contents of what he was really moving over. Hofer added some terse comments about Manitoba animal rights activists who protest the colony hog operations, the efficiency of which was described in detail in a news report last September. He feels the animals are cared for like babies. The article last week describes the way the new cover will stand up to wind, rain, and sunlight, and the technique for venting and burning off methane gas from the lagoon.

Another news story last November described similar concerns for public relations at the Pincher Creek Hutterite Colony near Pincher Creek, Alberta. It, too, has a hog manure lagoon which creates an intense odor that people in the nearby town were complaining about.

Last week, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), the citizen pressure group trying to save the sacred Dzongu region of Sikkim from hydropower projects, entered its third year of hunger strikes. The government of Sikkim, a small state in the Himalayas on India’s northern border with Tibet, is planning numerous large dams to develop power which it will sell to the rest of the country.

The Dzongu, located next to Mount Kanchenjunga on the border with Nepal, the world’s third highest peak, is sacred to the Lepcha people. The nature worship that many people in the region still accept focuses on the natural life of the country and the sacredness of the mountains themselves. The young activists involved with ACT believe the industrialization of their mountains would be sacrilegious, as well as highly destructive to nature in the region.

ACT had been concentrating its efforts among the people of the Dzongu itself until June two years ago when they decided to initiate an indefinite, relay-style, hunger strike in the state capital, Gangtok. Last June they achieved a partial victory when the state government decided to cancel four of the dams planned for the upper Teesta River basin. The state insists on continuing to plan for the 300 megawatt Panan project, which ACT still opposes vehemently.

“We [will] continue keeping up moral pressure on the state government till it categorically declares annulment of the proposed mega project,” said Dawa Lepcha, general secretary of ACT, on the second anniversary of their hunger strike. He added that his organization is now considering taking legal actions to try and stop the dam-building. “Our principal aim is to protect our land and ecology,” he said.

Actions, reactions, and heated commentaries from many points of view have filled the African press in recent weeks about the invasion of the Ju/’hoansi-owned Nyae Nyae Conservancy.

The difficulties began in early May when a group of Herero herders from Gam, a farming community located south of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, cut veterinary fences that separated their territory from the Ju/’hoansi lands and invaded with their cattle. The farmers complained that they were fleeing their own region due to a poisonous plant that would kill their animals. The apparent success of the initial invaders prompted other Gam farmers to invade until over 1,200 cattle and their owners had moved into the Conservancy.

The immediate problem for the invaders is the fact that the Nyae Nyae Conservancy is not free of diseases, specifically the foot and mouth disease, and if the meat from an infected animal would enter the beef market, the entire Namibian cattle industry would probably be sanctioned internationally. This would be a serious crisis for the poor nation. The Gam farmers, perhaps unwittingly, took their cattle into a land of no return.

A news report on May 29 focused on the Ju/’hoansi point of view. Poppie Khamaswa, a woman who lives with her family at Apel Post in the Conservancy, told the media, “We are not happy. We cannot find gamakhoe [devil’s claw] along the route the cattle moved. We do not hear the kudus at night any more because they took flight because of the presence of so many cattle in the area. The Gam cattle must be moved out of Nyae Nyae because there is no more grazing for the conservancy cattle.”

The devil’s claw she referred to is a wild medicinal herb containing analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties. Harvested by 377 permit holders in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, the tubers provide an important source of income for the Ju/’hoansi. The country supplies 95 percent of the world’s demand, earning N$2.8 million (US$350,000) per year. It is exported widely, and is the third most popular medicinal plant product in Germany.

The invasion by the farmers and their cattle harmed more than the devil’s claw harvesters. Onesmus Heinrich, who also lives at Apel Post, told the paper that goats brought in by the invaders have destroyed cultivated crops. The animals prefer the gardens over wild foods. /’Ang!ao Kiwit /’Un, Chair of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, told the press, “we have things that we want to do here at the Conservancy, but we cannot continue with them because of the Gam cattle.”

Various groups have come to the aid of the Ju/’hoansi. Lara Diez from the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN) defended the San point of view due to the fact that the Conservancy is ancestral land. “[The Ju/’hoansi] have great respect for the land,” Diez said, “[They] use it in a sustainable way; they have made certain choices about how to use it. They are not agriculturalists, they have not gone the livestock route.”

Diez argued that the government should compensate them for the losses they have sustained due to the invasion. In addition to damage to the devil’s claw plants, the Conservancy calculates losses due to water consumed by the invaders’ animals, lost fees from trophy hunters who are staying away, and diminished tourist revenues. The Conservancy indicates it will seek damages from the government of N$603,700 (US$76,000).

Kiwit /’Un underscored the position of the Ju/’hoansi: “We have promised our ancestors that we would look after the environment. We will do whatever we can to keep that promise.”

The Nyae Nyae Conservancy is known for its wildlife: buffaloes, elephants, wild dogs, cheetahs, leopards, lions, hyenas, and a variety of birds that frequent the wetlands during the rainy season, such as cranes, egrets, and flamingos. It is managed by an elected board and a management committee that monitors water supplies, wildlife populations, and the sustainable harvesting of wild foods.

Several NGOs, such as WWF, have provided technical assistance for resource management and the development of institutions, but supporters of the Conservancy are unapologetic about the continuing needs of the Ju/’hoansi. “Most people in the Conservancy still live in abject poverty, but they are at least given options with the various programmes in place,” said Diez. “If the income-generating projects of the Conservancy are destroyed, how can they survive? They are living in the middle of a desert.”

Fransiena Gaus, senior councilor of the Ju/’hoansi Traditional Authority, echoed the sentiments expressed by the other Ju/’hoan. “Most San—and particularly women—are uneducated and depend on the natural environment. As San women, we also need livestock but we are very careful with domestic animals in the area.”

Two weeks ago, the government began confiscating the invaders’ cattle and moving them to holding pens where they may be auctioned for butchering, evidently without any plans for compensating the Herero farmers. The invading Gam farmers were arrested, then released on bail. These government actions provoked outrage in some quarters. Several Namibian political parties have weighed in, obviously seeking political capital from the drama. The South West African National Union, for instance, accused the government of dragging its feet and of handling the matter badly.

The Congress of Democrats condemned the decision by the Namibian cabinet to seize the invaders’ cattle, and demanded that they be returned to the Herero people as soon as they can be certified as disease free. NUDO, the Namibian Unity Democratic Organization, suggested that the government should organize a major land conference, since access to land is the primary issue for the Herero farmers as well as the Ju/’hoansi.

Representatives of the Gam invaders have moved into Windhoek, the capital, to press their own case. Kuratanda Katjizeu, acting as spokesperson for the group, admitted that they had illegally invaded the Conservancy, but he denied that they had cut any fences. It was well known that elephants had long since destroyed the veterinary fences, he maintained. He defined his rights, as a citizen of Namibia, to be “free to live where we want.” He seems to feel that the Ju/’hoansi don’t have the freedom to live securely on lands they have occupied for millennia.

The controversy continued in a news column last Friday, which insinuated that foreign capitalists, agents for the devil’s claw exporting business, were somehow behind the invasion.

Performances of The Amish Project, a one-woman, off-Broadway play, which opened to favorable reviews several weeks ago, are going to be extended two weeks beyond the original closing date.

Written by and starring Jessica Dickey, the play features portrayals of fictional Amish characters involved in a mass murder of school girls—patterned, of course, on the tragic events of October 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. The major theme of the play is the way the Amish community forgave the killer immediately.

Originally projected to close on June 28, the show will now continue until July 12. It is being performed at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, located at 224 Waverly Place in New York City. Tickets are available on the playhouse website or by calling (212) 868-4444.

A member of the legislative assembly (MLA) in Nunavut has proposed adding the Back River, an important waterway in the territory, to the official list of Canadian heritage rivers.

Moses Aupaluktuk, MLA from Baker Lake, told the territorial legislature last week that the river has considerable historical importance. He cited a major Inuit artist, Jessie Oonark, who was born along the Back River, as part of his justification for adding the river to the official list. “Her work is well recognized throughout the world,” he told the legislators. [Her art is] in the Vatican, Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery of Canada,” he said.

The territorial minister of the environment, Daniel Shewchuck, said his agency would be quite willing to nominate the river to the Canadian Heritage Rivers Board, which would then be responsible for recommending the heritage designation. The minister said that his agency would consider carefully the opinions of people in the communities along the river, as well as other affected user groups. If the territorial government did make the recommendation and the Rivers Board approved, it would then be up to the Canadian national government to make the formal designation. Heritage River status would serve to help preserve it in its natural state.

Neither Mr. Aupaluktuk nor Mr. Shewchuck mentioned that a significant body of creative scientific work by anthropologist Jean Briggs was based in part on her work along the Back River. Her important study of anger control and nonviolence in an Inuit band that lived in the river valley should also be considered by the review board.

The marvelous book by Briggs, Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family, which is still in print, was based on her year and a half of experiences in 1963-1964 living among the Utkuhikhalingmuit Inuit along the river. Her descriptions of the river and its community of life provide convincing evidence of its importance. For instance, on page 11 she writes:

“Rising near Contwoyto Lake, on the edge of Indian country, [the river] flows northeast to the Arctic coast, where, more than two miles wide, it empties into Chantrey Inlet. From any hilltop near its mouth the river dominates the scene. No matter where one looks it is there, winding broad, peaceful arms around knolls of islands, or racing narrow and turbulent between confining granite bluffs. In the spring, torrential with melting snow and ice, the roar of Itimnaaqjuk, the Franklin Lake Rapids, can be heard at a distance of twelve miles or more …. In the summer the churning surf subsides, but the current never slackens. Even in winter no scab of ice forms over the rapids; and in autumn their breath hovers as a black vapor over the hole of open water.”

Her descriptions of the Utkuhikhalingmuit people, who tried to never allow any expressions of anger, are of course the major focus of the book. She describes how the Utku, as she referred to them, had absolute control over their emotions, which served to prevent anger from ever being displayed. Accidents, inept behavior, and failures prompted only murmurs of gentle laughter.

During the daytime in the Inuit home, she wrote, there were normally two circles: men and women. Despite this division into conversation groups, Briggs felt a very strong sense of human warmth and peacefulness, an attentiveness to the unspoken needs of family members. Evenings and during storms, when visiting between families wasn’t really possible, the single family would draw even closer together as a unit. People told stories, discussed various topics, and avidly relived shared experiences.

One of the most effective passages in the book is about Inuttiaq, who was an especially affectionate father toward his four daughters. He never expressed anger toward them; he constantly played with them and openly showed his affection, particularly toward the younger ones. “He loves his children deeply; he is never angry with them,” his father-in-law told the author. His wife Allaq echoed the sentiment: “Inuttiaq is the only parent who is never angry with his children,” she said. Another person commented that the children love him intensely since he never shows any anger toward them.

If the Canadian government were to certify important heritage books about their country, it should certainly include this warm and wonderful work, which records the heritage of the Back River.

Andy Schwartzentruber was released from the Cambria County, Pennsylvania, jail last week after completing his 90 day sentence for refusing to bring his outhouses into compliance with the orders of a judge. The Amish man feels that state and county regulations specifying construction and cleaning details of outhouses violate his religious rights. He had provided the outhouses for a school located on property he owns in the county. The judge had the school padlocked at the same time he sentenced the man to jail.

The county judge, Norman Krumenacker, claimed he tried to work out a compromise with the man, though the judge was not willing to relent on the fundamental issue as he saw it—that the state has the right to prescribe the construction details of an outhouse on private land. The Amish man refused to compromise too. His conservative Amish sect will not allow many modern devices into their homes or businesses. Rejection of technologies is a religious issue for them. Neither side would budge, so the man went to jail for his convictions.

The same judge ordered two other Amish farms in the county to be padlocked in May because the owners of the properties had failed to install proper outhouses for new homes they had built. When the two homes were padlocked, the sheriff’s deputies also locked the outbuildings on the farms, at the judge’s orders, but evidently he relented a bit last week on that issue.

One of the two Amish families, John and Susan Miller, met with the judge on Tuesday, accompanied by a sympathetic attorney, Dave Beyer, who has agreed to help them in their standoff with the authorities. The two sides are considering another approach, a siphoning system for the two houses, which may satisfy the county sewer enforcement agency and may also be acceptable to the local Amish bishop. Beyer expressed hope that a compromise can yet be reached.

“I wanted to see whether they can meet in the middle of the situation,” he said. “I am optimistic for a resolution.”

Judge Krumenacker decided to grant the Millers’ request that they be allowed to use their barns, so they can store crops as they harvest them. He also decided to allow the Millers, and the other family locked out of their houses, Joely and Mary Schwartzentruber, to be allowed to reenter their homes for just one day later in the week to retrieve personal articles that were left behind when they were locked out. It was not clear from news reports if the families would be allowed to use their outhouses during their one day visits.

At the beginning of the week, the county sewage enforcement agency revealed that still another Amish farm has been targeted by neighbors, who are complaining that it, too, does not have proper sewage disposal facilities. This newly opened complaint is about a property that is located in the same township as the other controversial Amish outhouses, and it is also owned by members of the ultra-conservative Schwartzentruber sect.

William Barbin, solicitor for the sewage agency, is responding in familiar fashion. “We’ll investigate the complaint, and if there are violations, the property owner will be notified,” he said. He would not identify the complaining neighbors. Presumably, if all goes according to the well-established, Cambria-County script, in six months that Amish family will also be locked out of their home. Then the complaining neighbors can search for their next victims.

President Hosni Mubarak toured Aswan Province in Upper Egypt last Wednesday and made conciliatory comments about the rights of the Nubian people. In a television interview, he said he had issued directives to his government to support the Nubians and remove obstacles against them.

He said that the plans his government had formed to resettle Nubians did not represent any ill will toward them. Nubian opposition to government resettlement schemes has been growing. “Their demands and requests should be met because they are part and parcel of the Egyptian national fabric,” the president said.

Nubian protesters are demanding that the government build new villages for them in locations right along the Nile, in contrast to the plans for resettlement formulated by the governor of Aswan. During the tour, the president ordered his government to build new villages for the Nubians after coordinating the locations with them. The conciliatory spirit that President Obama displayed during his Cairo speech the previous Thursday may have had a ripple effect on Egyptian politics.

Mubarak said he would promote development for the Nubian people, a reaction to the criticism that his government has received about their lack of care for the minority group. His statements represent the first time a top Egyptian government official has acknowledged the Nubian position, that their culture depends on them living in villages next to the river.

An Off Broadway play about the tragic Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting in October 2006 opened last Wednesday at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York City. Sarah Cameron Sunde directs the production, The Amish Project, which was written and solo acted by Jessica Dickey. It is a fictionalized presentation of the compassion and forgiveness displayed by the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the wake of the tragedy.

According to one reviewer, David Finkle, the actress imagines fictional characters who portray the events that occurred that day in 2006, and the following days. Dickey acts out the reactions and thoughts of the killer, some of the students he murdered, their parents, his widow, and an expert on the Amish, as events unfolded. The reviewer felt that one drawback to that device is that some of those people, such as killer’s widow and the parents of the dead girls, are still very much alive.

The theme of Amish forgiveness pervades the show. The murderer’s widow recounts with awe a visit she received from the families of the dead girls. The expert on the Amish describes his impressions of them: “I’ve been teaching about them, studying them for 25 years—it doesn’t matter what your faith is or if you even have one—something about them makes you wonder: What am I? Could I be more?”

That reviewer found the fictionalized, imagined characters to be quite compelling. He liked the portrayal of the young girl who asked to be shot second, right after her older sister, who had already asked to be the first one shot. He especially appreciated the killer’s widow, who had difficulty figuring out how to cope with the ordeal.

Variety also reviewed the show and liked it, except for the way it portrays the Lancaster County Amish as quasi-saintly human beings. “Dickey has picked a fascinating story,” in the opinion of Sam Thielman, the reviewer, “but she’s neglected the humanity of its most interesting characters.”

To judge by the review, Dickey picked up quite well on the fact that the Amish forgave the killer, Charles Carl Roberts, just as they believe that Jesus forgives them. The world, Mr. Thielman writes, “could probably stand another production or two that makes peace and forgiveness its principal virtues.” He feels that Dickey’s portrayal of their saintly Christian charity does not make for very compelling drama.

He also criticizes the Hispanic accent of the actress and a sub-plot that is unconvincing, though overall he thinks the one-woman show is very well performed. “But the production’s overwhelming gentleness is not always an asset,” he concludes.

The New York Times reviewer liked the play very much. He felt that Dickey gave an “extraordinary performance,” and that it is really “a remarkable piece of writing.” He states that “Ms. Dickey … is completely convincing as she switches among the play’s seven characters.”

The Amish Project will be playing daily except Tuesdays at the Rattlestick theater, 224 Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, through June 28. Times for showings are listed on the theater website, which also sells tickets. The theater has 95 seats, and the top ticket price is $35.00.

An international controversy is finally dying down over the way the Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, showed respect for Inuit traditional ways during a visit to Nunavut a couple weeks ago.

On the first day of her trip to Canada’s Arctic, May 25, she visited the community of Rankin Inlet, on Hudson Bay, to promote a variety of improvements that could help the Inuit people. She spoke about the need for a university in the North, modeled perhaps after the University of Tromso in northern Norway that serves the Saami minority of that country.

The Governor General, who came to Canada as a refugee from Haiti when she was young, also listened to presentations about the need for a road from the Canadian South to the North. She visited a high school to deliver a speech about the importance of education. She herself has several advanced degrees and pursued a career as a journalist and broadcaster for the CBC before being named Governor General by the Queen in 2005.

Later in the day things got especially interesting. The Inuit held a festival for Ms. Jean, with freshly-killed seal carcasses ready for the feast. The Governor General took a traditional Inuit knife, an ulu, and used it to slice some meat off the carcass. Then she enthusiastically asked a woman standing next to her if she could try the heart. She quickly cut out a slice, popped it into her mouth, and swallowed it raw, in the Inuit fashion.

She was, of course, aware of the power of the image she was casting, and the fact that videos of her eating a piece of seal heart would quickly be uploaded to the Internet. She referred to the action of eating raw seal meat as an ancient cultural practice that is carried out in a humane, respectful fashion. “It’s like sushi, and very rich in protein,” she said, a calculated remark that of course connected the Inuit custom with the Japanese fish delicacy. She said the seal heart was delicious.

Her act caused an international outcry, especially from animal rights groups, which have been pressing European governments and the EU to ban the import of commercially harvested Canadian seal products. The EU ban, which will take effect later in 2009, exempts seal products that have been harvested by the Inuit, but there is still a lot of resentment in Canada, especially in the North, about the actions of Europeans and the statements by animal rights organizations.

Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said, “I’m extremely embarrassed to be associated with a governor general of my country eating raw seal meat in that manner. It’s barbaric. ”Rebecca Aldworth from the Humane Society International Canada made similar comments. “It was ill-advised and in poor taste,” she said. A representative of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, expressed amazement that such a high official would “indulge in such blood lust.”

The Governor General had her defenders. A Liberal senator, Celine Hervieux-Payette, called Ms. Jean’s support for the Inuit custom “a generous gesture.” She said that cooked seal meat is a delicacy, and she is trying to add it to the menu of the restaurant in parliament.

Others praised, or raged, in the press and the blogosphere of Canada, the U.S., and around the world. Some defenders of Canada saw their country as being attacked by effete Europeans, who like to criticize the aboriginal practice of eating raw seal meat as barbaric, yet will consider themselves civilized when they eat foods such as foie gras, the enlarged livers of force-fed ducks.

One commentator said, “she’s Canada’s new Braveheart.” Others compared her to Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who is famed for shooting wolves from aircraft and draping the pelts in her office. The Governor and the Governor General wear similar glasses and had careers as journalists before becoming politicians, but Ms. Jean has a more forceful, provocative style than Ms. Palin, many feel. Ms. Jean, one blogger wrote, is “clearly the more badass of the two, [since she] prefers to butcher seals and eat their hearts in front of hundreds of onlookers.”

Opinions in Nunavut and the rest of Canada’s North generally favored the gesture by the G.G. Aaju Peter, a Nunavut local, said in an e-mail, “both she and the Inuit are showing great respect for the animal and great respect for each other in the sharing and accepting of this seal that has offered itself to the hunter.” Others, however, attacked the notion that an animal ever “offers itself” to a human.

The Governor General’s one simple gesture threatened to overwhelm the rest of her week-long tour of Nunavut. Much of her emphasis, in the various communities she visited, was on youth and education, which the Inuit appreciated. She told students she wanted to focus on them so the people in southern Canada would appreciate the realities of life, and the aspirations, of people in the North.

Later in the week, the G.G. rebutted her attackers and supported the Inuit way of hunting and living off the land. “It is part of their way of life. It is part of their economy. It is well [administered]. It is vital for them. It is done in a sustainable way. A very respectful way. And I’m certainly not indifferent to that. I respect that.”

“The heart is a delicacy,” she said. “It is the best you can offer to your guest. It is the best that is offered to the elders. So, do you say no to that? You engage and at the same time you are learning about a way of life, a civilization, a tradition.”

The principal of a high school, summarizing feelings among the Inuit for her visit, told her, “I am very grateful. You’ve done much to educate the south about how things are up here. You’ve been [a] true educator.”

The simple, but highly theatrical, act of respect by the Governor General a couple weeks ago renewed southern Canadian appreciation for the customs of the Inuit and sparked a broader dialog about Canadian identity that still continues.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Traditional Knowledge of the Yanadi Should Be Protected

Containing the Odors from Hutterite Hogs

Second Anniversary of Lepcha Hunger Strike

Invasion of Ju/’hoansi Lands Unresolved

Performances of Amish Play to Continue into Mid July

Back River Proposed for Heritage Status

Amish Victims of Cambria County, Pennsylvania

Egyptian President Pledges to Help Nubians

New Play Dramatizes Amish Forgiveness

The Badass Governor General

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