Peaceful Societies

A group of Herero families and their livestock have invaded the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, a major refuge for the Ju/’hoansi people that the government of Namibia created to protect them.

Nyae Nyae Conservancy location Five Herero-speaking families from Gam, outside the reserve, cut the veterinary fence that surrounds it and moved onto the Ju/’hoansi lands with 132 cattle, 15 horses, 16 sheep, and 21 donkeys last week. According to press reports, the chief of police for the town of Tsumkwe, in the reserve, reported that the people had invaded because their animals were dying due to poisonous plants (Dichapetalum cymosum) where they came from.

The Herero families admit to having invaded on purpose, but they do not want to go back.

The difficulty for the police and government officials is that the Nyae Nyae reserve is not free of the foot and mouth livestock disease, so moving the Herero people back out of the area with their cattle would risk spreading it to healthy, disease free areas. Farmers outside the reserve do not want the invaders to come back since their animals might bring diseases along.

Officials thus face a dilemma, particularly since different agencies are not sure who should deal with the problem, or how. The Ministry of Environment is trying to cope, but it may instead be a problem for the Ministry of Lands to handle. A few days after the initial reports, on Friday last week, the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry ruled that the livestock that was moved into the reserve will not be allowed to return to Gam.

The Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer in the ministry, Cleopas Bamhare, said that the invaders’ cattle will be branded with special marks so they can be easily identified, and they will be destroyed if they are found outside the reserve. The owners of the cattle will be prosecuted, once they have been identified, for moving their animals without a permit and for vandalism to the fence. He said he is not aware of an immediate threat of disease, but caution is necessary.

Meanwhile, during the middle of the week, rumors were flying that more Herero and their livestock were crossing into the reserve. Local people fear that 350 additional head of cattle have crossed into the Ju/’hoansi property, and other sources say that more people, with their guns and dogs, are moving in. Dr. Bamhare confirmed on Friday that a second invasion of the conservancy property had occurred, but he provided no further information.

The government of Namibia created the 9,000 square kilometer reserve 20 years ago to preserve the Ju/’hoansi lands and give the people the ability to manage it effectively. The outgrowth of an earlier farmers’ cooperative, the reserve allows the Ju/’hoansi to implement projects after listening to the input of the communities involved. Up until now, the conservancy running the reserve has successfully persuaded invaders with their cattle to respect their rights and leave again. It was fenced to prevent the livestock disease found within from spreading into the rest of the country.

Zedekia Hengari, an Animal Health Technician at Gam, indicated that he has asked the police to patrol the Nyae Nyae fence round the clock to prevent further invasions. He is especially concerned about the health of the animals in his area. Local police are also talking with other stakeholders to try and resolve the matter.

The police at Tsumkwe said that a chief inside the reserve has allowed the invaders to settle on a farm temporarily until the matter can be resolved. Meanwhile, a legal assistance center was preparing papers in hopes of getting a court to intercede and order the invaders off the Ju/’hoansi lands.

Judge Norman A. Krumenacker in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, who sent an Amish man to jail in March, last week ordered two other Amish families to be evicted from their homes. At a court hearing on Friday, he gave the two families the weekend to remove their belongings from their buildings. He ordered sheriff’s deputies to padlock the houses and all outbuildings on the two properties on Monday morning at 10:00 AM.

In November, the judge expressed hope of reaching a settlement with Joely Schwartzentruber and John Miller and their wives over the fact that they had built homes in a rural part of the county but had not followed the required sewage treatment guidelines. He subsequently visited one of the homes and told the Amish people that they must get into compliance with regulations.

But he suggested a compromise solution with them. They could add lime to the waste, store it in an approved tank, then spread it on their fields after having it tested. However, the Schwartzentruber Amish feel that any compromises would violate their religious beliefs, which include a strict adherence to doing things exactly the way their ancestors did them.

Deb Sedlmeyer, the Sewage Enforcement Officer for the county, told the judge on Friday that recent inspections of the two properties showed that neither had made the changes he had required earlier. The Amish people repeated their view that following required county practices would violate their religious beliefs. They told the judge that they intended to “stand by our religion, our church.”

Mr. Schwartzentruber commented after the hearing that the Amish people were puzzled by the judge’s ruling. After all, they had followed an Amish blueprint for constructing the houses, he said, which included sealed sewage tanks that they had built themselves. Evidently it had not occurred to the families to check with county officials about their plans before they built the houses.

Mr. Schwartzentruber also said, “we hoped to settle here and have freedom,” but he added that his family and the Millers were not sure what they were going to do. Mrs. Miller added, “I try to leave everything to God. I try to think God will lead me where we should be.”

William Barbin, the solicitor for the county agencies, approved of the judge’s decision since he did not order the Amish families to be sent to jail. The judge, he said, “is particularly concerned about the sewage and that no additional sewage be spread [on the fields].” Mr. Barbin added that, under state and federal laws, the states must try to accommodate religious beliefs unless such beliefs tend to undermine the society.

News reports on Monday show the sheriff’s deputies evicting the Amish families. The last thing Mrs. Miller was able to do in her home was to bake a batch of oatmeal cookies, which she handed out to the deputies while they padlocked the house.

A very different spirit prevailed last week at a Montour County, Pennsylvania, Commissioners meeting, where complaints about manure along public roads from Amish horses appear to have been resolved with compromises and good will. The complainers, plus an Amish representative and others spoke to the commissioners in Danville, the county seat, Tuesday evening.

County resident Walter Laidacker indicated that horse manure can be a problem for people who like to bicycle or walk along the secondary roads that the Amish also use with their horses and buggies. The vice chairman of the board of commissioners, Jack Gerst, asked the man to give him a call when he encounters problems. But, the commissioner told the complainer, “don’t call me about a couple of road apples. Call me about giant piles.”

Another complaining resident, John Rose, suggested that the Amish could fit their horses with diapers. He told the commissioners that he has to clean up horse manure from his driveway five times a week. “If they used diapers, nobody would have a problem,” he said.

The chairman of the commissioners, Trevor Finn, said they had met with representatives of the horse-using communities, Amish and Mennonites, and all had agreed that drivers of buggies should move over onto the shoulders of roadways to allow motor vehicles to pass. That would also help keep the manure off the central parts of the roads.

In any case, Jake Hershberger of Montour County said that the Amish community wants to help resolve the problem. Moving onto the shoulders of roads so vehicles can easily pass might help the situation, Mr. Hershberger said.

Chairman Finn indicated that the Amish community really wants to help. If they are alerted about large piles of manure, they will seek to avoid concentrating animals there in the future and they will certainly come and clean up the horse droppings. Mr. Finn said the Amish “are willing to work as a community and to live in peace. They don’t want to fight. They want to communicate through us if there are concerns out there and they’ll work on those concerns.”

Other citizens of the county expressed their support for the Amish. Dale Muckelmann said she has been riding horses for 60 years, and she feels that muddy roads pose far more of a problem than encountering some horse droppings.

Another lady, who told the meeting that she trains horses, asked rhetorically, “where does this stop. We’re not living in town. I’d hate to see this get out of hand.” The woman indicated that Amish people have been especially kind to her. They have helped her by cutting her wood and bringing food when her husband was ill with cancer.

Survival International (SI) has just announced that Gem Diamonds decided to delay their diamond mining operation on G/wi lands inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Demand for diamonds has dropped radically due to the global recession, and all of the diamond mining operations in the country closed in February. The company has confirmed the delay.

SI’s press release rehashes the tragic history of the terrible treatment by Botswana of the peaceful Bushmen people. The national government of the country and the large corporations, first De Beers and subsequently Gem Diamonds, consistently denied that they had any intention of mining for diamonds on the lands from which the G/wi and other San peoples were evicted. Their protests all turned out to be lies. In addition, the government has ignored the fact that the Bushmen won their case in Botswana’s highest court in 2006. The court reaffirmed that they had the right to live on their land, but the government has continued to persecute the G/wi, denying them access to water and game animals.

Stephen Corry, Director of SI, repeated assertions he has made in the past: “Survival’s allegations were true all along, as they are today when we say the Bushmen are still being denied their rights. Their treatment is still illegal and against the Botswana constitution. They are not even allowed to use the water borehole on their land.”

A research report by Stephen M. Younger, published in Current Anthropology last fall, provides an intriguing analysis of some of the conditions that may foster peacefulness in human societies. Younger acknowledges broader literature that demonstrates the ability of people to live together peacefully, but his research allows him to go deeper into the mechanisms and conditions that may inhibit violence and warfare.

He has studied the literature on warfare and peacefulness among Polynesian peoples in order to compare levels and types of violence in large and small scale societies. He analyses population densities and a variety of environmental conditions in the societies he works with. His table 1, “Violence and Warfare on Selected Islands of Polynesia,” lists 35 atolls and volcanic islands with populations ranging from Nukuoro, 124 people at the time of contact, up to Hawaii, with an estimate of 100,000 when Europeans first arrived.

The article distinguishes between two types of violence—interpersonal and warfare. The author defines the former as “dyadic action between two or a few individuals” and warfare as “an armed aggression between political communities or alliances of political communities (p.927).” The report includes a brief review of the issues identified by anthropologists that may help promote violence: conflicts over women, drives for status, competition for resources, and control of political power, among others. More to the point, Younger also mentions some of the literature which relates to peace and peacefulness, which is the focus of his report.

He is careful to not suggest that the factors he identifies in Polynesia are causes of peace—evidently warfare and violence can be caused, but not peacefulness. Instead, he maintains he is finding “conditions and mechanisms for peace.” He defines “conditions” as factors that are correlates or are associated with peacefulness, and “mechanisms” as behavioral patterns that tend to minimize violence. His basic question is that if demographic and geographical conditions can stimulate violence, can they also foster peacefulness? His answer is yes.

A number of his conclusions are most interesting. Younger finds that there is a positive correlation between interpersonal violence and warfare. Societies that have a lot of the one tend to have a lot of the other, and conversely, those that have a high degree of interpersonal harmony also tend to be the ones that do not fight wars.

The author also shows that islands with less than 1,000 people are, overall, much less likely to experience violence than larger ones. Intriguingly, he found that the more densely populated islands—the smaller, more crowded ones—experienced a lower level of violence than the less densely populated, larger islands. This result might seem counterintuitive. He also found that islands with a strongly egalitarian ethos, with chiefs who were relatively weak, were more likely to be peaceful than more hierarchical communities.

Another interesting result of his analysis is that small islands which are relatively more isolated from their nearest inhabited neighbors experience less violence than the ones that are closer to their neighboring peoples. He emphasizes that if all the islands in his sample are included, that conclusion does not apply. Larger islands that are relatively isolated from their neighbors still experience a lot of violence and warfare. But when he looks only at isolated islands with populations of less than 1,000, they have much less violence than the others. Seven of the eight small islands in his sample that are more than 100 km away from neighbors are relatively peaceful, in contrast to small islands with relatively close neighbors.

The distance is critical. While 100 km is well within the navigating capabilities of Polynesian canoeists—a day’s canoeing distance away—such distance severely limits the ability of islanders to initiate inter-island warfare. However, distance from neighboring islands was relatively less important for people on the larger islands, where communities can easily fight with others on the same island.

Younger concludes from his review of the literature that competition for resources, particularly food, often produced conflict in Polynesia. But an even more significant cause of violence was competition for status and power. On large islands, people fought over resources from different parts of the island that had varying amounts of food. On the smaller atolls, however, resources are more evenly distributed, and on many of them, the authority of the chiefs was often quite circumcised. His basic point is that small islands lacked the social stratification and resource asymmetry of the larger islands, which, on them, led to competition and war.

Also, on the smaller islands people handled problems themselves. They tended to be peaceful because they did not have leaders able to resolve their difficulties. People developed what he calls normative controls over their behavior to preserve interpersonal harmony.

Younger’s Polynesian data suggest that socialization for violence begins with warfare, a finding that is consistent with other research. He also indicates that human sacrifice, a custom in the Marquesas, may have contributed to violence there, but none of the small island societies appear to have developed that practice.

The author disagrees with the widely held supposition that warfare was ubiquitous in Polynesia. Perhaps it was on the larger islands, but not on the smaller ones. He concludes that his data disproves the frequently held proposition that violence is normative for human societies. “In precontact Polynesia, violence appears to have been realized or not realized as a result of the physical and social fabric in which the population found itself (p.932).”

He does not consider other values that, in some peaceful societies, appear to help develop and maintain peacefulness. He does not deal with the ethical structures of societies, their child-raising strategies, religious beliefs, values placed on gender equality, approaches to respect, and other elements of their worldviews that can contribute to interpersonal harmony. But criticizing what is not in the article begs the question: he contributes a lot of very useful ideas about the causes of peacefulness.

Younger, Stephen M. 2008. “Conditions and Mechanisms for Peace in Precontact Polynesia.” Current Anthropology 49(5): p.927-934

The Lepcha anti-dam group Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) tried last week to focus voters in Sikkim on the proposed hydropower dams that would destroy the sanctity of the Dzongu reserve. Indian national and state elections will be held in the state of Sikkim today, April 30. Campaigning in the state has aroused politicians to state their positions on a range of issues, and the construction of a series of power dams in northern Sikkim has received considerable attention.

ACT, which maintains an apolitical stance, urged voters to consider whether the candidates they support are in favor of preserving the fragile ecology of the land and the spiritual values of the Lepcha people, which are threatened by the proposed construction of 27 power projects.

The Congress Party is the only major contender for seats in the state legislature that has come out in opposition to the dams. The party says it will scrap all the dam proposals if it is elected. The ruling party, the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), and its current leader, Chief Minister Pawan Chamling, argues in favor of the projects. The government plans to spend over Rs 30,000 crore (US $6 billion), which it says will end unemployment in the state. Another party, the Sikkim Pradesh Congress Committee (SPCC), stated that the election of the Congress party will be a misfortune for the developers.

ACT General Secretary Dawa Lepcha indicated that his group will be watching the process closely, and it is urging its members to oppose the dams. “It has been made very clear to our supporters to vote for only those political parties extending support to its demand for the roll back of the hydel projects in Sikkim,” he told the press.

The SDF leadership responded by reaffirming the importance of the dams to the entire state of Sikkim. SDF leader Norzang Lepcha told reporters, “The proposed hydel projects are a guarantee to the livelihood of the Sikkimese people and a source of revenue to the state exchequer for a long long time to come.” Mr. Lepcha stated that the party had no intention of changing its mind about the dams, whether or not the issue might have consequences at the polls.

Operation Sadbhavana has been a military strategy of the Indian Army to win the hearts and minds of the remote Ladakhi people on the militarized borders of northern India. A recent article in the journal Military Medicine explains, and carefully justifies, the outreach services, particularly the medical interventions, in the high, Himalayan valleys.

The three officers who wrote the piece explain that the word “Sadbhavana” literally means “goodwill among people,” the army’s term for its attempts to convince the residents of the border areas with China and Pakistan to remain loyal and supportive of its objectives. The authors argue that, since civilian government administrators of the state of Jammu and Kashmir have often not been responsive to the needs of the rural Ladakhis, the people could easily become alienated.

The goal of their operation, therefore, “is to enhance the legitimacy of the local and national government in the eyes of the people.” In order to do that, the government needs to respond to crises effectively, to provide essential services, and to ensure security. The army wanted to win the confidence of the people, as a counterweight to the potential growth of terrorism in the region. One of the best ways they could see to do that was to augment the health services provided by the civil sector. Army officials perceived that the civilian government of the state and of the Ladakh district could not support the medical needs of the people. The army has excess medical capacity.

It also has the ability, and the willingness, to provide assistance for development projects, particularly small-scale efforts initiated with local political leaders. Projects have been founded to foster adult literacy, enhance agricultural production, improve primary education, empower women, electrify villages, and generate employment. Army officers plan their projects with community leaders in order to establish priorities, maintain transparency, and emphasize works that the people really want.

Perhaps the army’s greatest success has been the provision of primary health care for the residents of the really remote valleys of Ladakh. The civilian government apparently lacks the capacity to provide proper health services, so the military, with an excess of medical people on its staff, felt it was appropriate to help fill the need.

Roving military medical groups visit villages and go door to door, on a regular schedule, to teach public health measures, provide neonatal, infant and child care assistance, and monitor nutritional practices. They visit schools to conduct health surveys among the children. They visit women’s empowerment centers to teach about contraception, safety in pregnancy, and disease prevention.

They also conduct health camps in the villages in order to screen people for illnesses and chronic diseases. The medical personnel help Ladakhis who need follow-up care from specialists. The military medical people “adopt” individuals who need the specialized health care and they follow up afterwards with them to make sure they have received the services they need. These identification and follow up procedures have generated a lot of good will for the military. The army also allows medical personnel to treat civilians in their stationary medical centers which have surgical facilities in them. Common problems that are handled in those facilities include injuries from accidents on highways and in the mines.

The authors assert that Operation Sadbhavana has been a success. They write that the primary target of the operation has been the Bakarwal community, the marginalized shepherds of the most remote valleys. The three authors, who appear to have been closely involved with the operation, argue that the perspectives of the local populace have changed due to the army’s efforts. “There is willing participation in all of the community-oriented activities sponsored by the Army, with the women especially coming forward and virtually demanding more education and training facilities to empower them,” they write.

A clincher, for the military view of things, is their statement that, recently, local shepherds have been reporting to army officials transgressions across the border by foreign people. These instances of effective intelligence have allowed the army to protect the local region more effectively from potential terrorists and other outsiders. Local hostility to those invaders onto Indian territory have helped defend the region from militancy, the authors believe.

Another aspect of the army’s success has been the fact that local government officials have recognized the benefits of the army’s way of doing things, and have initiated development projects themselves as a result. The army’s medical interventions and health camps have helped develop confidence in the Indian Army, and by extension, in the civilian government, according to the authors. The most important benefit to the army has been the increased intelligence gathering by the local people.

The authors rhapsodize about the success of Operation Sadbhavana. “The military medical units have played a stellar role in the task laid down by their commanders to win over an entire populace, despite the major operational constraints imposed by an inhospitable terrain.” The medical and paramedical personnel involved have been devoted and dedicated to the needs of the people to an unparalleled degree, we are told.

The article does not make clear the exact relationship of the three authors to Operation Sadbhavana, though the context of their writing suggests that one or more of them have been closely involved. They do not suggest any possible negative effects for either the military or for the local people from the interventions of the army in rural Ladakhi civilian life.

Cariappa, Mudera P., Eugene V. Bonventre and Bikash K. Mohanti. 2008. “Operation Sadbhavana: Winning Hearts and Minds in the Ladakh Himalayan Region.” Military Medicine 173(8): 749-753

Friday’s dramatic announcement from the Obama administration—that carbon dioxide and five other gases pose a significant human health risk—shows that the American government is finally getting concerned about global climate change. Legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and further U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, are likely to follow in the near future, despite the protests of corporate America.

The small island nations of the world, and particularly the tropical coral atolls, may or may not survive, depending on the speed with which the world’s seas continue to rise. The fate of the Ifaluk Islanders, and the people of numerous other low-lying islands, hangs in the balance on decisions made in world capitals.

Coincidentally, the Micronesian Seminar, a non-profit group known as MicSem, posted to its website last week a report on the effects of rising sea levels on the low-lying atolls such as Ifaluk in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). “High water in the Low Atolls,” by Francis X. Hezel, SJ, number 76 in the series “Micronesian Counselor,” is a carefully reasoned analysis of the effects of rising ocean levels in the FSM.

High ocean waters were a particular problem during the period of November 2007 through March 2008, when exceptionally high tides flooded the islands. Scientists attributed the problem, in part, to the closeness between the earth, moon and sun during that period and the spring tides that occur twice each month when those three bodies are in alignment. When those conditions repeated a year later, at the end of 2008, a significant storm system caused even higher tides, with their attendant wave and salt water damage.

Some politicians in the island nations, while urging world leaders to do more to stop global seas from rising, are also preparing their people for the very real possibility that they may have to abandon their lands and move elsewhere to survive. But at the present time, islanders are trying to cope with the damage caused by droughts, salt water flooding, and wave surges.

A major concern is the danger to agricultural crops. The MicSem report describes the damage from storm surges and waves in late 2007 to low-lying areas on various islands in the FSM. On some of the more mountainous islands, damage was confined to low-lying coastal regions, but on the coral atolls, the entire landscape has suffered.

Late in 2008, the outer islands of Yap state, including Ifaluk, reported extensive damage from waves and storm surges. The waves uprooted coconut trees along the shores, destroyed seawalls, eroded coastal areas, washed away private and public buildings, and swept debris and garbage inland. Probably the most severe damage has come from salt water intrusion into the taro plantings of the islanders. The report indicates that the taro crop on Ifaluk was virtually destroyed by the storms this year.

Taro is not the most highly preferred vegetable food in the FSM. Breadfruits are. But since breadfruit only ripens a couple times per year, it is only available for six or seven months out of twelve. Taro is the fall-back crop for the rest of the year. Often referred to as the potato of the Pacific, taro is mostly grown in pits in low, swampy ground. It requires fresh water around its roots, so salt water intrusion and storm surges tend to kill the plants, which take several years to replant and grow. The residents of islands such as Ifaluk, left with nearly 100 percent loss of their plantings, may have to wait about five years, free of storm surges, for their taro crops to come back again.

Building salt-water resistant containers for the taro patches with concrete and other building materials, such as some islanders have done, or growing the crops in raised beds, may not work on many of the more remote atolls. The construction materials are heavy and expensive. On some of the islands, residents continue to plant taro in their traditional pits. But the low-lying pits are especially subject to salt water intrusion from below. It is not clear if the people could afford to change, or if there will even be enough fresh rainwater to flush the saltwater out of the plantations. Rainfall has been diminishing in recent years and drought conditions have been developing in the islands.

Other problems also face the islanders on the small atolls. Transportation services provided by inter-island ships have become less reliable as costs of repairs and fuels escalate. The remote islands are now more isolated than they have been for many decades. Governments, faced with fiscal problems, are having trouble meeting educational and health commitments to their distant, constituent populations.

But the author of the report says there is no evidence—yet—to suggest that very many residents of the atolls are giving up and moving away to larger population centers. The outer atolls of Yap State in the FSM, which include Ifaluk, lost a total of only 500 people in the 11 year period from 1989 to 2000, and the atolls in other states of the FSM gained population during the same period. The people of the outer atolls, evidently, are not about to give up, unless they are forced to evacuate.

Francis Hezel urges island leaders to address the immediate issues that face the people, the most severe of which is the danger to taro cultivation. There are no quick fixes, but measures can and should be taken to protect the major food source of the islanders. “Unless we are willing to simply write off our outer islands, we must all be engaged in active planning on short and long-term strategies for the islands,” he writes. “This is essential if we hope to preserve the viability of life in the atolls that are so dependent on the crop that is being threatened.”

Most of the Birhor families in the Bokaro District of Jharkhand State have been unaware of their right to vote in the Indian state and national elections, held last Thursday and today. The Birhor villages mentioned in a recent newspaper article, Tulbul and Khakhra Basti, are remote—miles from the nearest city.

The 350 villagers have evidently never seen, in their communities, a member of parliament or a representative of any of the parties contesting the elections, though they do see an occasional government official. Not only are they ignorant of their right to vote, they are also unfamiliar with ballot boxes or voting machines, according to The Telegraph of Calcutta. Furthermore, they are unclear as to the purposes of an election.

The article quoted an elderly Birhor man: “We drink and be merry. What is an election? Some NGOs visit us often and ask whether we are having any problem. No one has asked us to vote.” The political rallies held in Gomia, a nearby town, have yet to reach the village level in that district.

A representative of one of the politicians defended the fact that they do not campaign in the villages. It was a waste of time, he said. The Birhor may well not bother to come into town to vote anyway, and they are hard to teach. A welfare officer added that his agency is trying to instruct the Birhor in the value of elections, but they have not had much success yet.

The villagers recently did receive a visit from the deputy commissioner of the Bokaro District, Satyendra Singh, when he distributed 35 kg of food grains. The district has recently become concerned about the health and welfare of their Birhor people.

A Canadian educator, who formed a consulting firm with her husband which focuses on training to lessen bullying among children, has been quite successful in developing programs for the Nunavut schools.

According to their website, Susan Buchanan, with her husband Mark Buchanan, founded the firm Clarior Consulting in order to “create and deliver products and services that improve skills, communication, and cooperation leading to successful outlooks.” The Nunavut press has praised Ms. Buchanan for her anti-bullying programs in the Inuit schools.

The village of Chesterfield Inlet, on the western shore of Hudson’s Bay, benefited from Ms. Buchanan’s skills over the past month. Her courses, which she has presented in numerous other Inuit schools, try to teach the importance of friendship, social values, and life skills to young people.

She feels that, given proper training, children can deal with and effectively reduce bullying, which has become a problem in the schools. Her work also helps children improve their interpersonal relationships, their learning skills, and their abilities to communicate.

The programs she offers include parents, school staff, and daycare providers as well as children—she emphasizes the importance of the entire community becoming involved with the bullying problem. She offers a workshop for parents on how to overcome bullying in the family. “This program works well with Inuit values, and students, educators and parents all relate to it well,” she said.

She told the reporter that bullying is a serious problem in many Canadian schools, and it has been getting worse. Formerly, girls had the higher rates of bullying, but recently it has been increasing among boys. She didn’t mind praising her program to the press. She observed that many Inuit parents have complimented her for improving the social environment in the schools. “They see their kids getting along better with others in both the school environment and the community in general,” she said.

Allan Pitcher, the principal of the Victor Sammurtok school in Chesterfield Inlet, where she has been working with the students and their surrounding community, praised the program. He looks forward to evaluating the results after some time has passed. “Even though it’s called a bullying program, it’s much broader because of its premise that if you don’t teach proper social skills, maybe what’s being classified as bullying is simply students not knowing how to act properly,” he stated.

Pitcher told the reporter that he was quite impressed by the way the course is presented, and he’s sure the students will benefit from it. He likes the fact that the program involves the whole community; he says the students are beginning to internalize the lessons. He feels that Ms. Buchanan’s work complements what the community is already doing to combat tendencies toward bullying. All students need assistance in developing their social skills, he feels, and a program like hers that focuses on developing them is really important.

A serious confrontation between farmers and pastoralists in the Rukwa District of Tanzania has left one man seriously wounded from a gunshot wound in his stomach.

According to a news report this past weekend in the Daily News of Tanzania, six sons in the family of Kilomela Shigela pastured about 2,000 cows on the lands of area farmers. The cattle trampled the fields, destroying acres of cash crops and foods such as groundnuts and legumes. The Rukwa Regional police commander, Isuto Mantage, told reporters that the farmers gathered to protest the destruction.

When they confronted the six pastoralists, the latter threatened to shoot them. Someone sought help from a nearby traditional militia man, who rushed to the scene. At that point, one of the young men shot the militia man in the stomach. Identified as Johana James, he was rushed to the Rukwa Regional hospital. Police were summoned, but by the time they arrived a couple hours later, the six youths had disappeared.

The police searched the compound of the elder Shigela and found, in one of his houses, a gun that appeared to be the one used in the shooting. The news story indicates that Mr. Shigela has seven wives and 72 children. Shigela admitted he illegally owned the weapon. As the reporter filed his story, the police were interviewing Shigela further at the Mpanda police station, and they were continuing their hunt for the six young men directly involved in the incident.

Roy Willis, in his fine book A State in the Making, offers some clarifications on the pastoral situation among the Fipa people. Historically, owning cattle in northern Ufipa, their traditional territory, was a privilege of royalty and highly favored, wealthy commoners. They were seen as symbols of wealth and status.

At the present time—at least as of the 1960s—cattle are primarily owned by the wealthier households, and they are normally not consumed for food unless they are dying anyway. Normally, people do not drink cow’s milk either, though in the past the cattle owners consumed a bit every day as part of a milk-drinking ceremony. The work of herding the cattle is done by boys, according to Willis; older men and women do not bother.

People in the rich Fipa households will slaughter their sheep and goats when social occasions call for the consumption of meat, but the poorer farmers do not own even those smaller livestock. Chickens are the only animals that are commonly owned by everyone. Willis emphasizes that, as of the mid-1960s when he was studying Fipa society, owning cattle was a way for the richer people to store their wealth.

Although Willis published his book in 1981, his research was done nearly 20 years earlier, so the situation in Ufipa may have changed considerably over the intervening decades. One might reasonably suspect, from clues in the news story last weekend, that an unfortunate arrogance has crept into at least that one wealthy family, so that they felt they had the right to trample on the crops of the poorer farmers.

Violence such as the news story relates did not seem to happen when Willis was there, but it is not really clear from the report if the people involved were Fipa or not. The incident occurred at the northern edge of the traditional Fipa territory, so the cattle herders may be from a different ethnic background.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Ju/’hoansi Reserve Invaded

Persecute the Pennsylvania Amish — and Compromise

Diamond Mining on G/wi Lands Delayed

Conditions that Foster Peacefulness in Polynesia

Sikkim Voters Today May Decide the Dam Issue

Operation Sadbhavana in Ladakh [journal article review]

Taro Crops Destroyed on Ifaluk

Birhor in Jharkhand Do Not Vote

Combating Bullying in Nunavut

Farmer/Rancher Violence in Ufipa

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