Peaceful Societies

Daniel Koehler has published three more installments in his blog about his filming adventures among the G/wi and G//ana San people of Botswana.

His blog post published on April 22 described a trip he took from New Xade, the resettlement town he has been living in, out to the traditional community in the desert called Metsiamanong, located in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. He described an earlier visit to Metsiamanong in January 2015.

He and his assistants had left New Xade intending on driving to the traditional settlement so he could do some more filming as part of his Fulbright National Geographic Fellowship project. He is producing a film on the G/wi and the G//ana people, both in their traditional desert life and in the more modern resettlement community of New Xade, located to the west of the CKGR.

The transmission in the truck they were driving began banging ominously, shortly after they crossed into the CKGR. Then the truck simply stopped. Mosodi, one of the people with him, announced that it was the gearbox. Someone said it was 45 kilometers, or 27 miles, to Molapo, the nearest San community of any size where he could seek help. Since there was no cell phone service in the desert, and he apparently didn’t have a working satellite phone, he and Kitsiso, a friend who was with him, decided to walk across the desert to seek help. It was either that or wait in hopes that someone might come along the rarely-used road.

As the two men trudged along, they saw lots of wildlife, including antelope, squirrels, a fox, and a green mamba slithering along the branch of a tree. They appreciated the beauty of the desert, and Koehler enjoyed not having the burden of carrying a camera. It was an opportunity to walk along and enjoy the desert. However, he writes that he was hoping to make it into Molapo before nightfall when the lions and other desert predators would become more active.

When they ran out of water in the bottles they were carrying, they found a puddle that had not dried up from a rain earlier in the day. Kitsiso taught him to gently blow on the surface of the water to clear the dirt away before drinking. They arrived in Molapo safely later that night. He writes that he learned flexibility during that trip—and repeatedly throughout his filming experience in Botswana.

Koehler’s blog post of May 15 focuses on a young San man whom he had met and introduced in an earlier post, named Ketelelo. The man had decided that getting an education was to be his future, and he had clearly worked hard, despite many obstacles, to achieve it. He described to Koehler the impression of hopelessness among many of the San in New Xade, people who have no dignity, no identity, and no land.

Ketelelo had decided that his future did not lie with hunting and gathering as his ancestors had done—his goals were to be reached through education. Koehler’s quote from the words of Ketelelo are dramatic: “‘We are not primitive,’ He told me with a glimmer in his eyes. ‘We are people with hopes. We are people with dreams. If opportunities can be unveiled in front of us, we can take them.’”

During his visit to New Xade, Ketelelo showed the author a stack of certificates representing academic honors he had been awarded. He told the American that education was the way for the San to improve their housing and food shortages, to solve drug and alcohol abuse issues, and to better their lives in general.

While other San have run into numerous obstacles in their paths to obtaining some education, Ketelelo firmly expressed his conviction to Koehler about its importance. He was the first San person to graduate at the head of his class at the senior secondary school. He is optimistic that he won’t be the last.

Koehler’s most recent blog post, published on June 27, summarized the major aspects of his long stay among the San. He wrote that he would be returning to the U.S. shortly to be part of some orientation programs for next year’s crop of Fulbright National Geographic fellows. But he will then return to Botswana for a couple more months to finish editing his film.

That last essay is quite graceful. He describes his indebtedness to his friends Ketelelo, Kitsiso, Opaletswe, and others. He acknowledges the work of his assistant, translator, and field producer, Kebabonye, with whom he has been working hard on a pair of laptops to put together and edit over 300 hours of filming into what is shaping up into a 45-minute working draft of a documentary film.

He urges readers to keep a watch out for a new Facebook page for the film when it is ready for distribution, as well as for a preview of some footage from the documentary he is in the last stages of producing.

The Nicholas Stoltzfus Homestead in Wyomissing, a suburb of the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, hosted an Amish sing on Tuesday evening last week. The facility features the restored home of an Amish pioneer who settled near Reading nearly 250 years ago.

Two pages from the Ausbund, the Amish song book On Wednesday, the Reading Eagle, the daily newspaper of the metropolitan area in Berks County, carried a news story by Bruce Posten about the event. According to his report, over 100 guests and Amish singers, most of whom came from Lancaster County, took part in the cultural activities that focused on the Amish singing.

Calvin Kurtz, who serves as the chair of the Heritage Room Committee of the Homestead, said that the public sing was intended as a communal event rather than a performance of Amish songs. Kurtz also presented a DVD of “The Stoltzfus Story.”

The reporter described Amish singing as a “low, slow chant somewhat different from what is thought of as melodic singing.” He added that the hymn “Our Father God, Thy Name We Praise” is called the “Loblied.” It sometimes takes 15 minutes for the Amish to complete the four verses because of the slow, lengthy way they sing it. It is normally the second hymn sung at Amish worship services.

Kraybill, Nolt and Weaver-Zercher (2010) explain the importance of singing in Amish society and its place in their worship services in greater detail than the newspaper did. They write that the Ausbund, the German-language hymnal used by the Amish, has 140 hymns which were mostly written in the 16th and 17th centuries during the period of persecution of the Anabaptist people. The hymns often convey a sense of martyrdom and the need to remain firm in periods of persecution. Some of the hymns were, in fact, written by Anabaptists awaiting execution in European prisons.

But the Ausbund does more than simply recount the history of martyrdom. It also instructs the Amish about the rewards, and the demands, of worshipping Christ—and the nature of the Christian faith. The authors provide the text of a hymn in English translation and write, “these blood-soaked hymns anchor Amish people in the faith of their spiritual ancestors, women and men who heeded God’s call in the most perilous circumstances (p.25).”

Kraybill and his colleagues provide the context for the hymns in the bi-weekly Sunday morning worship services, which are hosted in the homes of different families. With about 200 people assembled by 9:00 A.M. in one of the Amish homes, a man calls out a number, rather quietly, from the middle of the group. He says it just loudly enough for others to hear, and then he starts to sing, in a slow, drawn out manner, the hymn he has chosen to begin the service.

Others pick up the hymnals scattered about the room in order to join him in the singing. They do not use any instruments, and their hymnals print just the words. Everyone knows the tunes. The song leader does not stand up or lead the singing in any other way. His spirit of yielding, hisGelassenheit, would not allow him the presumption of attempting to actively lead others.

Everyone sings, in unison, melodies that have passed down through the generations. They sing in a style that strikes outsiders as agonizingly slow. Professional musicians refer to the singing style as melismatic, but it strikes many observers as similar to the chanting of the Torah, or to Gregorian chant.

The singing captures the spirit of Gelassenheit, a concept that implies a yielding to God—and to the will of others in the church district. The singing suggests to the congregation a one-ness in God, an acceptance of His will and His timing. It reminds the congregation that they need to be resigned to the will of God and to the rules of the district. They need to let go of control and of material things, and to yield to circumstances.

The second hymn in the service, as the Reading Eagle reporter noted, is always the Loblied. It is a praise hymn, which emphasizes a request to God to bless the preachers and to incline the worshippers to receive the forthcoming message from God that the preacher chosen for the morning will deliver shortly. Singing the Loblied may take from 18 to 25 minutes, depending on the congregation, since the slow pace of the singing emphasizes the idea that everyone is yielding, rather than forcing things to go their own ways. The authors summarize that the worship service is essential for reinforcing Amish beliefs.

The singing reminds them that they are in the process of yielding to God and to one another. “The spirit of Gelassenheit brings a sense of contentment and harmony as members worship together,” the authors emphasize (p.60).

The Ausbund, the Amish hymnal, is not only essential in fostering a reiteration of Amish values during their bi-weekly church services, it also plays a central role in the occasional choice of a new minister of a district. According to Kraybill (1989), the leaders of the Amish churches, their ministers, are chosen for life by a process that combines nominations and lot.

The process works as follows. At the end of a worship service, men and women file past a deacon and each whispers the name of a nominee for minister. The names are passed along to the bishop, who is attending the service. Any man who is nominated by three or more people is included in a drawing. Usually six or seven men from the congregation will be nominated. A slip of paper bearing a Bible verse is inserted into one of six or seven hymnals, and each of the nominees is handed one of them, at random.

The man who opens his book and discovers that the verse is in his Ausbund is overwhelmed to realize that the Lord has just chosen him for the life-long, added responsibility of service to the community. The divine choice prevents any quarreling with the leadership selection process, and it reaffirms the unity, stability, authority and peacefulness of their community.

The Global Peace Index for 2015, which evaluates several measures indicating the peacefulness of 162 countries, was released by the Institute for Economics and Peace on June 17. The 117 page report is available as a PDF on the website of the Institute.

Global Peace Index 2015 While the GPI surveys the peacefulness of nation states rather than peaceful societies, the two are certainly allied concepts so it is worth ruminating about the latest in their series of annual reports. It is quickly clear that the current document does not just use reliable quantified data to evaluate the commitment to peacefulness by countries. It also summarizes the data and draws a variety of conclusions about global and regional trends. It is well worth a careful perusal.

For instance, it reports that over the past eight years, the average score for all nations covered by the reports has deteriorated slightly. In essence, the world has become, overall, a slightly less peaceful place. The Middle East and North Africa region, not surprisingly, has declined significantly over the time period—think Islamic State, Syria, and Libya. While the record of violence in 86 countries has risen over the eight-year time span, 76 others have become more peaceful.

Dipping around in the report turns up some interesting surprises. One is that Norway has dropped from its 6th place in 2014 to 17th place in 2015. Norway had been number 5, 6 or 7 in the annual rankings since 2008. It is still among the top group in the entire survey, but the reason for the drop is curious. Norway is becoming an important supplier of advanced military hardware to other nations.

According to the report, “Norway, a country better known for its support of global humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts, has also had an increase in its militarization score. The increase has been driven by exports of air defense systems, ships and advanced weaponry (p.40).” Table 19 in the 2015 report, which follows that grim statement, ranks the “Ten Countries with the Most Significant Deterioration in Militarization Scores, 2008-2015.” Norway is third from the worst, just behind Chad and Syria, and worse than Afghanistan and Iraq.

Norway is famed for its annual Nobel Peace Prize awards, its championing of peace processes, and its relative absence of internal violence (Bonta 2013). However, the amount of crime in the country, as well as the murder rate, is rising. Of more interest than statistics are the attitudes of the Norwegians toward conflicts and violence. They avoid having close social relations with their neighbors in order to minimize the possibility of confrontations.

The Norwegians are intensely opposed to violence and crime. They constantly discuss and protest violence in their country, and while their rate of violence may be increasing, they still treasure the peacefulness in their country. Be that as it may, if the GPI is correct, they also appear to have a cynical attitude toward selling advanced weapons to other parts of the world.

Searching through the Google News Index and dipping into scores of news stories about the current GPI shows that people, or at least the media, in many countries worldwide take the rankings seriously. Many of the news stories report that Iceland ranked first this year, that the United States ranked in 94th place (up from 101 in 2014), and so forth. A few reports provide some interesting additional comments.

One news report quotes Matt Wuerkler, an editorial cartoonist for Politico, as saying about the current GPI that journalists typically cover exciting violence rather than dull peacefulness. They are to blame for striving to appeal to ever-larger audiences who are attracted to violent events. He suggested, in a forum held upon the release of the GPI, that the focus on violence by the media harms everyone since it reinforces stereotypes that the way to control conflicts is through violent means.

The same forum also included former US Ambassador Rick Barton, who commented on what he referred to as the “silent majority” epidemic. Most people worldwide crave peace and oppose violence, he suggested, but they seem to accept the solutions advocated by their governments, of solving conflicts with warfare. He encouraged people to search for nonviolent means of solving conflicts and increasing peacefulness.

Meni Mbugha, a Congolese man, has launched a career in Kinshasa designing fabrics based on the traditional art of the Mbuti, which they draw on bark cloth fabricated from trees. He learned about the traditional bark cloth art from his interactions with the Mbuti, and in return he is attempting to assist them in more effectively producing their own art for sale to tourists.

A news story last Wednesday, published on a website that focuses on news from the D.R. Congo and neighboring African countries, is a French translation, with modest changes, of the original English version published by Agence France-Presse in May 2014. The story described the way Mr. Mbugha, himself a Nande, prints fabric creations that are then turned into scarves, jackets, skirts and dresses to sell to tourists. Working in a small shop in Kinshasa, Mr. Mbugha draws his creations on a computer, the news story reports, before transferring them to fabric.

Mbugha, who is 33, was born into a Congolese family living in eastern France, one of four children of a father who was a nutritionist and a mother who was a housewife. When he was six, the family returned to the D.R. Congo, then called Zaire. The Nande, who live in the same general region of Congo as the Mbuti, traditionally had a close relationship with the Efe, another pygmy people.

Mbugha’s parents were not happy with his inclination, at first, to express his creative gifts in dance, then in styling. He studied computing for three years before enrolling in the fine arts at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Kinshasa. He became convinced that there is a connection between protecting the forest and fashion.

At that point in his life, in 2007-2008, he met an Mbuti family that had fled to Kinshasa from the militias, abuses and violence in the Epulu area of the Ituri Forest, in northeastern Congo. The family shared a book of photos with Mbugha that showed their traditional bark cloth drawings. He wondered why he couldn’t use those motifs on his fabric creations.

In 2011, he was able to visit Epulu and discovered that the Mbuti express their worldviews on the fabrics they make from the bark of the Ficus trees. Using red, yellow, and black pigments, Mbuti women depict on the bark cloths images based on the local flora and fauna. They are used in rituals and ceremonies, and the bark cloths are popular sale items to tourists and outside collectors. Mbugha felt that if the Mbuti could use fabric instead of bark cloth, they could make better money from the tourist trade.

He launched a brand of clothing in Kinshasa in 2012 called Vivuya, the funds from which he hopes will support his plans to launch a project called “Ndura,” which means “forest” in the Kibila language of Congo. He expects the project to give the Mbuti an additional way of earning money. He prepared an exhibition in Kinshasa at the French Cultural Institute and hoped, later, to have one in Kisangani, a large city in eastern Congo and nearer to Epulu. The exhibitions will hopefully promote an awareness of the arts of the Mbuti.

The bark cloth made by the Mbuti has been the subject of a fair number of publications, such as one in 2007 that analyzed the artistic merits of 14 different bark cloth paintings. It described the techniques the Mbuti use for making the cloth out of fig trees, the preparations of their pigments, and the ways they paint the cloth.

A book reviewed in 2006 described the role of the bark cloth art in the research work of Colin Turnbull, a famous American anthropologist, and Anne Eisner, an American woman painter who lived at the same time as Turnbull in Epulu, then called Camp Putnam. For both people, studying the Mbuti bark cloth paintings was an important facet of their work.

Turnbull went so far as to describe the importance of bark cloth in their society. More than an artistic endeavor, bark cloths were an essential element in introducing their infants to the peacefulness of forest life. In one of his articles, Turnbull (1978) maintained that a few days after birth, which normally would take place in the forest, the Mbuti mother would bring her infant out of her hut enveloped in some fresh, sweet-smelling bark cloth which she had made just a few days before. It was designed to be pleasing and smooth enough for comfort, but rough enough to introduce the child to the protection of the forest.

“Some Mbuti assert,” Turnbull (1978) writes, “that the first Mbuti were indeed born out of trees, so what could be more reassuring to the child than the smell and texture of a tree?” The anthropologist continues, “Once made, the mother may decorate the cloth with free-flowing designs painted with a twig dipped in the dark juice of Kangay, the gardenia fruit (p.170).”

The nature of the whole pregnancy and birth cycle, Turnbull continued, was a critical component in developing peacefulness in the child, since it initiated him or her into a strong faith, reinforced continuously throughout life, about the goodness of the world. The child would grow, in the traditional environment of the Ituri Forest, in total confidence that he or she would have support from both the human and the natural environments. Aggressiveness is not learned at the breast in a situation such as that, particularly when the child is swaddled in decorated bark cloth.

Bobo Tsamkxao #Oma, Chief of the Ju/’hoansi Traditional Authority, blamed teachers and school authorities for the failures of many Ju/’hoansi kids in their schools. He decried the fact that they did little to motivate the children to do their schoolwork.

The chief spoke at a public meeting along with Anna Hipondoka, the Deputy Minister of Education, Arts and Culture of Namibia, who was visiting the community on a familiarization tour. Only four out of 87 grade 12 students in the Tsumkwe Senior Secondary School passed in 2014. According to a news report about the meeting last week, Mr. #Oma particularly blamed the teachers for the high failure rate. In 2014, the school ranked last in the entire nation among senior secondary schools.

#Oma blamed the school boards as well as the teachers for not communicating with the parents about the absenteeism of the children. The problem, he said, was that the parents were off in the bush gathering food and they only learn that their children are no longer attending school when they return to their communities. The teachers and school boards should get to know the parents and communicate with them more effectively, he argued, so that when children are absent, they can contact them. He said the education system is effective enough, but those who are supposed to implement the schooling are failing.

He identified some specific issues. He alleged that the teachers are going out drinking with the kids at the cuca shops in Tsumkwe. He also claimed that the adults are embarrassing the students in front of others by calling them dirty. They needed to understand, he said, that many of the Ju/’hoansi are very poor, and if the kids are shamed in front of others, they’ll stay away from their schools. Members of the community who attended the meeting strongly supported his views.

Afterwards, Ms. Hipondoka met with the teachers of the secondary school and asked them to set examples for the students by not drinking with them. However, she did praise the ones who taught under trying conditions in the rural schools.

According to another news story about the meeting, Ms. Hipondoka said that the parents told her the reason so many of their children drop out of schools in the region is that they are located so far from their homes. Some children attending one of the primary schools have to walk about 50 km to reach school, where they stay during the week. When they walk home for the weekends, they are often too tired to walk back to school again for the next school week. She also complained about the lack of adequate hostel facilities and the lack of a good supply of drinking water at the some of the schools.

A news report four years ago told a similar story: of parents who generally don’t care much if their kids get an education, of discouraged, poorly trained teachers, and of an education system in disarray. The poor education of the children in the Ju/’hoansi society has again gotten high-level attention, but it is not clear from any of these news story what really concrete measures are being taken.

Scholarly literature, particularly the outstanding recent book by Biesele and Hitchcock (2013), provides the context for understanding the problems. In some of the peaceful societies, such as that of the Ju/’hoansi, giving and receiving networks are extremely important, so many parents try to raise their children within that spirit.

In that context, the traditional Ju/’hoansi educational system that served them well for millennia emphasized an oral-learning process, focusing primarily on creativity and learning through hands-on experiences at the group level, rather than on achievements by individuals as formal schooling often requires. Notwithstanding that issue, Biesele and Hitchcock (2013) argue, the Ju/’hoansi have significantly improved their schools over the past 30 years.

In their book, they quote Mr. #Oma’s reactions in 1987 to the schooling situation he saw at that time. He expressed utter discouragement because the Ju/’hoansi children then feared going to schools because they were beaten at them. He said it was discouraging to see the children skipping schools because they only represented pain to them. In contrast, the schools are much better now.

Biesele and Hitchcock (2013) describe dramatic improvements in the Ju/’hoansi schools, facilities that they opened themselves and over which they maintain community control. In contrast to the news stories of 2011 and of last week, the two scholars maintain in their book that the five schools started and maintained by a Program called the Village Schools Project have been enthusiastically supported by the Ju/’hoansi communities and that they are basically a success.

The Nubians of Egypt continue to press for a return to their ancient homeland along the Nile as a solution to their yearnings for stability, prosperity, and peaceful village relations. Most of them were forced to leave their communities in southern Egypt and northern Sudan in 1964 when the Aswan Dam was completed.

The Egyptian government at the time moved the Nubians of their country into inadequate resettlement communities called New Nubia, without much if any access to fertile fields or income opportunities. They have suffered from the traumas of the enforced exile ever since and have struggled to cope with it.

Nubian leaders met on June 13 in Aswan in an attempt to foster legislation that would lead to the establishment of their long-sought resettlement into desirable areas. According to an article last week in the Cairo Post, their leaders are getting impatient with the slow responses of the government. Ahmed Azmy, leader of the Nubian General Federation, said, “we are putting on hold all our [negotiations] with the cabinet over our resettlement. We will oppose any draft law being issued without getting back to us.”

According to the news story, Ibrahim el-Heneidy, Minister of Transitional Justice, announced at a news conference on June 2 that a unified draft law on the resettlement of the Nubians is being prepared, as requested by the cabinet. The government is required, according to the constitution passed early last year, to consult the Nubians and to take into account “the cultural and environmental patterns of the local [Nubian] community.”

This website has reported over the years on the anguish that the diaspora has caused for the Nubian people, plus the pleas and negotiations that have been attempted on their behalf. A recent journal article by Fatin Abbas picks up on these troubles by describing many scenes of alienation, violence, and despair among the Nubians in Egypt as portrayed by Idris Ali, a prominent Nubian writer, in his work Dongola: A Novel of Nubia. Abbas characterizes the novel as an effective portrayal of the discrimination that Egyptians focus on the Nubian minority in their country, but she also describes the gender violence that exists within the Nubian society itself. The two seem to parallel one another.

Abbas provides a good overview of Nubian society and its literature within the broader context of Egyptian and Arabic culture. It is essential to remember that the Nubians are quite distinct from the Arab majority of Egypt. Idris Ali makes it clear that he identifies with the Nubians, even though he writes in Arabic rather than in the Nubian language.

In essence, Ali is suggesting that the Nubians have an ambivalent attitude toward the Arab Middle East. They share the same faith, Islam, as most of the Arabs, and they are politically tied to modern Egypt—at least the ones who live within the Egyptian state. But they hold a very different sense of themselves and their identity from the Arabs. Their traditional territory in southern Egypt and northern Sudan is at the periphery of the Arab world.

Abbas argues that there are basically two periods of Nubian literature: before the closing of the dam and afterwards, when the consciousness of a diaspora began to sink in among them. The more recent tradition, which includes the works of Ali, began in the 1980s and 1990s and emphasizes a feeling of loss, of displacement, and of a catastrophe of enormous proportions. The Nubian authors of the post-dam era typically insist on the separateness of their identity as Nubians. They have been affected by the racism, bigotry, and discrimination they have experienced from Arab Egyptians.

Dongola exemplifies that marginalization and degradation, but at the same time it provides a counter-narrative that insists on the vitality of the Nubian heritage. Furthermore, the novel shows that the Nubians are not just persecuted by the police and other state actors: racist attitudes against them pervade Egyptian society, at least in this novel.

The novel describes the events in the life of Awad Shalali, his wife, Halima, and his mother, Hushia. It is organized into three sections. The first, “Separated Man,” begins in Cairo where Awad is wandering the streets a few days after he has been released from prison. He’d been arrested years before because he had opposed the regime of President Nasser. As Awad aimlessly drifts about, the narrative itself wanders between ancient history and the present, often leaving the reader unclear as to where things stand. This aimlessness reflects the essence of Awad’s challenge to the Egyptian state—and perhaps the essence of Nubian post-dam existence.

When he returns to southern Egypt, Awad is summoned by the security police. An officer demands to know his name, so Awad answers with descriptions of Nubian history. He gives the officer the name of a Nubian pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the 25th dynasty instead of his own name, subtly challenging the popular Egyptian discourse that sometimes refers to the Nubians as slaves and savages.

The second section, “The Trial of Awad Shalali,” documents the hardships that the mother of the protagonist has suffered since her son was arrested and while he travels abroad after his release from prison. Hushia is living in poverty, awaiting the return of her son to their resettlement village in New Nubia.

The last section, “The Sorrows of Hushia and Halima,” focuses mostly on the trials of Halima, abandoned by her husband while he wanders about. By this third section, Dongola has shifted entirely to a feminine perspective, effectively describing Halima’s struggles against the oppressive masculine domination of Nubian men such as her father and her husband. It suggests that Nubian women have to bear a burden of discrimination and oppression more even than men do. They are left in the villages to raise their children in poverty, dependent on inadequate remittances from husbands and fathers who are employed elsewhere.

Halima is portrayed as subject to violence in the village, much as Awad is elsewhere in Egypt. Her father throws her down, bites her, puts his hand around her neck, and threatens to beat her, or even to kill her, because she disobeys him. This violence parallels the experiences of Awad in the first section of the novel while he was in prison, and the novel makes the parallel relationships quite clear. The words and phrases used to describe the master/slave relationship of the state to the Nubians are then used to define the role of the Nubian man to the Nubian woman. She is the real victim of oppression, Assad argues, more so than her husband is. The Nubian patriarchy dominates women as much as the Egyptian state violates the Nubian people.

Jennings (2009) presents a somewhat different take on the post-dam, patriarchal Nubian society. She indicates that many Nubians resent the disregard and disrespect that they often feel they get from the Arab Egyptians. However, in the traditional Nubian village, although women were dependent on men for money, men were just as dependent on women for the upkeep and running of the home. Furthermore, the villagers considered the spheres of men and women to be roughly equal in importance, Jennings (2009) insists.

Abbas, Fatin. 2014. “Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and Nubian Diasporic Identity in Idris Ali’s Dongola: A Novel of Nubia.” Research in African Literatures 45(3): 147-166

Last week, The Star from Malaysia published a news story about the rights to forest lands claimed by the Semai and the other Orang Asli societies in that country. The indigenous peoples believe that they have the right to communal ownership of the forested lands on which they have traditionally hunted, fished, gathered produce, practiced shifting cultivation, and buried their dead. In contrast, the government has insisted that the Orang Asli only have the right to land that they live on and that they actually use for permanent agriculture.

The issue is in the news once again, according to The Star, because the national cabinet is expected to make a decision in a week or two about implementing a report. Evidently, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, known in that country by its local acronym as Suhakam, conducted extensive hearings and issued a document in 2013 entitled “Report of the National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous People.”

According to a news report from 2013, the Sukaham agency took 18 months to complete a nationwide series of hearings. Its report includes 18 recommendations related to customary land rights. Datuk Paul Low, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, received the Sukaham report on August 7, 2013, and said that it would be carefully reviewed by a wide range of stakeholders, agencies, and ministries. “There will be no specific timeframe for the review as it contains a great deal of recommendations. These will be brought to the attention of the parties involved to facilitate the best interests of Orang Asli,” he said.

The indigenous individuals quoted by that news story expressed eagerness to have the report approved. However, the government reacted by appointing a national task force to review the recommendations. The task force was to be chaired by Dr. Mohd Tap Salleh, the President of the Malaysian Institute of Integrity.

Last week, the Task Force issued its recommendations, according to The Star, and Paul Low indicated it is now up to the cabinet to take action. The thrust of the current news story is to quote a variety of expert opinions about the issues related to indigenous land rights. Among them, Dr. Juli Edo, himself a Semai, was quoted at length in the news report. Edo is an associate professor at the Universiti Malaya Centre for Malaysian Indigenous Studies.

One issue that concerns the Semai, and the rest of the Orang Asli peoples, he said, is that the indigenous peoples claim their land includes the communal forests on which they have their hunting areas but the government is reluctant to let go of forestlands. Another issue, according to Edo, is that the Orang Asli have been offered 0.8 ha to 2.2 ha of land per household, while another government program designed to distribute land to landless Malays, called the Felda scheme, has offered those people 4.0 ha of land per household. Edo emphasized that the forestland includes sites sacred to the indigenous people, and it is essential for them to retain it to preserve their social history and culture.

Dr. Colin Nicholas, Coordinator of the Centre for Orang Asli Concerns, said that a major issue for the indigenous societies concerns the invasions by outsiders into Orang Asli villages. He named several Batek communities where individual Malays had applied for lands and then been allowed to settle in their villages. He indicated that the Orang Asli normally flee when other people take their lands, but sometimes, when they have nowhere else to go, they will take a stand and fight. He didn’t say which of their societies would resist such aggressive actions.

But The Star reports that when a private company invaded the traditional lands of Kampung Senta, a Semai community in Perak state, the Semai resisted. The company took the Semai to court, suing them for trespass, since it had deeds to prove their own ownership of the Semai property. The Semai countersued in court, claiming 2,206 ha of traditional lands under the right of common law and customary title. That Semai community is evidently unwilling to flee, as others might have done.

Dr. Edo concludes by urging the government to declare all the remaining forest lands claimed by the Orang Asli as theirs under the provisions of the Aboriginal Peoples Act. “When the area is reserved, it’ll be marked on the map. Otherwise, people will just apply for the land because it is unmarked,” Edo said.

Canadian photographer Tim Smith was roaming the prairies near his home in Brandon, Manitoba, when he spotted a group of Hutterite women working in one of the colony gardens. After he stopped to take some pictures of them, one of the young women pulled a phone out of her dress and took a photo of him taking pictures of them. He was fascinated that they had access to mobile phones.

Map of SW Manitoba He visited their colony, Deerboine, located about 25 miles to the northwest of Brandon, the second largest city in the province and about 140 miles west of Winnipeg, the provincial capital. He was given permission to continue visiting and taking pictures. James Estrin, a photographer who works for the New York Times, described in his Times blog last Thursday Smith’s successes in developing a photo journal of Deerboine and several other nearby Hutterite colonies.

Mr. Smith commented that while the Deerboine minister, Tom Hofer, was not really interested in generating publicity, he was favorably inclined to letting the outside world know more about life inside the colonies. Smith gradually became friends with the Hutterites as he visited them again and again. After about six months of visiting, he learned that Mr. Hofer’s wife had just died in an automobile accident. Smith attended the funeral, sensed the grief of the colony, and found that he became much closer to the people afterwards.

According to the New York Times writer, Smith has visited Deerboine and the other colonies in that area of Manitoba hundreds of times, sometimes including his own wife and son in his visits. He is fascinated by the similarities, as well as the differences, between urban Canadian habits—he’s a native of Winnipeg—and the rural lives of the Hutterites.

He notes that in the colonies, people strive to conform: the men and women dress more or less alike in the clothing made by colony women. But he has observed instances of self-expression, particularly among the young people. He spotted brightly-colored hair clips, a hoodie, pink sneakers—articles the young people have bought in town. Smith indicates that colonies that are allowing the use of smartphones are finding the devices to be useful for colony businesses, but they are also fostering connections with the outside world.

The photos he includes in his own website—over 50 of them show his Hutterite friends—depict the daily lives of the people as only good photographs can do. They are dated from 2009 to 2015, and they range from charming to interesting to really moving. The first picture shows six children, four girls and two boys, leaping around on a huge pile of large, round hay bales, a late afternoon rainbow arching over their heads. Many of the photos show children playing, working, praying with the adults, and living much as children do everywhere.

Smith organizes his photos in his website into two groups, “Hutterites of Manitoba” and “Growing up Hutterite.” The first group includes pictures of Hutterites working hard together, socializing, having fun, and sharing family life. The spirit of most of the 25 or so images in the group are people doing things with one another.

For instance, in that first group, a couple photos show the elderly couple Ruth and John Waldner. One shows them praying before eating lunch, and Mr. Smith’s informative caption tells us that Ruth has dementia. In the second photo, he is tucking her into bed for an afternoon nap, and they are looking at one another affectionately. The photo captures beautifully, epitomizes, a lifetime of harmony together, under the umbrella of colony life and support.

The second group, “Growing up Hutterite,” concentrates on children and young people in the colonies. One photo shows five children playing in a colony swimming pond. Due to the shirts and bathing suits they are wearing, they look like any kids in mainstream society having fun. Another photo of young adults arm wrestling includes a number of young men and women gathered around a table, all grinning with the enjoyment of the contest.

And, to single out one more, Smith captured a priceless moment as a youngster runs to catch a Pekin duck in a narrow pen. The duck runs with his beak wide open and the boy is close behind, running with his mouth open too. Smith provides helpful captions under all his pictures. This one reads, “Simeon Wurtz tries to corner a duck while helping with the slaughter. Children are taught to pull their weight on the colony at an early age. Deerboine Colony – 2010.”

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a summary of its final report last week, which urged Canadians to find ways of reconciling with indigenous people who were harmed by their forced attendance at residential schools. News accounts of the unveiling of the long-anticipated report emphasized that the 94 points in the summary represent the start of a healing process for many Inuit individuals and communities.

The TRC report summarizes testimonies it received from over 6,000 First Nation, Metis, and Inuit survivors of residential schools, people who described their suffering from the emotional and mental abuse, physical and sexual harm, and deprivation and discrimination they had received while in the schools. Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the commission, said that the report makes 94 recommendations for governments at all levels to take action. He urged Canadians to accept them and to find ways of reconciling with the people affected by the abuses.

Inuit leaders were similarly positive. Cathy Towtongie, President of Nunavut Tunngavik, Inc., an organization that advocates for the Inuit, said, according to one news report, “it is of vital importance that Justice Sinclair’s report, which details the horrible realities of residential school[s], becomes part of the conversation in all Canadian households.”

She urged Canadians to learn about the abuses that occurred in the institutions, “in order to better understand the lasting impacts and legacy that residential schools continue to have on a large percentage of this country’s Aboriginal population.” She said that Canadians must find ways of working together to heal from the abuses of the past.

The Makivuk Corp., which represents the Inuit of northern Quebec, also welcomed the report by the TRC. The document “opened the flood gate” on the concerns that have disturbed the Nunavimmiut residents who have survived the residential schools. The abuses of the past have been a major factor in producing the violence, unemployment, suicides, and other social dysfunctions, Makivik indicated on June 2.

Makivuk president Jobie Tukkiapik said that it is now time to change from “apology to action.” He was referring to the apology issued by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008, and said that it was time to start the recovery process. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Not all Canadian Inuit were included in the reconciliation process, however. The Inuit residential schools in Labrador had been established before the province of Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949, so Prime Minister Harper’s apology omitted them. Separately, about 1,000 survivors of Inuit residential schools in that province have filed class-action suits against the provincial government, the Moravian Mission, and the International Grenfell Association.

Another news report last week indicates that Terry Audla, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an NGO representing over 50,000 Inuit, agrees with Justice Sinclair that the residential schools perpetrated a type of cultural genocide on the indigenous people. “It was atrocious what happened,” he said. He urged people to “work toward national understanding and reconciliation among all Canadians.”

He suggested that the history of the residential school system should be part of the curriculum in all Canadian schools, to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again. He condemned the ways the indigenous children in the residential schools were violently punished, abused from speaking their own languages, and neglected even when they were dying from tuberculosis and other diseases.

News stories three years ago described in some detail the horrors that the Canadian residential schools perpetrated on the indigenous peoples. The full report will be issued later in the year after it has been translated into other languages.

A Peace Corps volunteer, who only identifies herself as “Dr. Rosemary,” has just visited Ifaluk Island, an experience that she briefly describes in a blog entry posted on June 2, 2015. She includes many pictures with her blog posts about her year in the Yap State of Micronesia, which began in August 2014. Her visit to Ifaluk was part of a trip beginning on May 13 to the Outer Islands of Yap state.

Flower in My Ear

Dr. Rosemary spent much of her day on Ifaluk examining women who had female concerns. After she taught the woman health assistant on the island how to do a clinical breast exam, they then examined about 30 women who came to them in the course of a long day.

Fortunately, she had some time to tour the island, guided by a young girl who went with her to the elementary school and through the village. It was a very hot, humid, tropical day. One of the highlights of her visit occurred when Joe, a Health Assistant from Lamotrek, another nearby island, suggested that she might want to walk to the men’s house and “pay homage to the chief.”

It was clearly intended as a joke on her, since she evidently already knew that the central support pole of the men’s house is decorated, from top to bottom, with a carved turtle, a lizard, and an erect human phallus. Dr. Rosemary asked the chief if she would be allowed to take a picture of the post, which he agreed to (see her photo no. 10 of the 13 she posted with that day’s blog entry).

Others had told her that if she did get to visit the chief and she did take a picture of the totem pole, it would bring her bad luck, or at least it would represent a serious cultural breach. Dr. Rosemary writes that since it was OK with the chief, she felt it would be fine for her to take the picture.

It is not clear from her blog entry if she was aware of the myth surrounding the wooden phallus and the fact that the erect penis on the Ifaluk men’s house is a symbol of peacefulness on the island. Burrows (1952) provides the story quite succinctly (p.19-20) while Burrows book Flower in My Ear (1963), p.71-77, gives more details.

Legends on Ifaluk tell of violent periods in the distant, mythic, warrior past. In one of the major myths, a chief had visited a nearby island, Woleai, where he had married a woman and had a child. But he had been beaten there and nearly killed because of a quarrel. He managed to survive, escaped back to Ifaluk, and called a general meeting of all the men on his island.

He gave a brief speech and dropped his loincloth with the statement that if his penis pointed toward the other island, they should go to war and kill everyone there except his spouse and child, whom he had specially marked with distinctive wristbands.

When his erection did, in fact, point toward Woleai, the Ifaluk men went to war and killed everyone on that island as the chief had directed. In 1947, when Burrows visited, the front post of the men’s house on Ifaluk had an 18-inch wooden phallus mounted on a supporting beam. It pointed, of course, straight at Woleai. The phallus is clearly still there in 2015.

But there is a significant difference between the founding mythology of the Ifaluk and that of many other societies. The Ifaluk Islanders decided to get over their violent past. One of Burrows’ informants, named Tom, made it clear to the visiting scholar that the events described in the story had occurred long ago. “‘Before, before,’ he said, raising head and eyes as if to point to a very distant past. ‘Not now. Now all same one people.’” (Burrows 1963, p.77)

Tom was emphasizing the fact that the Ifaluk were very different—they didn’t fight any longer. The Ifaluk have their faults, as all people do: their island is not a utopia. They have a male-dominated society that would repel many outsiders. But it is not a violent place—they absolutely reject violence.

Thus, the difference between Ifaluk and many larger societies and nation states is not so much that the one is a small, isolated island and the others are larger and more cosmopolitan. The difference is that the one distances itself from its past, treats violence as something that people simply don’t do any longer. Its stories serve as reminders of the way people were in ancient times. People such as the Ifaluk no longer believe in violence.

On the other hand, many societies and states glorify their long-ago warfare and keep their myths current as part of the fabric of contemporary life. They continually try to reinvent themselves in the images of their glorious, violent, and storied past experiences. The Ifaluk provide an example of a society that has a different vision of itself. It has changed, and it cherishes the peacefulness of its contemporary life.

Other than the erect penis, the rest of Dr. Rosemary’s description of the post at the front of the men’s house differs in every detail from the one that Burrows saw when he first visited the island in 1947. The penis then was about 5 feet above the ground, but above it were various paintings in black of a lizard, a shark, and a man rising, centaur-like, out of the shark. It appears as if the Ifaluk have been willing to change the nature of their icons, except for the phallus, which has too much importance to change.

Whether Dr. Rosemary saw the exact same post, or a new one, is not clear—and probably it does not matter. The importance is that the graphic symbol of the way the Ifaluk used to be is preserved and cherished on their island, since it serves not only as a reminder of the way they were but also the way they want to be.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Adventures in Botswana

Amish Singing

Statistics about Peaceful Nation States

Mbuti Bark Cloth and Babies

Schools for San Kids

Problems of the Nubian Diaspora [journal article review]

Orang Asli Land Rights

Photos of the Hutterites

Truth and Reconciliation for the Inuit

An Erection Points toward Peace on Ifaluk

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