Dead Birds now

I hope that some people reading this blog have seen the 1965 documentary, Dead Birds. If you haven’t, please try to do so. It’s a very long film, in black and white. I viewed it in a college class many years ago. For me, the big lesson was that the Dani people of highland New Guinea (their territory is now defined as lying within West Papua which belongs to Indonesia) had a relatively civilized way of doing war. The men would get all dressed up with feather and shell ornaments. Then they took up their bows and shields, lined up against their opponents and shot arrows at the opposing line of men until someone was wounded, or perhaps killed.

A modern day almost-dead bird in the Gulf of Mexico. “Dying Baby Egret,” creative commons licensed content from Flickr user MarilynWelch.

Then the war stopped. Right then.

That was my interpretation of a representation: both may be quite distorted. Nonetheless, you have to agree that so-called “tribal warfare,” before the arrival of guns, was not about massive killing, much less annihilation.

But I seem to be the odd duck out. Stuart Kirsch, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, argues (in “Ethnographic Representation and the Politics of Violence in West Papua,” Critique of Anthropology 30:3-22, 2010) convincingly that the general perception of outsiders is that the Dani and other West Papuans are frighteningly violent — by nature and by culture. War is the central value in their culture. They are simply all about war.

This image justified the Dutch colonial presence: West Papuans needed pacification.

It fosters a thriving industry of extreme tourism “in which Euro-Americans pay thousands of dollars to participate in staged encounters with lost tribes.”

Now there is a new kind of war going on.

The story today is about international mining. Colonialists of our time, the multinationals have made and continue to make huge profits from exploiting the riches of West Papua. These companies, if called into question, can hire top lawyers to protect their interests. They can curry favor with politicians. They can win support from the military.

But the West Papuans, now, have more than bows and arrows, though their arsenal is still small by comparison with that of the big companies. They are organizing and enlisting international political support against the depredations of the mining companies. They are using an indigenous concept, merdeka (freedom) to express their wish for both regional autonomy and social justice.

Starting with the intrusion of the Dutch and continuing to today’s Indonesian control, many West Papuans have suffered from a politics of violence that makes the ritual warfare of Dead Birds look like child’s play.

If one were to film a documentary of conflict in West Papua today, the line-up would be very different from that depicted in Dead Birds. The mining companies would have a star role. Their employees are dressed up nicely. But they don’t stop shooting after wounding just one person.

Must read: The Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith

The Nacirema are a large and diverse group of people who live south of Canada and north of Mexico (spell the tribal name backward in case you haven’t figured out who they are). In the mid-20th century, Horace Miner wrote a clever parody about the culture of this tribe. The nickname continues to have some currency among anthropologists and their students. It’s a clever way to get Americans to think of their culture as a culture: contextualized, changing and not at all natural.

Because the Nacirema are such a large and diverse population, I ask students in my introductory cultural anthropology class to avoid referring to Americans as a whole. Because of the many and deep differences across regions, urban/rural, class, age groups, genders, ethnicity and more, I ask that any mention of Americans be preceded by several adjectives.

I have long held to a belief that the only thing all Americans share is knowing what crayons smell like. I have learned much, therefore, from reading Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith, and I may have to acknowledge that all Americans share an attraction to the concept of freedom.

Riley-Smith is English. He earned his doctorate in cultural anthropology at Cambridge University and did his fieldwork in Nepal. In 2002, he moved to Washington, D.C., working in the British Embassy. Over the next few years, he cast his anthropological gaze on America, taking the pervasive value of freedom as his focal point.

His book provides deep insights for those who wish to understand the United States. In seven chapters, he explores the theme of freedom in America from different angles, all wide angles that allow space for Riley-Smith to draw on his very deep well of knowledge about my country. He knows far, far more about my country than I do — a citizen steeped in its history from childhood and nurtured on its popular culture. I stand in awe of the range of Riley-Smith’s data: historic documents, movies, one-on-one interviews with Americans throughout the land and much, much more.

Chapter one tackles the question of identity. Riley-Smith raises the question of how can and does a sense of identity as American exist out of so much difference? He discusses how the education system shapes a shared sense of identity, as well as “rituals” such as summer camp and mass devotion to sport teams. Yet freedom and opportunity cannot and do not successfully bridge the deep divisions of race and ethnicity and the dispossession of American Indians and the poor in general.

Riley-Smith goes on to tackle six more big issues, bringing to each of them startlingly original insights. Chapter two examines consumerism, with Riley-Smith taking us down the corridors of excess and into the aisles of Walmart where the freedom to consume in fact shackles us all. Other chapters address religion, innovation, the wilderness, war and peace and law.

Riley-Smith isn’t as naive as Mork, who came to America from another planet to learn about our customs, but his observations are just as crisp and memorable. This is not a book you can whiz through in a few hours. I had to stop frequently, put it down, and think. It’s worth the effort.

Keeping our promises to children

In the words of Nicholas Kristof, “The late James P. Grant, a little known American aid worker who headed Unicef from 1980 to 1995 and launched the child survival revolution with vaccinations and diarrhea treatments, probably saved more lives than were destroyed by Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined.”

The legacy of this “little known American” was the focus of the James P. Grant Lecture at the George Washington University on March 23, a tribute to Grant 15 years after his death. Dr. Jon Rohde delivered the keynote lecture, entitled “An Unfinished Agenda for Children.” Rohde is a professor in the James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh, and former representative of Unicef in New Delhi, from 1993 to 1997.

Rohde first offered highlights of Jim Grant’s work with Unicef: putting children on the political agenda of countries around the world, promoting a focused four-point program called GOBI (growth monitoring, oral rehydration therapy, breast feeding and immunization), pursuing universal reach to all children, initiating cease-fires in war-torn countries to allow a few days for immunization of children, and unrelenting energy in carrying forward his vision to put “children first.”

A subtext running through the speech was that UNICEF, since James Grant’s death, has failed to keep his vision alive. The United States, through its lack of support for the United Nations, has turned its back on the world’s children.
Today, we have new hope for a re-commitment to children with Unicef once again taking a strong position under the leadership of Tony Grant. What would James Grant say to Tony Lake as he assumes his new position? Here are Rohde’s thoughts about what he would emphasize:

1. Focus on the unfinished agenda: reach those who are left out in order to erase social disparities in child survival.
2. Keep resources focused on children rather than on particular diseases.
3. Restore UNICEF to what it was: get UNICEF staff out into the field rather than spending most of their time doing paperwork.
4. Defend the rights of children with the same energy as adult rights are defended.
5. Promote community participation to define activities that will respond to local threats and priorities.
6. Strengthen UNICEF’s support for education, especially of girls.
7. Build alliances among all partners to eliminate competition by taking children as the integrating catalyst.
8. Plan now for the next development decade to 2025.
9. Bridge political differences in the US so that Americans can speak in one compassionate voice.
10. End the stranglehold that the military and industrial partners have over our lives and redirect the vast resources now expended on war to keep our promises to children. Rohde commented that Grant typically steered clear of issues not within his mandate for children. “Children first” was one of his mantras. Yet he knew that putting children first was incompatible with a world in which the richest country continues to dedicate vast resources to war.

In closing, Rohde remarked: “Jim Grant saw through children the chance of peace and decency for everyone. Indeed, children are a valid aim in themselves, but even more so as a means to uncover the humanity in us all and bring about a better world in the process. This is the legacy he left us – the challenge lives on.”

Blogger’s note: In a side conversation with Dr. Rohde, I asked him, “How would the US deal with all the soldiers if they are not at war?” His answer: “They can get to work rebuilding America.” Imagine soldiers helping to build schools, providing security in poor neighborhoods so that children can come and go to school without fear, participating in social programs, and providing outreach to those on the social margins. A demilitarized military working for life not death, for child survival and humanity.

Image: “Return to Innocence,” from flickr user sytoha, licensed with Creative Commons.