Indigenous Knowledge and the Social Construction of Patriarchy: The Case of the Bukusu of Kenya

This article is an ethnographic study on the Bukusu number system and the connections between Indigenous knowledge and patriarchy. It examines the ways patriarchy is embedded in everyday knowledge through a number system that has deep gender hierarchy symbolisms. The findings show strong connection between everyday knowledge and social norms that define the status of men and women. While this article is centered on Bukusu society in Kenya, it is premised on the understanding that patriarchy is a pervasive social problem that goes beyond Indigenous societies as evident in the feminist critiques of contemporary societies. Just as Durkheim traced the genesis of society to the simplest forms of rules associated with totemic beliefs, this article also points to the roots of patriarchy in Indigenous society so as to draw attention to the variety of ways in which patriarchy is manifested. By incorporating feminist critiques of patriarchy, it shows conceptual connections between the blatant manifestation of patriarchy in Indigenous societies and the latent, albeit oppressive, manifestations of patriarchy in modern societies. Overall, the article provides deep conceptual insights into the intersection of knowledge systems and patriarchy.

Embedding in Shawi narrations: A quantitative analysis of embedding in a post-colonial Amazonian indigenous society

In this article, we provide the first quantitative account of the frequent use of embedding in Shawi, a Kawapanan language spoken in Peruvian Northwestern Amazonia. We collected a corpus of ninety-two Frog Stories (Mayer 1969) from three different field sites in 2015 and 2016. Using the glossed corpus as our data, we conducted a generalised mixed model analysis, where we predicted the use of embedding with several macrosocial variables, such as gender, age, and education level. We show that bilingualism (Amazonian Spanish-Shawi) and education, mostly restricted by complex gender differences in Shawi communities, play a significant role in the establishment of linguistic preferences in narration. Moreover, we argue that the use of embedding reflects the impact of the mestizo1 society from the nineteenth century until today in Santa Maria de Cahuapanas, reshaping not only Shawi demographics but also linguistic practices. (Post-colonial societies, Amazonian linguistics, Kawapanan, Shawi, embedding, language variation and change, contact linguistics)*

The re-emergence of nganaparru (water buffalo) into the culture, landscape and rock art of western Arnhem Land

The introduction of new animals into hunter-gatherer societies produces a variety of cultural responses. This article explores the role of rock art in western Arnhem Land, Australia, in helping to mediate contact-period changes in Indigenous society in the nineteenth century. The authors explore etic and emic perspectives on the ‘re-emergence’ of water buffalo into Aboriginal cultural life. Merging archaeological analysis, rock art and ethnographic accounts, the article demonstrates how such artworks were used as a tool for maintaining order in times of dramatic social change. The results of this research have significant implications for understanding how cultural groups and individuals worldwide used rock art during periods of upheaval.

NA SOCIEDADE INDÍGENA, TODOS SÃO ARTISTAS / In indigenous society everyone is an artist

Entrevista de Jaider Esbell a Arte Ensaios, com a participação de Anderson Arêas, Clarissa Diniz, Daiara Tukano, Livia Flores, Paula Berbert, Pedro Cesarino e Ronald Duarte, realizada em 15 de abril de 2021 por via remota.

Cultural Diversity in Igbo Life: A Postcolonial Response to Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God

In his book Chinua Achebe, David Caroll (1980) describes the novel Arrow of God as a fight for dominance both on the theological and political level, as well as in the framework of Igbo philosophy. In Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (1990), famous Achebe critics C. L. Innes and Berth Lindforts consider Arrow of God as a novel with conflicting ideas and voices inside each community with the tensions and rivalries that make it alive and vital. Another profound scholar on Achebe Chinwe Christiana Okechukwu (2001) in Achebe the Orator: The Art of Persuasion in Chinua Achebe's Novels assesses Arrow of God, which depicts a community under imminent danger of cultural genocide unleashed by agents of Western imperialism who have recently arrived in the indigenous society. However, the author in this study attempts to see Arrow of God as a postcolonial response to cultural diversity that upholds its uniting and cohesive force in Nigerian Igbo life. The goal is to look at how Achebe, in response to misleading western discourses, develops a simplistic image and appreciation that persists in Igbo life and culture even as colonization takes hold. This paper also exhibits how the Igbo people share their hardships, uphold their age-old ideals, celebrate festivals, and even battle on disagreements. This study employs postcolonial theory to reconsider aspects of cultural diversity among the African Igbo people, which are threatened by the intervention of European colonialism in the name of religion, progress, and civilization.

Alcohol Abuse

The article sets out to examine the correlation between the drinking problem that has beset youth of Central Kenya and the oaths that were taken by residents in the region in the wake of the struggle for socio-political and economic independence (in 1950s). It is worthwhile to recall that the Mau Mau philosophy discouraged the abuse of drugs, and especially alcohol. It was the belief that the breach of oaths spelt calamity. The youth might disassociate themselves from beliefs of their fathers and forefathers. However, since most of them are Christians, nominal or practical, they should be awed because the bible has it that, ‘’. . . I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation . . .’’ (Deuteronomy 5:9). Characteristically, the communities in Central Kenya share many aspects of culture, especially beliefs and religious practices. For example, breach of oaths was a taboo. The article seeks to establish the connection between the high degree of alcohol abuse to the violation of oaths that the Mau Mau (freedom fighters) patriots took before and during the State of Emergency (1952-1960). Certainly, anything taboo was ominous. Mau Mau agitated for independence, and more importantly, the return of land, the bond that bound together the living, the dead and the unborn. Land was seen in our indigenous society as sacred and it was not to change hands in any way. Mau Mau took oaths to the effect that whoever breached it would attract catastrophe, including death. In view of this, the article would seek to establish if the drinking problem in the Mount Kenya (central) region is a consequence of breaching Mau Mau oaths.

People, place, and space: Theoretical and empirical reflections in studying urban open space

People, place, and space are the main domain of spatial research which is widely discussed in the geographic discipline. Geographers always focus on the meanings related to space and human interactions to explain people, place, and space. The concept was explained by Richard Harsthrone (1959), Fred E Lukermann (1964), David Harvey (1969), Henri Lefebvre (1974), Yi-fu Tuan (1974), Edward Relph (1976) and Doreen Massey (2005), etc. As a human geographer, Yi.fu Tuan has a great contribution to explain people-place relations and further explained by Relph, Massey, and other scholars. Grounding on the geographic research traditions, this paper presents the concept of people, place, and space reviewing the historiographical literatures and some empirical research studies on people-space relations. Theorists have argued that people and space are deep-rooted in studying place attachment creating people’s sense of place. People’s actions and behaviors create meaning through their individual and communal behaviors in that space where they live and interact. Moreover, theoretical perspectives argue that placemaking is always associated with the social and cultural dimensions of a society. Empirically, as an indigenous society, people from the core area of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) have been perceiving urban open space as a commonplace for social and cultural life activities whereas migrants’ people living in the newly growing settlements have been perceiving the open space as a place for recreation and social capital enhancement.

Settler Colonialism and the Capricious Seizure of Unwanted Land, or How the Huni Kuin were Expelled From Plácido de Castro, Acre, Brazil

Situated in the Mesoregion of the Acre River, Plácido de Castro is a small municipality in the Brazilian state of Acre. In 2015, with the consent of the authorities, a group of people of Huni Kuin ethnicity occupied an abandoned, state-owned piece of land in the municipal territory, namely, the Parque Ecológico. For two years, the Huni Kuin group has lived in the Parque Ecológico, decontaminating and revalorising the land. Afterwards the Huni Kuin have been gradually dispossessed of the occupied land via various coercive actions, some of which were backed by the authorities. In this paper, the authors draw upon media releases as well as an interview with Hunk Kuin cacique Mapu, in order to signify the events in terms of a violent performance of settler colonialism in the face of the legitimate reclamation of Indigenous sovereignty over Brazilian land. In particular, they look at the ways in which political authorities, police forces, social services, and the broader non-Indigenous society unanimously cooperate towards the total effacement of Indigenous bodies, communities, and subjectivities from the land.