Ik people
Encyclopedia
The Ik are an ethnic group numbering about 10,000 people living in the mountains of northeastern Uganda
near the border with Kenya
, next to the more populous Karamojong and Turkana people
s. The Ik were displaced from their land to create a national park
and consequently suffered extreme famine
. Also, their weakness relative to other tribes meant they were regularly raid
ed. The Ik are subsistence farmers
who grind their own grain.
The Ik language
is a member of the highly divergent Kuliak
subgroup of Nilo-Saharan languages
.
.
published an ethnography
about the Ik titled The Mountain People. The book provides an examination of Ik culture and practices based on information gathered by Turnbull during a stay of a three years. He depicts the Ik as a people forced into extreme individualistic practices in order to survive. Using the few remaining elderly Ik as sources, he attempts to describe the former Ik society (including hunter-gatherer practices; marriage, childbirth, and death rituals and taboos; religious and spiritual beliefs, and other aspects). Much of the work, however, focuses on the then-current condition of the Ik people during a severe famine brought on by two consecutive drought years.
Turnbull clearly became very involved with the Ik people, and openly writes about his horror at many of the events he witnessed, most notably total disregard for familial bonds leading to the death of children and the elderly by starvation. He does speak warmly about certain Ik, and describes his "misguided" efforts to give food and water to those too weak to provide for themselves, standing guard over them to prevent others from stealing the food. Turnbull shares these experiences to raise questions concerning basic human nature, and makes constant reference to "goodness" and "virtue" being cast aside when there is nothing left but a need to survive (even going so far as to draw parallels to the individualism of 'civilized' society). Overall, living with the Ik seems to have afflicted Turnbull more with melancholy and depression than anger, and he dedicated his work "to the Ik, whom I learned not to hate".
Claude Steiner
cited Turnbull's study saying:
Turnbull also argued that Ik society was already destroyed and all that could be done was to save individual tribal members. Consequently Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government forcible relocation of random tribal members (with no more than ten people in any relocated group).
and Dennis Cannan. The play, directed by Peter Brook
, premiered in Paris in 1975, and was produced in London in 1976 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
. It also toured the United States in 1976 as a bicentennial gift from the French government.
A documentary on the Ik, Ikland, was produced by Spectacle Films and directed by Cevin Soling and David Hilbert. The film depicts the Ik in a positive light and concludes with members of the tribe staging a performance of A Christmas Carol
.
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
near the border with Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, next to the more populous Karamojong and Turkana people
Turkana people
The Turkana are a Nilotic people native to the Turkana District in northwest Kenya, a dry and hot region bordering Lake Turkana in the east, Pokot, Rendille and Samburuto the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan and Ethiopia to the north...
s. The Ik were displaced from their land to create a national park
National park
A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
and consequently suffered extreme famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
. Also, their weakness relative to other tribes meant they were regularly raid
Raid (military)
Raid, also known as depredation, is a military tactic or operational warfare mission which has a specific purpose and is not normally intended to capture and hold terrain, but instead finish with the raiding force quickly retreating to a previous defended position prior to the enemy forces being...
ed. The Ik are subsistence farmers
Subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye...
who grind their own grain.
The Ik language
Ik language
The Ik language, also known as Icetot, Icietot, Ngulak, or Teuso, Teuth, are one of the Kuliak languages of northeastern Uganda. The Ik people have a positive attitude toward their language, which is increasing; with Tepes being moribund, Ik may soon be the sole remaining language of its family....
is a member of the highly divergent Kuliak
Kuliak languages
-References:* Heine, Bernd The Kuliak Languages of Eastern Uganda. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.* Ehret, Christopher "The classification of Kuliak", in ed. Thilo Schadeberg & Lionel Bender, Nilo-Saharan: Proceedings of the First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, September...
subgroup of Nilo-Saharan languages
Nilo-Saharan languages
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...
.
Community structure
The Ik people live in several small villages arranged in clusters, which comprise the total "community". Each small village is surrounded by an outer wall, then sectioned off into familial (or friend-based) "neighborhoods" called Odoks, each surrounded by a wall. Each Odok is sectioned into walled-off households called asaks, with front yards (for lack of a better term) and in some cases, granariesGranary
A granary is a storehouse for threshed grain or animal feed. In ancient or primitive granaries, pottery is the most common use of storage in these buildings. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals.-Early origins:From ancient times grain...
.
Culture
Children by age three are at least sometimes permanently expelled from the household and form groups called age-bands consisting of those within the same age group. The 'Junior Group' consists of children from the ages of three to eight and the 'Senior Group' consists of those between eight and thirteen. No adults look after the children, who teach each other the basics of survival. However, it is not certain whether this practice is typical Ik tradition or merely triggered by unusual famine conditions. Tainter proposes this fragmentation to be an artifact of the dire circumstances where each person must depend on their own resources alone to find food and the age peers band together primarily to protect themselves from older stronger children who would take their food. He also argues that the present social fragmentation is the result of extreme deprivation on a more complex and functional culture, an argument also made by Turnbull.The Mountain People (1972)
In 1972, Colin TurnbullColin Turnbull
Colin Macmillan Turnbull was a British-American anthropologist who came to public attention with the popular books The Forest People and The Mountain People , and one of the first anthropologists to work in the field of ethnomusicology.-Early life:Turnbull was born in London and...
published an ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
about the Ik titled The Mountain People. The book provides an examination of Ik culture and practices based on information gathered by Turnbull during a stay of a three years. He depicts the Ik as a people forced into extreme individualistic practices in order to survive. Using the few remaining elderly Ik as sources, he attempts to describe the former Ik society (including hunter-gatherer practices; marriage, childbirth, and death rituals and taboos; religious and spiritual beliefs, and other aspects). Much of the work, however, focuses on the then-current condition of the Ik people during a severe famine brought on by two consecutive drought years.
Turnbull clearly became very involved with the Ik people, and openly writes about his horror at many of the events he witnessed, most notably total disregard for familial bonds leading to the death of children and the elderly by starvation. He does speak warmly about certain Ik, and describes his "misguided" efforts to give food and water to those too weak to provide for themselves, standing guard over them to prevent others from stealing the food. Turnbull shares these experiences to raise questions concerning basic human nature, and makes constant reference to "goodness" and "virtue" being cast aside when there is nothing left but a need to survive (even going so far as to draw parallels to the individualism of 'civilized' society). Overall, living with the Ik seems to have afflicted Turnbull more with melancholy and depression than anger, and he dedicated his work "to the Ik, whom I learned not to hate".
Claude Steiner
Claude Steiner
Claude Steiner is a psychotherapist who has written extensively about transactional analysis . His writings have focused especially on life scripts, alcoholism, emotional literacy, and Interpersonal power plays.-Early life:...
cited Turnbull's study saying:
Criticism of Turnbull's work
While highly popular, the book was controversial, and the accuracy and methodology of Turnbull's work has been questioned. (Turnbull himself does mention his sources' uncooperative nature and tendency to lie). For example, Bernd Heine gives the following examples to support her claims that Turnbull's conclusions and methodology were flawed.- There is evidence that Turnbull had limited knowledge of Ik language and tradition—and virtually no knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region. He seems to have misrepresented the Ik by describing them as traditionally hunters and gatherers forced by circumstance to become farmers, when there is ample linguistic and cultural evidence that the Ik were farmers long before they were displaced from their hunting grounds after the formation of Kidepo National Park—the event that Turnbull claims forced the Ik to become farmers.
- Some of Turnbull's main informants were not Ik, but Diding'a people. Lomeja, a local who helped teach Turnbull the Ik dialect, was undoubtedly Diding'a, and according to informants of linguist Bernd Heine (who studied the Ik in early 1983) spoke only broken Ik. Moreover, three out of the six villages Turnbull studied were headed by non-Ik people.
- Turnbull's claim that Ik raided cattle and frequently did "a double deal" by selling information concerning the raid to the victims is not corroborated by the Dodoth County Chief's monthly reports, as well as records of the Administrator in Moroto between 1963 and 1969. Rather, these files and reports actually suggest that the largest number of cattle raids occurred in parts of Dodoth County where no mention of Ik raiding livestock can be found in any of these documents.
- Turnbull's claims that adultery was common among the Ik is contrary to statements of informants interviewed by Bernd Heine in 1983. They reported that during the two years Turnbull stayed in Pirre there was only one case of adultery. Heine writes: "All Ik elders interviewed stated that there are no indications whatsoever in the oral traditions to suggest that adulterers were burnt in the past." (Although Turnbull's work itself expressed doubt as to the veracity of his source's claims to that effect.)
- Heine adds, "...Turnbull's account of Ik culture turned out to be at variance with most observations we made — to the extent that at times I was under the impression that I was dealing with an entirely different people."
Turnbull also argued that Ik society was already destroyed and all that could be done was to save individual tribal members. Consequently Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government forcible relocation of random tribal members (with no more than ten people in any relocated group).
Cultural references
In 1975, Turnbull's book provided the source material for a play called The Ik, written by Colin HigginsColin Higgins
Colin Higgins was an Australian-American screenwriter, actor, director, and producer. He was best known for writing the screenplay for the 1971 film Harold and Maude. and for directing the films Foul Play and Nine to Five .-Biography:Higgins was born in Nouméa, New Caledonia to an Australian...
and Dennis Cannan. The play, directed by Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
, premiered in Paris in 1975, and was produced in London in 1976 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
. It also toured the United States in 1976 as a bicentennial gift from the French government.
A documentary on the Ik, Ikland, was produced by Spectacle Films and directed by Cevin Soling and David Hilbert. The film depicts the Ik in a positive light and concludes with members of the tribe staging a performance of A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
.
See also
- AridificationAridificationAridification is the process of a region becoming increasingly dry. It refers to long term change rather than seasonal variation.It is often measured as the reduction of average soil moisture content....
- DroughtDroughtA drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
- Posttraumatic stress disorder
- Societal collapseSocietal collapseSocietal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...
External links
- Video Documentary On Ik People of Uganda
- http://www1.dragonet.es/users/markbcki/trnbll.htm
- http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Mountain+People+revisited:+Curtis+Abraham+went+to+Ik-land+in...-a082802101