AfterWords

Though I was able to peek in for about ten minutes–and caught a bit of a talented Jazz ensemble–I was too freaked over the Guitar exam held today to linger. However, a guitar maven from my class, David Hollingsworth, is light years ahead of me on our common instrument and was free to write up a wonderful blog entry about Springfest! Thanks, David!

Spring Fest 2007 was a big hit. There were plenty of things to keep anyone occupied for the entire day. The games, food, and shows were all wonderfully entertaining. The staff was also very fun to watch work. They seemed to enjoy their jobs with an unnatural fervor.

Among the plethora of games, there was the Fantasy gaming clubs game; a deceptively simple game in which you attempt to shoot a monster with an (approximate) ½ pound bow and sticky arrows. This game was one of my favorites, but this may have been attributed to me sticking an arrow onto a monster’s crotch. It was a well placed shot and got the honor that I deserved; a key chain supporting teaching and a pack of Magic cards.

And heaven help anyone who takes on the eating challenge. Thank god watermelon is mostly water, or else we would have some particularly disgusting wretches to deal with. Although I will admit, I felt that I had seen it all when a 5’3 100 lbs. girl won against a boy who, no offense intended, was roughly the size of a large pony. The winner absolutely deserves her prize and maybe a shower as well.

The music was also phenomenal, in particular, the French gentleman. Although I wasn’t able to catch his name, his enthusiasm and will to sing the crowd to silence was marvelous. Also, the different bands were all wonderful. There were simply just too many to name, all of them spectacular.

Needless to say, this year’s Spring Fest was a smash hit, and I cannot wait for next year’s. Really, it kind of makes me want to stay in college.

Avant garde Hip Hop artist and theatre performer Will Power devoted two sessions worth of wisdom to Edmonds Community College students on May 10th. I, unfortunately, was only able to catch the second one (how unfair is it that my International Relations class also started at 12:30?).

Will’s second talk was nothing to sneeze at, however. Our own local Hip Hop Renaissance man “Dizzle” Morrison introduced his fellow emcee, detailing Will’s many impressive accolades and accomplishments (far too numerous to enumerate here). Despite his intimidating curriculum vitae, I was struck by how genuine and eager to relate Will seemed. He could have just as easily been the excitable guy drawing an audience in line at the corner Starbucks as the feted global performer that the Brownbag committee had to book months in advance.

The talk began with a thought-provoking (yet highly entertaining, how did he manage that?) performance in which Will broached many of the subjects that he intended to discuss with greater depth. I remember distinctly a scene he fleshed out, involving a young immigrant mother asking in broken English for a bus driver to turn down the air-conditioner as her child begins to cough. The bus driver contemptuously responds that she should “go back to Mexico” if she is unhappy with the temperature on his bus and Will mournfully asked if “the old people [Civil Rights activists] did what they did so we could turn around and oppress another people?”

After his introductory performance, Will began to feel out the crowd, seeking common points of reference to build lines of discussions upon. He spouted a number of impromptu (?) proverbs, such as “art is the shovel used to unearth the treasures of the past.” He quoted Toni Morrison (one of my favorite authors, I wrote a twenty-seven page paper in English 205 based on the historical trial that inspired her novel “Beloved”), saying something along the lines of [paraphrasing]: the personalities that you most love and absolutely hate originate from within your own family. He then, unexpectedly, compared George W. Bush (not a great favorite amongst most us college-aged folk), Dick Cheney (ditto), and Condoleezza Rice to curmudgeonly old aunts and annoying uncles whom, no matter how much you disagree with philosophically/ideologically, you would never dream of disrespecting. Will challenged us to “stand for” and acknowledge the basic humanity in all people, not merely those that we are more comfortable identifying with.

He delved deeper and challenged the very vocabulary of divisiveness, reminding us that seven hundred years ago there was no such thing as a “White, Black, or Puerto Rican”. Will’s unifying message was stressed throughout, simply put: there is complexity, irony, and communality in all great art. This nationally-recognized performer beseeched us to celebrate “community artists”, whose work might be local but not necessarily humble, and whose efforts promote self-determination even in “unfashionable” locales.

Artists are our fortune-tellers, able to predict doom. They are also heroes, able to salvage entire worlds and cultures from ignominy and obscurity. After hearing Will’s talk, I feel motivated to peek into our local galleries and maybe buy a CD being sold by a new artist on the sidewalk. Who knows what undiscovered gem we could happen upon if we took a moment to glance at our own feet?

The conversation between Will Power and the audience concluded with a variety of questions. One, about Will’s personal comfort zone and “appropriateness” of Hip Hop today, prompted the hilarious response that “the Iliad is way more violent than rap music today!” We just have to stop applying a special context to one and universally vilifying the other.

I left smiling.

Photos by, well, me: Jenna Nand.

I finally experienced my first powwow! Volunteering behind a concessions stand, for the most part, but it was still quite an experience! The Edmonds Community College First Nations Student Association held its 2007 powwow in the Seaview Gym for hundreds of onlookers and participants.

Though I was only there Friday and Saturday nights (and then mostly to sling frybread and popcorn), I met a number of remarkable people (see slideshow) and was honored and excited to witness and experienced so much of the various cultures of the Native American community.

I knew that my friend Mary Miller was from the Cherokee nation, but I was surprised to learn that another buddy of mine, Venetia, was also part Native American. Mary made some interesting points while we were manning the Welcome Booth at the entrance. I mentioned that I had seen a beautiful buffalo bone and glass bead choker at one of the vendors’ stands, at which Mary remarked that as lovely as it was, she would never risk purchasing something like that without knowing which tribe it had come from. As a non-Native, I was free to bear the adornments of whichever nation I pleased, but there would be a negative reaction if she were found to be wearing jewelry that wasn’t traditionally part of the Cherokee culture. And though I had known that some historical tribes had protected runaways from their vengeful owners during the slave era, I hadn’t realized until the powwow how prevalent Native ancestry was in America’s Black community. When I mentioned my ignorance to Venetia, she offhandedly estimated that 1/3 of self-identified African Americans were some part Native American, whether they were aware of it or not.

In addition to my everyday darlings, I managed to wrangle some time with Andrew Morrison, the gifted artist behind the posters drafted to celebrate the 2007 powwow. Andrew was a former Edmonds Community College student who spoke passionately about the goals for his community that he wished to encourage through his art. (He also signed my poster. ) I even got a word in with Master of Ceremonies Arlie Neskahi, of the Dine’ (formerly known as the Navajos), who saw the powwow as a way to reach out to the mainstream American community and foster a relationship of mutual respect and understanding between the two traditional foes. He also made me especially wistful about missing the last day of the powwow, Sunday the 6th, when the first Native American woman elected to our state legislature, Claudia Kauffman, was set to make an appearance. Talk about rotten luck for me!

I do feel more enlightened for having spent the weekend contributing to the powwow, but I regret that I didn’t get to witness more of the ceremony. I can report that there were a series of competitions (hopefully someone who actually managed to see one the whole way through can fill in the details) involving rhythmic dance. I saw, and the photos clearly testify, that the dancers’ regalia was gorgeous (my inquisitive mother asked to read a tag on one of the robes and quite amused to discover that it had been made in India, our ancestral land). The children were boisterous and incredibly cute in their outfits, and I know that one specific group of little girls competed to see who would become “Powwow Princess” (Venetia was given the unenviable task of selecting just one winner) on basis of a short essay.

Frybread, I discovered, was deliciously fatty slathered in honey and jam (not unlike the puri made by the “other” Indians) and I don’t trust myself within ten feet of the stuff until I am off my diet.

I wish I could report more about the history and traditions of powwows and how they translate into the modern setting, but someone more knowledgeable than I am—presently—will have to draw in the blanks.

I cannot wait to learn more…

My intrepid classmate Foti Angelopoulos was able to attend this amazing lecture, which illness forced me to miss. I hope that you enjoy his well-written entry as much I did! I have always wanted to know more about the “blood diamonds” tragedy in Africa, and found the mentions of Americans counterculture icons like Tupac Shakur startling. What do you think?

Youth In The Military, Violence In West Africa

April 25, 2007

Danny Hoffman, who teaches as an assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, came to EDCC to talk about his experience living in Sierra Leone during the recent civil war (1991 to 2002). While he was there, he lived with Kamajor fighters in order to learn their side of the story and gain a better understanding of the conflict and the region. Kamajors, loosely translated as “hunters” in the Mende language, are the traditional fighters who originally defended the rural villages and outlying areas, but later fought for the elected government against Revolutionary United Front (RUF) forces. These fighters were included as part of the Civil Defense Forces (CDF) who fought against the RUF at the behest of the elected government. In 1991, the war began when RUF fighters spilled over Sierra Leone’s southern border from Liberia and launched an attack. This bloody conflict, in a country of about 4 to 5 million people, took between 50,000 and 200,000 lives before the UN intervened in 2002.

One of the primary reasons for the emergence of the Kamajors as fighters in the CDF was the impotence of the military in defending against the RUF. During the height of the war, the military in Sierra Leone colluded with the invading RUF fighters to sustain the level of violence necessary to circumvent government restrictions regulating the diamond trade, thus reaping huge profits from the sale of “blood diamonds”. When it became clear to the newly elected government in 1996 that the military was cooperating with the RUF, it asked the Kamajors to assist in fighting against the RUF, as the military was not performing that duty. When the military overthrew the government in 1997, it invited RUF forces to help govern the country. This led to further atrocities, such as the common practice of amputation. In 1998, the government asked the Kamajors, to live in the capital city of Freetown and assist in defending it. Much of the violence in this region was characterized by ambushes, attacks on civilians and, to a lesser degree, violence within the ranks of certain factions. Hoffman spent most of his time there living with the Kamajors lived in the dilapidated Brookfield Hotel in Freetown, which became their base of operations. Entire families lived there and many adapted to life in the city by bringing rural communal living to the urban environment.

What did it mean, especially to the young fighters, to be a Kamajor? To them, being a Kamajor means being a man. What meaning, Hoffman asked, did the war have for young men? Many outsiders saw both sides as participating in a local blood feud with little motivation other than money and hatred for each other. Some postulated that the widespread use of drugs was to blame. What Hoffman witnessed in the Kamajors, however, was something entirely different. Hoffman took quite a few pictures while he was there, and presented them to complement the lecture. One of the slides was a picture that looked like it was taken somewhere in Freetown. On the side of a building was a huge picture of Tupac Shakur, a figure of mythical proportions in Sierra Leone. The Kamajors hold mystical beliefs that the hunter has special powers such as the ability to fly, invisibility to their enemies, and being bulletproof. Here, as elsewhere, the myth endured that Tupac was not killed in 1996 when he was the target of a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Another important figure for the young fighters is Rambo, the personification of supposedly justified violence and war heroism. The Kamajors see themselves as freedom fighters and global citizens. They feel a connection to those in the world wide African community who are suffering under oppression.

Hoffman contends in so many words that many western observers have taken an ivory tower approach to the area north of the Ivory Coast. For this reason, concern about the region has been slow to develop and, where it has, most descriptions of the problem and proposed solutions have suffered from a shallow assessment of the situation. The popular theory for African instability before 1989 was that most conflicts were the result of proxy tensions caused by the Cold War. When the Cold War ended and violence failed to abate in Africa, a new explanation was needed. In 1994, Robert Kaplan, a well connected journalist who has since covered Afghanistan and the Iraq War, published an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet. Kaplan, who spent three days in Sierra Leone, saw the breakdown of a society struggling to reconcile old ways of life in a changing world. According to Hoffman, the article viewed the conflict in Sierra Leone as little more than a tribal war caused by the nature and culture of the indigenous people. This perspective helped to inform US-African foreign policy at the time and contributed to the hands-off approach that the western world has generally taken towards

When the international community, through the UN, finally intervened, some of the CDF leaders, including Kamajors, were indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a court set up by the UN to try crimes committed during the civil war. Originally asked to speak with those preparing to prosecute the crimes, Hoffman declined and later joined the proceedings as a witness for the defense. He did this in part because he did not want to close the door on further study in the region, but also because he felt that the Kamajors were not a war group that had played a major part in contributing to the gruesome violence, but rather that they had played a pivotal role in the restoration of social order.

To summarize Danny Hoffman’s argument and main points, the current popular western view of African conflict as being caused by the nature of their culture is wrong and becomes dangerous when it causes indifference or inaction on the part of the international community. Academics, those interested in the region and willing to experience and learn the realities first hand, need to become more involved in increasing public awareness and gaining a voice in the political affairs of those nations that are able to help. Globalization has played a key role in shaping the ideals and perceptions of a supposedly isolated and backward African state. International participation is vital to ensuring that the trend of bloody conflict does not continue in the region or wherever else it may arise.