06-07 Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along
Audio Extra/ Podcast 2 Script and Support Information
Title:
Conflict Resolution the Old Way: Dancing Community Home
with
Megan Biesele
Total Time: 8:17
AUDIO:
NARRATION 1
Hi, I’m Neil Harvey.
The production of this podcast is supported by Bioneers members. Learn more about the Bioneers at www.bioneers.org
The following is a bonus audio segment associated with the Bioneers radio program titled: Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along.
In pulling the radio program together African San Bushmen, Okanagan, and Algonquin leaders told us stories about how their peoples have peacefully solved conflicts for thousands of years.
We asked Megan Biesele, Director of the Kalahari People’s Fund to imagine how the indigenous San people of Namibia might have responded to an attack like what the United States experienced on 9/11.
Biesele i/v Cut 1
I think that the response of these people and the new little government that they are forming is the exact opposite of what we saw in this country. Ever since 9/11 it seems that secrets are coming out, and it is the opposite of the kind of sharing, mutual consultation and negotiation that has gone on for a very long time with these people.
So I think that that’s the kind of lesson that we can learn from some of these longest tenured societies, such as these people have been.
They’ve found that confrontation and polarization do not work, and wide consultation, wide discussion and consensus-decision making do work. It could be seen as a form of turning the other cheek, when somebody’s hard you need to be soft. The whole point of it is to preserve the social fabric because I think they realize that’s where their wealth lies, that’s where their strength, that’s where their safety is. They don’t have the kinds of more artificial safety nets that we do with money, with health insurance and with social security and so forth. They’ve got to rely on the goodwill of living people, because what else is there?
NARRATION 2
The San people never embraced farming. There has been no tradition of storing up goods and so accumulating wealth. Money was not part of their culture. And yet they have successfully lived in the same area of southern Africa longer, according to DNA informed anthropological studies, than any other people. The San have cracked the code on how to live together at peace and sustainably in a place.
Biesele i/v Cut 2
These are people who- whose ancestors have obviously honed to a fine point of artistry that method of getting along with each other.
And there’s some very important components to that. One, of course, is not leaving anybody out of the loop, not dealing in secrecy; opening up your heart to each other; understanding where another person’s coming from when they’re feeling badly, and realizing that it’s incumbent on you to take that person’s pain seriously and try to do something about it. And perhaps last they have a healing tradition which embodies all of these family values and makes them possible by- I can just give you an instance. I have seen this many, many times, if there are two people who are not getting along with each other, in the healing dance, they try to put these two people next to each other so that they can come into harmony by dancing together.
NARRATION 3
When a conflict arises in a San community that requires the attention of the group, they dance.
(San Healing Dance song - Giraffe Dance vocal –starts)
NARRATION 4
Healing dances are central to San culture. They have been danced for thousands of years.
(Sans Healing Dance song - Giraffe Dance)
NARRATION 5
Through singing, hand clapping, and dancing, the community unifies and lifts itself up, including those in conflict, into joyous compassion and strong feelings of love. Respected elders also direct subtle healing energies. These energies are referred to as arrows. But these are no ordinary arrows.
Megan Biesele.
Biesele i/v Cut 3
Arrows of n/om is a spiritual substance, kind of like electricity that passes between the spirits and the dancers. And if you are a person who is in good control of n/om, which older people are who have danced for many, many, many years, it’s like an apprenticeship, then you know how to deal with these arrows that are flying around.
NARRATION 6
Some San elders have remarkable healing gifts. During the healing dances elders go into heightened emotional states, sometimes trances. Megan Biesele reports that in those altered states, they address illnesses with the laying on of hands…
Biesele i/v Cut 4
…and can deal with these chaotic things that happen between people. The dance is to cure what we think of as physical illness, but most of all it’s to cure problems between people because those are the worst kinds of illnesses that there are.
NARRATION 7
Individuals in conflict dance together and in the end, washed in the waves of joy generated by the dance and transformed by the love arrows directed at them from the elders, their problems find natural resolution or are simply dissolved.
Biesele i/v Cut 5
What people have told me about what’s going on in these really beautiful, beautiful dances is that it’s a technology of opening the heart so that healing energy can enter and so that people’s hearts will be revealed to each other and any problems or enmity will go out from between them. And, you know, I started off studying folklore and oral traditions of these people, and I kept finding that everything comes back to the healing dance. Everything points to the healing dance. It’s like the central metaphor. All the stories refer to it. Many, many, many of the metaphors have that at its heart – the metaphor of healing and of opening the heart. And, so it’s like a touchstone of their culture, and I think for that reason this must be something that goes way back into the way that they established a workable social fabric.
NARRATION 8
Megan Biesele. She is the Director of the Kalahari People’s Fund. The healing dance recording was part of a San Giraffe Dance from the CD called Music of the Kalahari San: Instrumental Pieces and Songs of the Healing Dance. To obtain the CD or find out more information about the San and the work of Megan Biesele
go to www.kalaharipeoples.org
To order a CD or audio download of radio program 06-07 Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along and to connect with the Bioneers, visit www.bioneers.org or call 877-246-6337.
I'm Neil Harvey.
Thank you for Listening.
I invite you to join the Bioneers in improving the environment by changing the world.
END AUDIO
Print on website next to show title on Audio extras page:
SHOW TITLE: 06-07 Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along
POD PIECE TITLE: Conflict Resolution the Old Way: Dancing Community Home
Total Time: 8:17
06-07 Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along radio show can be purchased at https://secure.bioneers.org/product/type/content-cd
Bioneers Conference material related to this radio show can be found at:
2005 Workshop – Aqeela Sherrills, Marc Ian Barasch, Marlowe Sam, Megan Biesele - Peace Technologies
https://secure.bioneers.org/audio/by/year/2005
