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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
INDIGENOUS LESSONS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTIONa
Geneviève Souillac
Douglas P. Fry
This chapter explores indigenous values and peacemaking systems from micro- and macroperspectives. It considers not only conflict resolution within particular cultural contexts but also attempts to cross the borderlands between indigenous worldview and the value orientation of the modern, postindustrial West, while keeping a focus on how to apply conflict resolution lessons in new contexts and at higher levels of social complexity, right up to and including the global.
The first section of this chapter focuses on indigenous conflict resolution orientations and practices. We explore contrasting value systems and the implications for engaging in participatory dialogue in the service of conflict resolution. Next, we consider how the critically important principle of reciprocity informs our understanding of justice seeking and conflict resolution. Finally, we briefly examine some salient features of nonwarring peace systems.
The second section explores the implications for both theory and practice. We pursue insights that indigenous approaches might contribute to the emergence of peace-with-justice-oriented values and practice in the context of modern, pluralist, postindustrialized societies. We also argue that indigenous practices have considerable implications for peace education and conflict resolution for global society.
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE
Conflict and aggression are not equivalent concepts. Conflict entails divergent interests, needs, or goals, and a cross-cultural view demonstrates that people address conflict in numerous ways, many of which entail no use of aggression whatsoever (Fry, 2006). For instance, individuals may simply avoid each other or put up with a difficult situation, talk about their differences, negotiate resolutions to their disputes, seek out mediators or arbitrators, appear in front of a tribunal, and so forth. Violence and war are not the only options for settling differences. Whereas it is unrealistic to eradicate all forms of conflict, it is realistic to create alternatives to war and other forms of violence. If the creation of peace is seen as an ongoing dynamic process, certain questions are raised: How can nonviolent forms of conflict resolution and social interaction be promoted within and among societies? Can the institution of war be given up and intergroup conflicts within and between nation-states be addressed in less destructive ways?
Humans are a social species wherein each individual is highly dependent on relationships and assistance from others, and one reflection of this fact is that the overwhelming majority of social behavior is prosocial, not physically aggressive (Fry, 2013; Goldschmidt, 2006; Sussman and Cloninger, 2011). Some societies tolerate higher levels of physical aggression than do others (Fry, 2000). The cross-cultural variation in this regard can be viewed along a peacefulness-aggressiveness continuum, which has an empirical basis (Fry, 2006). The position of any particular society on the continuum is not immutably fixed; its position can shift in either direction over years, generations, or centuries. The fact that a culture may have a high level of physical aggression today does not preclude its shift toward peacefulness in the future, and by extension, the same type of shift away from aggression and toward peaceful conflict resolution could occur within global society.
The Waorani of Ecuador illustrate that fairly rapid shifts are possible since they managed to decrease an initially high rate of deaths through feuding by over 90 percent in just a few years. Robarchek and Robarchek (1996, p. 72) explain, “As bands became convinced that the feuding could stop, peace became a goal in its own right, even superseding the desire for revenge. . . . The killing stopped because the Waorani themselves made a conscious decision to end it.”
Societies near one end of the aggressiveness-peacefulness continuum can be characterized as internally peaceful, meaning that they have nonviolent belief and value systems and display very little physical aggression (Bonta, 1996; Fry, 2006). Overall, most societies in the ethnographic record do engage in some sort of feud or war, but at the same time, nonwarring, nonfeuding cultures such as the Mardu of Australia and the Batek of Malaysia shun intergroup violence (Fry, 2006, 2012, 2013).
Scholars such as Black (1993) provide a cross-cultural typology of conflict management approaches that includes avoidance of a disputant, simple toleration, bipartisan negotiation to search for a mutually agreeable resolution, unilaterally imposed coercive or aggressive self-redress, and various kinds of third-party-assisted settlement (
e.g., arbitration, mediation, and adjudication). Most of these approaches involve practices and procedures for dealing with conflict without the manifestation of any physical aggression, with the self-redress category being the obvious exception. In humans and other mammalian species, physical aggression appears to be the least often used means to address a conflict of interest, but obviously it can be extremely harmful and disruptive when employed (Fry, 2013; Sussman and Cloninger, 2011).
We now consider how a cross-cultural examination of conflict resolution approaches within indigenous societies may offer some insights into how to get along with less violence. Across the past millennia and into the present, humans have always faced the challenge of how to minimize the harmful effects of conflict within bounded social groups. In the twenty-first century, the entire planet has become a social group of sorts. Whereas much conflict is handled nonviolently through agreements, treaties, negotiation, toleration, avoidance, mediation, and so forth, intergroup violence, whether within or between nation-states, nonetheless continues to erupt periodically. We suggest that conflict management ethos, processes, and institutions need to be further developed and implemented internationally so that the institution of warfare, like torture and slavery before it, can become delegitimized and phased out of existence. Clearly, many forms of extreme violence related to warfare and conflict, such as slavery, torture, and genocide, have followed a distinct historical process of both moral and legal delegitimization. The Geneva Conventions limiting the means of warfare have also played a powerful role in inscribing the ethical limits theorized by just war theorists into international law. The great development of the international legal architecture with regard to human rights and the right conduct of war since World War II demonstrate the need for a pool of legal and conceptual resources for the limitation of war. Yet its expansion toward increased identification, understanding, and vocabulary to reinforce the role played by conflict resolution and transformation for conflict prevention at all levels of social and cultural organization remains very much needed. We argue that a cross-cultural view of human conflict behavior and its management suggests that nonviolent alternatives are not only possible but constitute a vital resource for humanity. Integrating modern and indigenous conceptions of community, peace, and violence constitutes one important step toward the achievement of this goal (Souillac, 2012).
The remainder of this section focuses first on a technique called structured dialogue processes and on the importance of an indigenous normative value system dubbed the four Rs. Second, it proposes that one of the four Rs, reciprocity, is of central importance in providing just and effective conflict resolution. The section concludes with a brief consideration of peace systems.
Values
A consideration of value orientations is critical for deriving more generally applicable lessons from indigenous forms of conflict resolution. At a macrolevel, various terms and concepts have been applied to contrast indigenous, non-Western value orientations with those reflected by modern, pluralist, postindustrial nations, for example, cooperative versus competitive, tribal versus modern, collectivist versus individualistic, self-transcendent versus self-achievement, and the four Rs (relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution) versus the two Ps (power and profit) (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004; Maybury-Lewis, 1992; Miklikowska and Fry, 2010; Triandis, 1994). These dichotomous distinctions do not imply an absolute, all-or-nothing chasm between value perspectives, but rather suggest markedly different cultural emphases on general orientations. The indigenous orientation is toward certain C-words and R-words (e.g., cooperation, collaboration, collectivity, relationships, respect, and reciprocity), which in turn correlate with conflict practices such as compromise, reconciliation, and restoration, all in contrast to a modernist Western, postindustrial penchant for win-lose, coercion, domination, “might-makes-right” conflict-related ethos and practices. At the microlevel of the individual culture and subculture is a plethora of more specific value constellations and conflict management practices (Fry, 2000, 2006). In addressing the central question about what lessons for the modern, postindustrial West that indigenous societies may offer regarding conflict resolution theory and practice, a consideration of core value orientation in relation to justice seeking and dispute resolution becomes critical.
Comanche core values include sharing, respect, patience, maintaining good relationships, and acting so as to favor the community over one’s self-interest (Harris, 2000). La Donna Harris is the founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity and a citizen of the Comanche nation. Harris and Jacqueline Wasilewski, an expert on intercultural communication and conflict resolution, discuss the two-decade-long development and use of a technique called structured dialogue processes (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004; Christakis and Bausch, 2006; www.globalagoras.org). Christakis and Bausch (2006) note how structured dialogue processes show “some of the essential features of pre-contact decision-making processes in North American tribal communities,” including “an order of speaking, everyone having a chance to speak, no evaluative comments, the speaking going on until no one had anything else to say” (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004, p. 4). As Harris and Wasilewski show, applying a model of dialogue and conflict resolution designed to democratically harness the wisdom of people was the beginning of a process of recovery of a whole series of concepts that were found to overlap across the boundaries of culture, both indigenous and nonindigenous.
Wasilewski (n.d., p. 5; Harris and Wasilewski, 2004) explains that a team of scholar-practitioners identified four core Native American values that transverse “generation, geography, and Tribe.” First, the value of relationship reflects a feeling that all humans (and other aspects of the world) are related. People should be included, not excluded. One implication is that decisions should be made by consensus, allowing everyone to have input. Another implication relevant to conflict resolution is that relationships are centrally important and should be mended and maintained, not ignored or broken. The second core value is responsibility (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004). People have a responsibility to care for their relatives, broadly conceived, to include people and even animals and plants. Responsible indigenous leadership rests on caring, not coercion. The third core value is reciprocity, and we consider it, a key variable, in the next section. Finally, Harris and Wasilewski (2004) point out that redistribution keeps relationships in balance through obligations to share material and social goods. This value is the opposite of materialism: “The point is not to acquire things. The point is to give them away” (Wasilewski, n.d., p. 5).
Clearly the four core values are interrelated in their conceptualization and in their social manifestations. In an indigenous society with such an ethos, everyone is interdependent, linked through caring and sharing, being responsible, and helping and in turn being helped within the contexts of relationships. Related to the handling of conflict, Harris explains:
One highly prized characteristic within the tribe is the ability to behave in a way that maintains these [community] relationships, even through disagreements. In order to be able to do this, one’s focus must not be on winning but on making the best decision for the community. Good relationships are dependent on people feeling good about themselves, which in turn creates strong persons who can contribute to the well-being of the community. (Harris and Wasilewski, 1992, quoted in Harris, 2000, p. xix)
The exploration of indigenous collective wisdom through the structured dialogue processes proved to be particularly successful in the area of the emergence of peace building, conflict resolution, and peace values. It compelled participants to reflect on the values that both structured the dialogue process and emerged as common and overarching. This clearly exemplified the potential sophistication in procedure and results for the pooling of conflict resolution and transformation resources within an inclusive public and democratic agora. As peace, nonviolence, and the recovery of the common wisdom that structures community were prioritized, the types of values encompass
ed in the four Rs emerged as key elements in a dialogical process that respected the worthiness of all contributors. The dialogical, integrative, and reflexive process that transpired created a learning situation for all sides.
In addition, the rights of indigenous peoples, not only to conserve their own time-tested practices but also to participate equally in the global normative arena, are implemented within projects such as structured dialogue processes. As Wiessner argues, the “remarkable comeback” of the indigenous peoples in its “most comprehensive expression in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” has meant that excluded peoples “overcame their cultural and political isolation and joined together to reclaim their essential identity as well as their role on the global stage of decision-making” (Wiessner, n.d.). In the context of this “remarkable comeback” of indigeneity, the application of the ideals contained in the law have been especially resonant as indigenous peoples have been able to recover their cultural, social, and political subjectivity and, even further, see the contribution of indigenous knowledge, values, and practices to a modern world. Conversely, the unique nature of this integrative process across the historical divide between the indigenous and modernity leads to a recovery by modern societies, and indeed by the international society as a whole, of the ethical resources as they have existed prior to the development of modernity itself. Finally, it should be noted that the modern nation-states that compose international society do not always provide safe and protective living environments for their indigenous peoples. This issue is of central concern in terms of creating positive peace and addressing structural and historical violence.
The importance of the recovery of an alternative worldview based on the four Rs of relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution to peace and survival on an interdependent planet cannot be overemphasized (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004). Harris and Wasilewski (2004, p. 1) stress that structured dialogue processes “have provided culturally resonant means through which Indigenous peoples have been able to identify and articulate their core values to broader audiences.” They further contend that these four Rs form the core of an emerging concept of indigeneity, where the “dynamic inclusivity of this value cluster has much to contribute to global discourse as we go about the task of constructing global agoras, the dialogic spaces of optimal mutual learning of the 21st century” (2004, p. 1), and especially as these relate to ethical living in a society. As Harris and Wasilewski (2004, pp. 2–3) evocatively write:
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