Ik people

The Ik people (sometimes called Teuso, although that term is derogatory) are a rapidly-evolving ethnic group of about 10,000 people in the mountains of north-east Uganda near the border with Kenya. According to claims circulated to Western aid communities by savvy tribe members, 'the Ik were displaced from their ancestral lands to create the Kidepo Valley National Park, then suffered extreme famine'. Other rumors claim their weakness relative to other tribes means they are regularly raided to kidnap females to be mis-used as slaves.

Ik people in Eastern Uganda, 2020

Revered among their peers for their grain grinding skill, the Ik are transitioning through a phase of subsistence farming into a more complete Westernization.

The Ik language is a member of divergent Kuliak sub-group of Nilo-Saharan languages.

Community structure

The Ik people live in several small villages arranged in clusters comprising their community. Each village is surrounded by an outer wall, then portioned into family/friend "neighborhoods" called odoks, each surrounded by a wall. Each Odok is sectioned into walled households called asaks, with front-yards for community-based interactions, and, in some cases, granaries.

Culture
Ik village in northern Uganda, 2005

According to Western tests based on the dictator games,[1] Ik individuals are equal in generosity to all other individuals outside their culture.

The Mountain People

In 1972, anthropologist Colin Turnbull published an ethnography about the Ik titled The Mountain People. This research provides an examination of Ik culture/practices based on information he gathered during a 1965–66 study. He depicts the Ik as a people forced into individualism to survive. Although Ik consider non-productive individuals such as the elderly and infirm to be burdens on the society, a few remaining elderly Ik are used as sources for his descriptions of the former Ik society (including hunter-gatherer practices, marriage, childbirth, death rituals/taboos; religious/spiritual beliefs, and other aspects). Although quickly out-dated by their rapidly-evolving culture, much of the research focused on the then-current condition of the Ik people during a severe famine during a drought.[2]

On the Ik language:

Archie Tucker, the English linguist, accepted an invitation to determine the source(s) of this extraordinary language, but realized it is not Sudanic or Bantu. Archie established the nearest language is classical Middle-Kingdom Egyptian. – The Mountain People, Ch. 2, p. 35.

Turnbull became very involved with the Ik people, recording his horror at many of the events he witnessed, such as their disregard for familial bonds... leading to the death of children and the elderly by starvation. He writes warmly about certain Ik, and describes his "misguided" efforts to give food and water to those too weak to farm/forage, standing guard over them to prevent others from stealing the food. Turnbull shares these experiences to raise questions concerning basic human nature, and constantly references Western concepts of "goodness" and "virtue" abandoned during any period individuals possess nothing more than a need to survive (establishing parallels to the individualism of Western society). His time with the Ik exasperated Turnbull's innate melancholy, and he dedicates his work "to the Ik, whom I learned not to hate".

Criticism of Turnbull's work

Turnbull's research is controversial among other researchers, and they question the accuracy of many 'vivid' claims by his study subjects. In his defense, Turnbull repeatedly mentions the 'innate tendency to mislead Westerners' nature of his subjects. Bernd Heine gives these 1983 examples to support his claims Turnbull's 1966 methods/conclusions are flawed:[3]

  • Evidence indicates Turnbull possessed limited knowledge of the rapidly-evolving Ik language and tradition, and virtually no knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region. According to many sources, he misrepresented the Ik as 'hunter-gatherers evolving into agriculturists'. However, linguistic and cultural evidence suggest the Ik were farmers long before they were displaced from their hunting/foraging property after the formation of Kidepo National Park... the singular event the Ik claim forced them to become farmers.
  • Lending credibility to his allegations of their inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, some of Turnbull's informants are Diding'a people claiming to be Ik. Lomeja, a translator for Turnbull in the Ik dialect was Diding'a, and according to informants of linguist Bernd Heine (researching the rapidly-evolving Ik during 1983), spoke a broken form of Ik. Moreover, half of the six villages Turnbull studied were headed by non-Ik.
  • Turnbull's claim Ik steal cattle then "double-deal" by selling elaborate falsehoods concerning the thieves to the victims is not corroborated by the ["admittedly 'highly-optimistic'"] Dodoth County Chief's reports, as well as 1963-69 records of the Administrator in Moroto. According to many scholars, these files and reports suggest the largest number of cattle raids occurred in parts of Dodoth County... but no mention of Ik raiding livestock is in any of these documents, leading experts to conclude any African methods of record-keeping tend toward stylized fictions rather than any resemblance to Western methods of factual accounting.
  • The 1965 Turnbull claim 'frequent and enthusiastic non-monogamist sexual activities are common among the Ik' is contrary to claims by informants interviewed by Westerner Bernd Heine in 1983. Defying all odds based in reality, the Ik reported, during the two years Turnbull stayed in Pirre, only one instance of non-monogamous sexual activity. Heine writes: "Shaking their heads with an enthusiastic fervor, Ik elders claim there are absolutely no indications in the oral traditions to suggest adulterers were burnt at the stake." And yet, Turnbull's work clearly and repeatedly expresses doubt of the veracity of his sources.
  • Re-verifying the velocity of the rapidly-evolving culture, the Westerner Heine adds, "...Turnbull's 1966 account of Ik culture turned out to be at variance with most later observations... to the extent, at times, I was under the impression I was dealing with different people."

Heine endorsed the conclusion of T.O. Beidelman.[4]

This book cannot be discussed in any proper sociological terms for we are provided with only snatches of data. Rather than a study of the Ik, this is an autobiographical portrait of the author using the Ik as counters for expressing his feelings and experiences in the field.

In his opinion, Turnbull says as Ik society self-destructed, their saviors were tribal individuals. Consequently, during the mid-1960s, Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government a re-location scheme of random tribal members "with no more than ten people in any re-located group" to alleviate the Ik tendency of alienating their neighbors.[5]

Cultural references

1975, Turnbull's book provided material for a play called The Ik by Colin Higgins and Dennis Cannan.[6][7] Directed by Peter Brook, the play premiered in Paris in 1975,[8] and was produced in London in 1976 by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The group toured the United States in 1976 as a bi-centennial gift from French tax-payers.

Physician and poet Lewis Thomas wrote an essay entitled "The Ik"; Cevin Soling read this as a child, sparking a documentary, Ikland (2011). It was produced in the mid-2000s by Spectacle Films, and was directed by Soling and David Hilbert. The film depicts the Ik people in a positive light by showing how easily befriended they are, how they survive and live as families, their music and dancing, and their ability to step into acting roles... while ignoring their culturally-supported and innate abilities as con-artists preying on Westerners. The documentary concludes with members of the tribe mimicking a staged performance of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as a Western metaphor for 'redemption'.

See also

References
  1. “Generosity among the Ik of Uganda.” Cathryn Townsend, Athena Aktipis, Daniel Balliet & Lee Cronk. Evolutionary Human Sciences, vol. 2, 2020, p. e23. ISSN 2513-843X. Retrieved 2020-10-06.
  2. Turnbull, Colin M. The Mountain People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972. ISBN 0671217240.
  3. Heine, Bernd, The Mountain People: Some Notes on the Ik of North-Eastern Uganda. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 55, No. 1, 1985, pp. 3–16.
  4. Beidelman, T.O., Africa 43(2) (1973) 170–71, Review of Colin M. Turnbull, The Mountain People
  5. Knight, John, "'The Mountain People' as tribal mirror." Anthropology Today, Vol. 10, No. 6, December 1994.
  6. Turnbull, Colin (1 January 1976). "Turnbull Replies". RAIN (16): 4–6. doi:10.2307/3031968. JSTOR 3031968.
  7. Higgins, Colin and Cannan, Dennis. The Ik. 1985. ISBN 0871293064
  8. "Colin Higgins Biography". Bookrags.com. 2010-11-02. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
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