Journal articles on the topic 'Beng (african people) – kinship'

Over the past four decades, since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade. There is a visible African diaspora in many localities in India. This diaspora is a layered one, consisting of diverse groups of people with different degrees of attachment to India: Africans settled in India with kinship ties, mobile professionals and students, and itinerant traders. Its composition and strength are in a constant flux. This paper will explore how debates and rituals in primarily Pentecostal- Charismatic churches – which have emerged as the focal point of community interaction for contemporary Africans in India – become crucial in shaping, reconfiguring and showcasing the markers of an imagined Africanness. Complex Pan-African diasporic subjectivities are invented, performed, and transmitted (from older residents to new arrivals), in conversation with prejudices and expectations of the host culture. These subjectivities are informed by educational and economic aspirations; visions of moral, personal, and corporate African progress, embedded in memoryscapes of an (Afro) future, articulated through the meta-language of African Pentecostalism.

Opening ParagraphSince 1960 several million Africans have been relocated in South Africa, mainly from the common (or ‘white’) area to the so-called ‘homelands’. This process of relocation is still under way, and precise enumeration of the numbers of people who have been and will be affected is impossible. Estimates vary according to the definition of ‘relocation’: it is apparent, for instance, that official sources define the process as narrowly as possible in order to minimize the numbers involved. There is abundant evidence, however, that relocation has taken place on a vast scale, and that the process has generally resulted in increased poverty and misery for its victims (Surplus People Project, 1983). Kane-Berman has recently argued that the South African Bantustans are, at present, not so much reservoirs of a reserve army of labour as dumping grounds ‘for people who have little chance of obtaining employment anywhere’ (1981: 29). From having been sub-subsistence dormitory areas for labour migrants, they are rapidly becoming places to which the structurally unemployed are being permanently consigned.

In her book Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death, Judith Butler reads the figure of Antigone, who exists as an impossible aberration of kinship, as a challenge to the very terms of livability that are established by the reigning symbolic rules of Western thought (Butler 2000). In this article I extend Butler's argument to reach beyond gender. I argue that African feminist scholarship shows that the kinship norms shaping the reigning symbolic rules of Western thought not only render certain gendered lives unlivable, but through the gendered working thereof also become key to the colonial process of the racial dehumanization of the colonized and the violent expansion of Eurocentric capitalism. I show how Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, in her work on the Yorùbá people of Nigeria, provides, in a way analogous to Antigone, a glimpse of an order structured by kinship formations that are remarkably different from, and thereby bring into crisis, the normative versions of kinship that are posited as timeless truths. Through a reimagining or reconstruction of precolonial Yorùbá kinship formations, Oyĕwùmí articulates a different scheme of intelligibility, which enables radically different ways of being human and existing in the world.

This ethnographic study explores forms of mutuality and conviviality between Shona migrants from Zimbabwe and Tsonga-speaking South Africans living in Giyani, South Africa. To analyse these forms of mutuality, we draw on Southern African concepts rather than more conventional development or migration theory. We explore ways in which the Shona concept of hushamwari (translated as “friendship”) and the commensurate xiTsonga category of kuhanyisana (“to help each other to live”) allow for conviviality. Employing the concept of hushamwari enables us to move beyond binaries of kinship versus friendship relations and examine the ways in which people create reciprocal friendships that are a little “like kin.” We argue that the cross-cutting forms of collective personhood that underlie both Shona and Tsonga ways of being make it possible to form social bonds across national lines, such that mutuality can be made between people even where the wider social context remains antagonistic to “foreigners.”

When Bamileke women in urban Cameroon give birth, older women often recall the ‘troubles’, the period between 1955 and 1974 when the UPC (Union des Populations du Cameroun) waged a battle of national independence, as a way of teaching their daughters about the hazards of reproduction and threats to Bamileke integrity as a people (Feldman-Savelsberget al.). Slightly to the north-west, in the Nigerian city of Kano, Igbo talk constantly about their memories of the Biafran war, using them to forge a sense of Igbo ethnic distinctiveness that reinforces patterns of patron-client relations critical to the maintenance of transregional connections (Smith), while further to the south many Yoruba are reassessing the meaning of the old practice of pawning children (Renne). Meanwhile in Botswana, where the AIDS epidemic exacts a high death toll, members of an Apostolic church create distinctive practices of remembering what caused a person's death. In so doing, they counter the attenuation of care and support that often occurs when people interpret death as due to illnesses transmitted through blood and improper sexual relations (Klaits). By contrast in a Samburu community in Kenya, the cultural practice ofntotoi, a complex board game, reproduces a male-dominated history of kinship, while systematically erasing a female narrative of adulterous births and forced infanticide. And among rural Beng in Côte d'Ivoire, beliefs and practices that structure infant care serve as an indirect critique of the violence of French colonialism and of its aftermath that continues to interfere in Beng lives in the form of high rates of infant mortality (Gottlieb). As these examples taken from this volume indicate, the papers gathered together in this special issue examine the complex and often contradictory ways in which the reproduction of memories shapes the social and biological reproduction of people.

SchwarzRund’s Biskaya (2017) is an “Afroqueer” novel that follows the travails of Tue, a queer Black German woman whose life is marked by the quotidian struggles of queer Black folx in Germany. However, Biskaya is also a work of fantasy, since SchwarzRund created an island (Biskaya) in the Bay of Biscay along the southern coast of Spain and France. In the novel Biskaya is home to African-descended people who have both voluntarily and involuntarily migrated to Europe as part of the labour market for centuries. In this article I examine the role of children in the novel’s discussions about Black German futurity. I argue that in Biskaya, SchwarzRund combines Afrofuturist aesthetics, Black feminist thought, and queer futurity to present us with a utopia that is not perfect but is in a state of becoming thanks to people like Tue, who realize the importance of being hopeful and working towards a better future. I focus on the role that kinship plays in this Black, queer futurity, because Tue’s relationships, both biological and non-biological, both with peers and with elders and juniors, are a key part of her transformation into being more hopeful about the future. While it is the importance of non-biological kinship ties in the novel that helps make it so queer, it is the intergenerational relationships that make the novel Afrofuturist. I look at how children in the novel allow SchwarzRund to pose several questions about futurity that can help unite Black Germans across genders, sexualities, and generations and empower all Black German folx to see themselves as agents of change.

When I started fieldwork among the Maka in SE Cameroon in 1971 I was suprised that for them kinship was hardly about ascribing people a fixed position. In retrospect this makes me realize how deeply Talcott Parsons’ famous pattern variables – notably ‘ascription’ versus ‘achievement’ influenced our perspective. But Maka people turned out to be true masters in ‘working’-with kinship, constantly ‘discovering’ kin in unexpected contexts, making creative equations and switch-es. My subsequent research in the area (up till now) highlighted how over time this plasticity of their kinship arrangements increased with growing urbanization and even more with transcontinental migration. Cameroon’s famous ‘bush-fallers’ have developed their own ways for ‘working’ with kinship. However, this plasticity should not only be studied as stemming from new and shifting conditions. I hope to show as well that such a more dynamic view on kinship is valuable for re-evaluating classical kinship theory.

Changes in kinship relations are part of the broad social change in all African societies. This article highlights trends and characteristics of changing kinship relations in West Africa. Its analysis focuses on the twentieth century, which was shaped by the colonial conquest and profound societal transformations like the political independence of the African colonies. In analysing three important kinship relations – parent–child relations, marriage, and care for the elderly – this article depicts the trends and conditions of historical change of these relationships. It also shows whether and how these changes are accompanied by conflict, and how people refer to the different ways of dealing with those conflicts. The article is based on empirical data from three thematically intertwined research projects.

AbstractOne product of the vicissitudes of apartheid-era labour migration, of persistent constraints on urban settlement and of continuing post-apartheid oscillating migration between South Africa's cities and countryside has been extensive domestic fluidity for many South African working people. As a consequence, they have repeatedly created new social networks across the urban–rural social field. In making sense of those networks by reconfiguring their notions of kinship and clanship, they have demonstrated the significance of kinship as an identity idiom. Based on research in Cape Town's largest African township during the early 1990s period of transition from apartheid, the article shows how, through people's use of notions of clanship, they have recursively reconstructed their idiom of kinship in a context of systemic instability. This article uses ethnographic data from that time and context to argue that we need to understand kinship as a cultural resource, pragmatically used and reinvented over and over again, each time emerging anew. In doing so, the article shows that kinship is not a fixed, recordable structure and that, like so many aspects of culture, it is repeatedly reinvented and reconstituted in order to address pragmatic circumstances.

By contrasting how families who mobilized African-descent networks gained more autonomy than those who relied on slaveholder patronage, this article explores the interplay between kinship and manumission on the northern Peruvian coast from the mid-seventeenth century into the early eighteenth century. For enslaved and freed people, kinship did not constitute a status, but a series of exchanges that required legal or public recognition and mutual acknowledgment. Manumission was embedded in articulated kinships, or announced relations, as well as in silenced kinships that often occurred because owners refused to recognize their relationships with enslaved women.

The connection between rural-urban migration, risky survival activities and HIV infections in sub-Saharan African societies has been central among the social and cultural factors associated with the high rates of HIV/AIDS in the continent. But the underlying role of kinship in this relationship has been less documented. This article discusses the connection of kinship in rural-urban migration and HIV infections among the matrilineal Akan of Ghana. There is a pressure on people to migrate from their villages to urban areas where they are expected to be successful and remit to other kin members back home. When people become infected, the burden then turns to lie on kin members to care for the AIDS patients. The article concludes that the family pressures reflected in the stories of many AIDS patients in Akan society are too huge to ignore. It suggests that interpersonal dialogues as campaign strategies should target both individuals and family members in households. Keywords: kinship obligations, migration, HIV/AIDS, Akan of Ghana

The paper re-examines principles of social organization in pre-colonial Equatorial Africa, suggesting that the imagery of ‘accumulation’ of ‘wealth in people’ is not wrong, but not flexible enough to encompass the centrality of knowledge in these societies. People were singularized repositories of a differentiated and expanding repertoire of knowledge, as well as being structured kin (as in the kinship model) and generic dependents and followers (as in the wealth-in-people model). We argue that social mobilization was in part based on the mobilization of different bodies of knowledge, and leadership was the capacity to bring them together effectively, even if for a short time and specific purpose. We refer to this process as composition and distinguish it from accumulation.The paper has three parts. The first substitutes an oral epic from southern Cameroon for an ethnography of the principles by which people pursued agendas and mobilized followings in their own political worlds. Colonial rule may have institutionalized pre-colonial political hierarchies, but it completely altered the terms for political mobilization. Hence the historical record is very limited for making inferences about how ‘wealth-in-people’ operated in action, under pre-colonial conditions. The second critiques the evolutionary assumptions about simple societies that still color the models of Equatorial societies. The third revisits the ethnography to illuminate the principles of composition. The conclusion makes inferences and suggestions with respect to aspects of pre-colonial social history.

AbstractIn the academic debate on labour migration and urbanisation in Southern Africa the persistence of links between urban workers and people in rural areas has proved a pertinent issue. As is implied by the termlabour migration, economic forces have always been regarded as a major determinant of migratory behaviour. State-centred perspectives have dominated studies of rural–urban migration in Zimbabwe, where a restrictive legal framework regulated migration to urban centres during the colonial era in an attempt to prevent large numbers of Africans becoming permanent town dwellers. This ethnographic study of labour migrants in Harare originating from the Buhera district, however, shifts away from perspectives that reduce migratory behaviour to an effect of state intervention and/or economic forces. Such external forces are mediated by migrants’ networks that encompass both rural and urban localities. Rather than being only economically motivated, individual migrants’ participation in these networks has to be understood as an expression of a socio-cultural pattern in which rural identification and kinship ideology are of major importance. Viewing migration practices in this way—i.e. as observable outcomes of migrants’ socio-cultural dispositions—not only helps us to understand better the preferences that motivate economic behaviour but also challenges conventional perspectives in which the rural and urban are often viewed as distinct social worlds and the urbanisation process as part of a wider evolutionary development or transition towards a modern class society.

Although one of the existing studies on Nigerian or African kinship terms has argued that semantic expansion of such words constitutes an absurdity to the English society, none has argued for the necessity of a specialized dictionary to address the problem of absurdity to the English society, the custodian of the English language. This is important especially now that the language has become an invaluable legacy which non-native speakers of the language use to express their culture as well as the fact that the English people now accept the Greek and Hebrew world-views through Christianity. This paper provides additional evidence in support of semantic expansion of kingship terms like ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ not only in a Nigerian or an African language but also in Greek and Hebrew languages. The paper argues that if English is to play its role as an international language, it will be desirable if our lexicographers can publish a specialized dictionary that will take care of kinship terms, as it is the case in some other specialized dictionaries on the different professions such as medicine, nursing, linguistics and agriculture, to mention but a few, so as to guide against ambiguity or absurdity that may arise in language use in social interactions.

<p>The aim of this study is to adapt and to obtain evidences of validity of the Allophilia Scale to Spanish population. Participants were 960 individuals from all over Spain. Questionnaires to measure prejudice toward North African people, stress and empathy were used to analyze the criterion validity of the Allophilia scale. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the items of the questionnaire fit a model with five factors, corresponding to the dimensions proposed by the original authors (affection, comfort, kinship, engagement, enthusiasm). Additionally, it has been found that the Allophilia scale is related with other variables such as prejudice toward North African people (cognitive, emotions and behaviors), stress (interaction, resources, identity) and empathy. In light of these results, we conclude that the questionnaire is methodologically valid and can be used by the scientific community to measure cooperative and participatory intergroup behavior and as a complement to traditional measures of prejudice and negative intergroup behaviors.</p>

The article examines the religious and symbolic aspects of the Ethiopian Embassy (mission) to Russia (1895) in the context of church and state relations and ideological searching of Russian conservatives in the end of the 19th century. The visit of the Embassy to Russia aroused special interest of the Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev who saw the people of the African State as supporters of the patriarchal values, so important for him, such as – patriarchal simplicity, devotion to traditions, genuine religiousness. For Pobedonostsev the embodiment of those values in Russia were the establishments related to his activities as head of the clerical office (primarily church schools for common people), that’s why he attached special importance to the visits of the African guests to those schools in the course of their mission. The visits were meant to reveal the spiritual kinship of the Christians from that distant country with Russian church life and consolidate their attraction to Russia.

The main contribution of this article revolves around the choice of address forms as a mechanism to express politeness in an institutionalised setting in African context. To achieve this goal, I worked with spoken texts which enabled to unravel three issues. First, maternal forms of address in Nyakyusa reveal a dichotomy of male-female distinction, which adopts the male-oriented terms when the general population is referred to. Terms of masculine status are preferred in addressing the general public. In this case both male and female members of the community are addressed by male-oriented kin terms. Second, since utility of address forms primarily involves selection of kinship terms, their choice is a strategy employed to express politeness in face-to-face conversations. The extensions and incorporation of kinship terms in the forms of address is a testimony that the Nyakyusa people manoeuvres terms to express politeness. Lastly, Nyakyusa people have adjusted their kin system. This is obvious with such terms as usangasi (< Swahili: shangazi ‘father’s sister’), ugwifi (< Swahili: wifi ‘brother’s wife’) and abalongosi (< Swahili: viongozi ‘leaders’). In this regard, findings show that the lexicon for the traditional leadership is slightly disrupted by the introduction of the modern system of government.

Stereotypical ideas about poverty and life in refugee camps make it difficult to understand the choices that individual refugees make when moving from one place to another within Africa, including from refugee settlements to town, to refugee camps and vice versa. Certain choices which individual migrants make, and which may appear incomprehensible, respond in fact to a clear logic and represent, as it were, diversified forms of social security. Recent trends in migration theories have emphasised the importance of the positive role of the group of kin in the decision to set out on the migration path, but this article reveals a much more complex dynamic underlying such movements within Africa: a vision of livelihood diversification that goes beyond the stark reality of forced displacement or the opportunity of acquiring refugee status. The article will take into consideration the migratory trajectories of a number of young persons, across the Horn and some eastern African nations, first as forced migrants and later as refugees migrating at will, as observed over a period of years. Over and above the war that initially prompted migration, the movements of these young people result from negotiating the demands of individual agency and the constraints imposed by kinship ideologies.

The post-apartheid state in South Africa inherited a care regime that historically combined liberal, social democratic and conservative features. The post-apartheid state has sought to deracialise the care regime, through extending to the African majority the privileges that hitherto had been largely confined to the white minority, and to transform it, to render it more appropriate to the needs and norms of the African majority. Deracialisation proved insufficient and transformation too limited to address inequalities in access to care. Reform also generated tensions, including between a predominant ideology that accords women and children rights as autonomous individuals, the widespread belief in kinship obligations and an enduring if less widespread conservative, patriarchal ideology. Ordinary people must navigate between the market (if they can afford it), the state and the family, balancing opportunities for independence with the claims made on and by kin. The care regime thus remains a contested hybrid.

Ties of kinship traced through blood (consanguinity) are of fundamental importance to individuals because they enshrine historical content which cannot be ignored. The social recognition of these linkages through totems provides the individual with a blue print of interaction which forms a vital bas is for cooperation. This article challenges the so-called irrationality of totemism, taking an uncelebrated dimension of how the practice is crucial for tracing the history of a people and the cementing of domestic social relations. The study explores and traces the history behind toponyms with the intention of showing that totems are a rich heritage as a source of history and social registers through which people can identify themselves. The study has been motivated by the Afrocentricity theory which values preservation of oral history as the natural way of storing information and historical realities in many African societies.

ABSTRACT This article argues that the missionary language of the Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was cast in familial and kinship nomenclature that eschewed the evil of racial hierarchy. Although routine missionary vernacular about heathen Africa and its need for Christianization and civilization appeared in the rhetoric of AME women, they more deeply expressed a diasporic consciousness that obligated Black people on both sides of the Atlantic to resist Euro-American hegemony. The capacious embrace of the WPMMS for Black women—whether in the United States, the Caribbean, or Africa—actualized their vision for maternal and sisterly interaction in contrast to the racial condescension prevalent among white women in their respective American and European missionary groups.

ABSTRACT The main objective of this paper is to contribute to explaining the outstanding business success among the Asian diaspora in East Africa as compared to the native African population. Taking an actor's point of view, the business context is analysed against a theoretical background of alien entrepreneurship and a presentation of the history of Asians in the region. A main argument is that the alien entrepreneurs are in a better position to enact their business context in a manner favourable for success, based on ethnic resources such as kinship, education and pride, mobility and communication and social networking. The main policy recommendations include mechanisms to improve information flows and networking capabilities of indigenous business people.

Multilingualism as a consequence of transnational mobility and migration is prominent in studies of language socialization and family multilingualism in the Global North. While mobility within and between the various regions in South Africa sustains multilingualism and aligns with the global dynamic of mobility, Indigenous multilingualism is inherently the norm. The officiation of 11 named languages positions the country as linguistically diverse. However, dominant ideologies from the coloniality of language continue to reinforce the power of colonial languages while African languages used by numerical majorities remain marginalized, especially in high-status domains such as education. In this article, we present ethnographic data from a case study of a Xhosa multilingual family traversing between their urban (township) homes and the main family homestead in a rural setting. The family includes a child who attends a suburban historically whites-only English medium school. Reflecting on the non-hierarchical use of languages within their homes, or their languaging, we show how they use their linguistic/semiotic and spatial repertoires to make family as well as to resist the hierarchical positioning of the colonial languages, English and Afrikaans, above isiXhosa (prefix isi- indicates the language of Xhosa people) at school. Informed by Siqwana-Ndulo’s (1998) challenge to the Western idea of the nuclear family, our analysis demonstrates how family is distributed across kinship ties and households. We introduce the notion of ikhaya – the isiXhosa word for both family and home (see Molate, forthcoming) – as a useful southern concept for accounting for the expansive nature of family kinship systems in African families.

AbstractThis description of relations between grandparents and grandchildren in a rural Ghanaian community argues that the quality of these relations varies according to age and gender. Literature on African kinship has almost entirely focused on very young grandchildren. This article draws attention to changes that occur when those children grow into adolescents and adults. Grandchildren—both young and old—speak respectfully about their grandparents, but older people regret that their grandchildren do not come to them for advice once they have grown up. Older men seem more ‘neglected’ by their grandchildren than older women. The second argument is about performance: respect, affection and relatedness between grandparents and grandchildren are demonstrated in public even when their ‘contents’ have dwindled. The article is based on anthropological fieldwork over a period of almost ten years.

In her 1986 book All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Maya Angelou reflected on the meaning of identity among the people of the African diaspora. A rich and highly reflective memoir, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes recounted the author's experiences, relationships, and quest for a sense of individual and collective belonging throughout the African diaspora. At the core of Angelou's quest for individual and collective identity lay Africa, a continent whose geography and history loomed large in her very personal story, and in her efforts to create a sense of “kinship” among people of African descent throughout the world. Starting with Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, this essay considers the significance of “Africa” as a geographical site, political space, and constantly reimagined history in the formation of black identity in the travel writings of black diaspora authors since the 1980s. I compare Angelou's work with that of the Hawaiian-born President of the United States Barack Obama, whose Dreams from My Father (1995) offered personal self-reflections and critiques of the African diaspora from a Pacific world perspective. In Obama's rendering of African diasporic identity, Africa has become “an idea more than an actual place.” Half a decade later, and half a world away, the Caribbean-born Afro-Britain Caryl Phillips published The Atlantic Sound (2000), an account of African diasporic identity that moved between understanding, compassion, and a harsh belief that Africa cannot take on the role of a psychologist's couch, that “Africa cannot cure.” These three memoirs offer insight into the complex and highly contested nature of identity throughout the African diaspora, and present very personalized reflections on the geography, politics, and history of Africa as a source of identity and diasporic belonging. Taken together, these three personal narratives represent a challenge to the utility of a transnational black identity that Paul Gilroy suggested in his landmark book The Black Atlantic.

Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, however, is Ward’s second work to have won the National Book Award for fiction. It was Sing that laid a solid foundation for Ward’s reception from the American literary circle as a powerful new voice. Sing focuses on a black family in the American south, which was nearly torn apart by poverty, drugs, and racial discrimination; Apart from the estranged kinship in the black family, represented by ghost Richie, the black group in the novel also shows a seemingly strong desire for identity. Based on Erich Fromm’s alienation theory and his theories of love, this paper gives an analysis of the alienation of the protagonist at the level of love and racial identity and focuses on the struggle of the black group to survive in the white mainstream society, which resulted in their dual lack and dual pursuit of love and identity. This paper aims to reveal Ward’s fierce criticism of racist ideology that has caused the double dilemma of survival and spirit of black people in the American South and demonstrate her deep understanding as well as support for the ideals and actions of African Americans in terms of their eagerness to integrate into the mainstream society.

This paper analyses how gender is constructed by the Tivs through their interpretation of Hamlet in comparison with how Shakespeare projects these characters. Hamlet, a tragic play by Shakespeare, presents a patriarchal system of governance with strong themes of betrayal, love, kinship, religion, and revenge. The lack of agency and autonomy of women, sexual objectification, and their plagues as victims of patriarchy portrayed in Hamlet is a vivid presentation of the fate of women in a patriarchal world. While these may seem universal, the contradictory interpretation of Hamlet by the Tivs in Nigeria demands an inquiry into how the people of Tiv construct and interpret gender in Shakespeare's Hamlet. This paper, therefore, compares the Tiv's culture and gender values with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The paper argues that the Tiv’s construction of gender contradicts Western conceptions of gruesome patriarchal performance in Africa as presented in Western literature. The analysis revealed that the Tiv’s construction of gender gave more agency, power, and respect to women and differed significantly from how Shakespeare constructed gender in Hamlet. The masculinization of witchcraft and the demeaning of the male characters in Hamlet gave less honour and power to the male characters. Tiv’s interpretations and gender constructions present a rather diverging representation of women in Hamlet based on cultural negotiations and lived experiences; thereby, demonstrating how cultural dynamism shapes gender constructions.

The former Kingdom of Granada, comprising the provinces of Granada, Málaga, and Almería (GMA), was once inhabited for over 700 years (711–1492 AD) by a North African population, which influenced its creation and establishment. The genetic data on 15 autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) in 245 unrelated donor residents were examined in order to assess any possible admixture. As the two surnames in Spain follow an inheritance similar to the Y chromosome, both surnames of all 245 unrelated individuals were queried and annotated. The Spanish Statistics Office website was consulted to determine the regions with the highest frequency of individuals born bearing each surname. Further, several heraldry and lineage pages were examined to determine the historical origin of the surnames. By AMOVA and STRUCTURE analysis, the populations of the three provinces can be treated genetically as a single population. The analysis of allele frequencies and genetic distance demonstrated that the GMA population lay in the Spanish population group but was slightly more similar to the North African populations than the remainder of the Spanish populations. In addition, the surnames of most individuals originated in Northern and Central Spain, whereas most surnames had higher frequencies in Southern Spain. These results confirm that the GMA population shows no characteristics that reflect a greater genetic influence of North African people than the rest of the populations of the Iberian Peninsula. This feature is consistent with the historical data that African inhabitants were expelled or isolated during the repopulation of the region with Spaniards from Northern Spain. The knowledge of present populations and their genetic history is essential for better statistical results in kinship analyses.

This paper analyses the role of information flow under transnational (social) networks to understand African refugees and undocumented migrants’ migration to Austria. Existing research pointed to the international refugee crisis with industrialised countries targeted border governance that has prompted the emergence of the transnational (social) network, which builds (kinship-based) connectivity and interchangeable acquaintances between migrants in host and country of origin to influence and facilitate migrants’ pre and post mobility process. However, the network often faces weak ties with exploitation and subjugation to human trafficking. Based on twenty qualitative problem-centred face-face interviews, data are collected and analysed with content analysis technique to fill in the gap. The findings indicate that pre-mobility guidance, directive, and legislative decoder regulatory tools influence transnational networks with a lack of well-managed network that may impair pre and post-mobility processes to shape African refugees and undocumented migrant international migratory pathways in an information flow setting. This study demonstrated actor-based network-driven advocacy governance. The outcome points to the strategic mobilization of collective information to resource vulnerable people and refugees or undocumented migrants to meet their needs. This is relevant to collective action in contemporary neoliberal society targeting freedom and movements that may not only constrain ethnic minority group mobility, but the universal human rights principles, public policy learning process, informal institution collaborative actions, and democratic values in times of crisis-related super-diversity societies.

Background: This research is an exploratory pilot study into the phenomenon of caregiving for people with dementia in a rural context in South Africa. Method: This study used a qualitative method of inquiry for conducting individual interviews with five caregivers to collect the data. The interviews were conducted in the local language of isiZulu. All interviews were audiotaped, and then transcribed into English. Transcriptions were analysed using thematic analysis.Findings: There were three main emergent themes, namely views and responsibilities of the caregiver, impact of caregiving, and skills and services to assist the caregiver. There were numerous subsidiary themes such as acceptance of the ageing process, a sense of duty and kinship in African culture, and dealing with problem behaviours. Caregiving was also viewed as a character-building experience, and has major implications such as promoting social isolation, restricting activities of daily living, reducing employment and increasing financial burden. Services that would alleviate caregiver burden are education, caregiver training, a financial grant and respite care.Conclusions: Although these findings are not generalisable, it would appear that caregivers of people with dementia suffer significant psychosocial distress, and would benefit from emotional and financial support. It remains to be seen who will provide this support, but policy-makers as well as governmental and non-governmental organisations will have to factor this into their forward planning to render an effective service for people with dementia and their families. Advocacy groups should also disseminate information on dementia and caregiving responsibility, whilst healthcare professionals should screen for caregiver stress or caregiver burden in individuals caring for people with dementia.

The present study investigated potential enhancement factors in relation to volunteerism. Specifically, we examined how perceived locus of causality, social distance and gender may influence willingness to volunteer help for victims of road accident. The study was based on a controlled experiment among students of a university (N = 80). Hypotheses were tested simultaneously in a univariate analysis which showed non-significant influence of perceived locus of causality (H1, p > .05); significant influence of social distance (H2, p < .05); non-significant influence of gender (H3, p > .05); significant interaction of perceived locus of causality and gender (p < .01), and significant interaction of perceived locus of causality, social distance and gender on willingness to volunteer (H4, p < .01). That is, people were more willing to help when those in need are related to them. The present study contributes to theory within this research field which explain African disposition by showing that kinship and familiarity are significant predictors of willingness to provide help for victims of disaster. However, the researchers encourage all Nigerians to look beyond family ties and affiliations in providing help to people in need. Key Words: Volunteerism; Social distance; Perceived locus of causality; Gender; Nigeria; Local culture

ABSTRACTThere is widespread apprehension about the resilience of the ‘traditional African’ model of the extended family in maintaining norms and practices of inter-group cooperation and care in conditions of demographic, social and economic change. In Nyanza Province, Kenya, where one of every five children is currently orphaned, and HIV/AIDS and wide-scale poverty continue to render lives and livelihoods insecure, many people are not able to take their families' care for granted. Ideas and practices of kinship have been challenged profoundly by questions regarding who is responsible for the care of orphaned children. This article looks at two complementary practices among Luo families in western Kenya that address such dilemmas: the communal initiative of ‘sitting’ as a family to discuss and resolve issues in a cooperative and consensual manner; and the individualistic initiative of ‘standing’ to represent the interests of another individual. I suggest that while the immediate purposes of sitting and standing are pragmatic in assigning caring responsibilities for specific children, their eventfulness also actualizes something greater: trust, reciprocity and solidarity among extended families.

Anthropologists have long recognized that Australian aboriginal cultures have a rich repertoire of cognitive achievements, and they have contrasted this richness with the relative impoverishment of their technological repertoire. However, despite the richness of the cognitive repertoire, the anthropological literature contains no overall inventory for any aboriginal cultural group. McKnight's monograph is the first work that covers everything: social structure (including kinship), myth, ritual, dancing, property structure, and biological classification. The quality of the scholarship is very high. At the time of writing, McKnight had worked with the Lardil for 30 years, including 16 field trips, with a total time of residence among the Lardil of more than five years. After completing an MA on West African materials under Darryl Forde, he switched to Australia, where he also worked with the Wik-mungkan and a number of other groups. The present monograph is the first of a projected trilogy; work is under way now on the second volume, a monograph on marriage, sorcery, and violence. In recent years, McKnight has been involved, on behalf of the Lardil, in negotiations with the Australian government for land claims.

Canarians, North Africans and Iberians show a close genetic relatedness. Greeks have a Sub-Saharan gene input according to HLA and other autosomic markers. Also, there is a genetic kinship between both Atlantic Euro Africans and North African/Arabic people. This is concordant with a drying humid Sahara Desert, which may have occurred about 6,000 years BC, and the subsequent northwards emigration of Saharan people may have also happened in Pharaonic times. This genetic input into Atlantic and Mediterranean Europe/Africa is also supported with Lineal Megalithic Scripts in Canary Islands (as well as in Iberia) together with simple Iberian semi-syllabary rock inscriptions both at Canary Islands and Ti-m Missaou (Algeria, Central southern Sahara). Lineal African/European scripts are found in certain languages scripts like Berber/Tuareg, Iberian, Runes, Etruscan, Bulgarian (Sitovo and Gradeshnitza, 6,000 years BP), Italian Old Scripts (Lepontic, Venetic, Raetic), Minoan Lineal A and Vinca scripts (Romania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, about 4,000 years BP). The possibility that Megalithic Lineal Scripts have given rise to these languages lineal writing is feasible because admixture of languages rock scripts and Megalithic Lineal Scripts have been found. Thus, resistance of Canarian aborigines (Guanches) to Carthage, Rome and Arabs left a bulk of Canarian-Saharan information which is used to study both Saharan and Canarian Prehistory, and also Atlantic and Mediterranean beginning of European and other civilizations: this preserved prehistoric inheritance may be named the “Saharo-Canarian Circle” of prehistoric knowledge. Also, linguistics-epigraphy, physical anthropology, archaeology, and domesticated cattle shows a close North Africa-Iberia Mesolithic/Neolithic relationship and demonstrates that the demic diffusion model does not exist in Iberia. Also, Tassili Sahara paintings of domesticated cattle appear 1,000 years before those agricultural practices started at Middle East. Finally, it is also inferred that circum-Mediterranean contacts during thousand years between ice and desert constructed Mediterranean cultures from Canary Islands to Ancient Great Persia and this is the origin of Classical Mediterranean cultures that was later exclusively attributed to Rome and Greece.

Responding to the question, “Whose North America is it?,” this essay argues North America does not belong to anyone. As a Sonoran Desert Tohono O’odham said of the mountain: “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.” Contrasting Native American and Euro-American views of the natural world, the essay maintains that European immigrants introduced the startling concept of Cartesian duality. Accepting a division between spiritual and material, they viewed the natural world as physical matter, devoid of spirituality. North America’s First People saw it differently: they perceived the Earth/Universe as a spiritual community of reciprocal relationships bound by intricate ties of kinship and respect. This clash has shaped American history. From the sixteenth century forward, many European immigrants envisioned land ownership as a dream. Creators of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution thrust “happiness”/“property” into the nation’s mythology. Southern Euro-Americans claimed “ownership” of African Americans, defining them as “property”; Native Americans resisted Euro-Americans’ enforcement of land ownership ideology; by the late 1800s, Euro-Americans’ view of the natural world as physical matter spurred massive extraction of natural resources. The Cartesian duality persisted, but, given its dubious legacy, Native Americans question the wisdom of this interpretation of the natural world.

Abstract In the African kinship system, elders have significant roles. Especially within families, roles including care and socialization are established by cultural normativity. Since socialization processes are intergenerational, older generations inculcate these norms and the values of the society in the younger generation. This makes mothers-in-law relevant in families. The roles of mothers-in-law in younger families are widely acknowledged as key in providing intergenerational training and general family support in Nigeria. However, these intergenerational roles are complex and variously interpreted and constructed to the extent that they may engender inherent conflicts across generations in Nigerian families. These differential interpretations and constructions form perspectives of how people interpret the roles of mothers-in-law. They have implications for family wellbeing, social change, and demographic ethos, yet previous studies have not sufficiently captured these nuances. Therefore, this article empirically examines the intersectionalities of Mothers-in-Law (MsIL) roles, perspectives, social constructions of roles, and existentialities in the context of Nigeria within a broader framework of family demographic change and social development. Specific objectives of this article include understanding constructions and drivers of opinions, ideas, and worldviews about mothers-in-law and examining the preferred choice of family and perceived continuities and discontinuities relative to MsIL realities among unmarried youths.

Abstract: This article investigates one of the most litigated and controversial court cases over Dawes enrollments in Oklahoma history from the perspective of Sally Atkins (1855–1924). Atkins, born into slavery in Missouri, married into an estelvste (African Creek) family in Indian Territory after the Civil War. Atkins migrated to Canada following statehood but was drawn back to Oklahoma by 1917. She believed her son, Tommy, to be the rightful allottee of one quarter section of the Cushing-Drumright Oilfield, the richest oilfield in the nation at the time. This claim drew Atkins into conflict with some of the most powerful oilmen in the state, who believed that another woman—a “full-blood” Muscogee—was Tommy’s mother. Who was the real mother of Tommy? State and federal officials, along with newspaper reporters, adjudicated the case based on their preconceived notions of race and “blood” in Indian Country, leading to confounding conclusions about racial categories, mineral wealth, and kinship. Many of these notions were then codified into state laws in Oklahoma. In this article, I untangle the shifting notions of bloodlines and property rights to show how the bureaucratic imperialism of the Dawes Commission fixed white supremacist notions of race for people recognized as “Black” in Indian Territory.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the encounter between the social anthropologist Meyer Fortes and his wife Sonia, on the one hand, and the Talensi people of northern Ghana, on the other, in the years 1934–7. Based in large part on the Forteses’ extensive corpus of recently archived field notes, diaries and other papers, it argues that the quotidian dynamics of that encounter were in many ways quite different from those of Talensi social life as enshrined in Meyer's famous published monographs. Far from entering a timeless world of enduring clanship and kinship, the Forteses grappled with a society struggling to come to terms with the forces of colonial change. The focus is on the couple's shifting relationship with two dominant figures in the local political landscape in the 1930s:TongranaNambiong, the leading Talensi chief and their host in the settlement of Tongo, andGolibdaanaTengol, a wealthy ritual entrepreneur who dominated access on the part of ‘stranger’ pilgrims to the principal oracular shrine in the adjacent Tong Hills. These two bitter rivals were, by local standards, commanding figures – yet both emerge as psychologically complex characters riddled with anxiety, unease and self-doubt. The ethnographic archive is thereby shown to offer the possibility of a more intimate history of the interior lives of non-literate African peoples on remote colonial frontiers who often passed under the radar of the state and its documentary regime.

Comparative history may be fashionable these days, but references to the past of precolonial sub-Saharan Africa in the literature on early Scandinavia, and vice versa, are still hard to come by. Perhaps this is as it should be, as Scandinavia and Sub-Saharan Africa are generally considered to be worlds apart. Besides, there is the time-lag involved: pre-Christian Scandinavia, including the Norse world, came to an end in roughly the eleventh century, whereas the precolonial era in sub-Saharan Africa lasted into the 1880s at the earliest. But many years ago, when after a prolonged immersion in African history, I picked up some books, including printed primary sources, related to pre-Christian Norway, I was invaded by a strange feeling of déjà vu, of having seen it all before, precisely in sub-Saharan Africa of old. Pre-Christian Norwegian, or Norse, society suddenly began to make sense to me as it had never done before.Why the similarities I believe I have detected, and how significant are they? Is it possible that they are in some way more relevant or meaningful than the differences? Can we even speak of a problem of similarities à la Henri Frankfort? I have no ready-made answers to these questions. In fact my aim in this paper is a fairly modest one, that of offering some tentative, possibly speculative, observations, thoughts, and/or conclusions. I take as my point of departure the obvious, or trivial, point that precolonial sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Christian Norway did have something quite essential in common: the prevalence in both cases of ”pagan” (or “heathen”) and overwhelmingly agrarian kinship-type societies. In the case of Norway and Scandinavia, the Viking era (790s to somewhere in the tenth century), with its marked maritime orientation, constituted perhaps a rupture. Extensive seafaring, including maritime raiding and pillaging, not to mention the emergence of so-called sea kings, implies mobility, and mobile people do not fit readily into the “model” that is outlined in this essay. It may be, however, that the inland regions of the Nordic world were not always directly or even deeply influenced by what happened on the coast. Note that the words “pagan” and “heathen” are used here for want of a better expression, in the sense of “non-revealed” or “ethnic” religions. By kinship-type societies I mean collectivist-oriented societies composed not primarily of individuals, but of kindreds or lineages.

The author defines nation as a territorial community of nativity and attributes significance to the biological fact of birth into the historically evolving territorial structure of the cultural community of nation, which allows to consider nation as a form of kinship. Nation differs from other territorial communities such as tribe, city-state or various ‘ethnic groups’ not just by the greater extent of its territory, but also by a relatively uniform culture that provides stability over time [22. P. 7]. According to the historical-linguistic comparative studies, “in terms of the history of mankind it is incontrovertible that some of the earliest and greatest human achievements have been accomplished in civilizations founded and headed by Afro-Asiatic peoples” [28. P. 74]. The Oromo people is one of the oldest nations in the world with its own territory (Oromia) and language ( Afaan Oromoo ). The Oromo possess a common political culture ( Gadaa democracy) and pursue one national-political goal of independence to get rid of the Abyssinian colonialism. Oromo national memories consist of memories of independence and national heroism, memories of the long war against expansionist Abyssinian warlords and the Abyssinian invasion of the Oromo land in the 19th century with the new firearms received from the African co-colonizing Western European powers, and these weapons were used not only to conquer the Oromo land but to cut the Oromo population in half. The Oromo nation consider the colonization of their country, loss of their independence, and existence under the brutal colonial rule of Abyssinia to be the worst humiliation period in their national history. The article consists of two parts. In the first part, the author considers the theoretical background of such concepts as nation, national memory, conquest humiliation, and some colonial pejorative terms still used by colonial-minded writers (like tribe and ethnic groups). In the second part, the author describes the Oromo national political and social memories during their long history as an independent nation from the Middle-Ages to the last quarter of the 19th century; presents ‘the Oromo question’ through the prism of the global history of colonization, occupation of their territory, slavery, and the colonial humiliation of the Oromo nation by the most cruel and oppressive Abyssinian colonial system; presents the two last regimes of the Abyssinian system and the final phase of the Oromo National Movement for sovereignty, dignity, and peace, which contributed greatly to the stability in the Horn of Africa.

A World Among these Islands: Essays on Literature, Race, and National Identity in Antillean America, by Roberto Márquez (reviewed by Peter Hulme) Caribbean Reasonings: The Thought of New World, The Quest for Decolonisation, edited by Brian Meeks & Norman Girvan (reviewed by Cary Fraser) Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination, by Paul B. Miller (reviewed by Kerstin Oloff) Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa’s Gaze, by Maria Cristina Fumagalli (reviewed by Maureen Shay) Who Abolished Slavery: Slave Revolts and Abolitionism: A Debate with João Pedro Marques, edited by Seymour Drescher & Pieter C. Emmer, and Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, edited by Derek R . Peterson (reviewed by Claudius Fergus) The Mediterranean Apprenticeship of British Slavery, by Gustav Ungerer (reviewed by James Walvin) Children in Slavery through the Ages, edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers & Joseph C. Miller (reviewed by Indrani Chatterjee) The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson (reviewed by Kris Lane) Theorizing a Colonial Caribbean-Atlantic Imaginary: Sugar and Obeah, by Keith Sandiford (reviewed by Elaine Savory) Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul, edited by Jennifer Rahim & Barbara Lalla (reviewed by Supriya M. Nair) Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature, by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley (reviewed by Lyndon K. Gill) Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, by Kaiama L. Glover (reviewed by Asselin Charles) Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature, by Néstor E. Rodríguez (reviewed by Dawn F. Stinchcomb) The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives, edited by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt & Emma Smith (reviewed by Leah Rosenberg) Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba, by Todd Ramón Ochoa (reviewed by Brian Brazeal) El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader, by Araceli Tinajero (reviewed by Juan José Baldrich) Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959, by Gillian McGillivray (reviewed by Consuelo Naranjo Orovio) The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai’i, by Christine Skwiot (reviewed by Amalia L. Cabezas) A History of the Cuban Revolution, by Aviva Chomsky (reviewed by Michelle Chase) The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana, by Todd F. Tietchen (reviewed by Stephen Fay) The Devil in the Details: Cuban Antislavery Narrative in the Postmodern Age, by Claudette M. Williams (reviewed by Gera Burton) Screening Cuba: Film Criticism as Political Performance during the Cold War, by Hector Amaya (reviewed by Ann Marie Stock) Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective, by Lana Wylie (reviewed by Julia Sagebien) Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow, by Frank Andre Guridy (reviewed by Susan Greenbaum) The Irish in the Atlantic World, edited by David T. Gleeson (reviewed by Donald Harman Akenson) The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Walton Look Lai & Tan Chee-Beng (reviewed by John Kuo Wei Tchen) The Island of One People: An Account of the History of the Jews of Jamaica, by Marilyn Delevante & Anthony Alberga (reviewed by Barry Stiefel) Creole Jews: Negotiating Community in Colonial Suriname, by Wieke Vink (reviewed by Aviva Ben-Ur) Only West Indians: Creole Nationalism in the British West Indies, by F.S.J. Ledgister (reviewed by Jerome Teelucksingh) Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root of Everyday Life in Rural Jamaica, by Diana J. Fox (reviewed by Jean Besson) Women in Grenadian History, 1783-1983, by Nicole Laurine Phillip (reviewed by Bernard Moitt) British-Controlled Trinidad and Venezuela: A History of Economic Interests and Subversions, 1830-1962, by Kelvin Singh (reviewed by Stephen G. Rabe) Export/Import Trends and Economic Development in Trinidad, 1919-1939, by Doddridge H.N. Alleyne (reviewed by Rita Pemberton) Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal, by Colin Clarke & Gillian Clarke (reviewed by Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy) Poverty in Haiti: Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects, by Mats Lundahl (reviewed by Robert Fatton Jr.) From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964, by Millery Polyné (reviewed by Brenda Gayle Plummer) Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, edited by Martin Munro (reviewed by Jonna Knappenberger) Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora, by Margarita A. Mooney (reviewed by Rose-Marie Chierici) This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, by Carol B. Duncan (reviewed by James Houk) Interroger les morts: Essai sur le dynamique politique des Noirs marrons ndjuka du Surinam et de la Guyane, by Jean-Yves Parris (reviewed by H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen & W. van Wetering)

Education in Oceania continues to reflect the embedded implicit and explicit colonial practices and processes from the past. This paper conceptualises a cultural approach to education and leadership appropriate and relevant to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As elementary school leaders, we highlight Kanne Lobal, a traditional Marshallese navigation practice based on indigenous language, values and practices. We conceptualise and develop Kanne Lobal in this paper as a framework for understanding the usefulness of our indigenous knowledge in leadership and educational practices within formal education. Through bwebwenato, a method of talk story, our key learnings and reflexivities were captured. We argue that realising the value of Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices for school leaders requires purposeful training of the ways in which our knowledge can be made useful in our professional educational responsibilities. Drawing from our Marshallese knowledge is an intentional effort to inspire, empower and express what education and leadership partnership means for Marshallese people, as articulated by Marshallese themselves. Introduction As noted in the call for papers within the Waikato Journal of Education (WJE) for this special issue, bodies of knowledge and histories in Oceania have long sustained generations across geographic boundaries to ensure cultural survival. For Marshallese people, we cannot really know ourselves “until we know how we came to be where we are today” (Walsh, Heine, Bigler & Stege, 2012). Jitdam Kapeel is a popular Marshallese concept and ideal associated with inquiring into relationships within the family and community. In a similar way, the practice of relating is about connecting the present and future to the past. Education and leadership partnerships are linked and we look back to the past, our history, to make sense and feel inspired to transform practices that will benefit our people. In this paper and in light of our next generation, we reconnect with our navigation stories to inspire and empower education and leadership. Kanne lobal is part of our navigation stories, a conceptual framework centred on cultural practices, values, and concepts that embrace collective partnerships. Our link to this talanoa vā with others in the special issue is to attempt to make sense of connections given the global COVID-19 context by providing a Marshallese approach to address the physical and relational “distance” between education and leadership partnerships in Oceania. Like the majority of developing small island nations in Oceania, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has had its share of educational challenges through colonial legacies of the past which continues to drive education systems in the region (Heine, 2002). The historical administration and education in the RMI is one of colonisation. Successive administrations by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and now the US, has resulted in education and learning that privileges western knowledge and forms of learning. This paper foregrounds understandings of education and learning as told by the voices of elementary school leaders from the RMI. The move to re-think education and leadership from Marshallese perspectives is an act of shifting the focus of bwebwenato or conversations that centres on Marshallese language and worldviews. The concept of jelalokjen was conceptualised as traditional education framed mainly within the community context. In the past, jelalokjen was practiced and transmitted to the younger generation for cultural continuity. During the arrival of colonial administrations into the RMI, jelalokjen was likened to the western notions of education and schooling (Kupferman, 2004). Today, the primary function of jelalokjen, as traditional and formal education, it is for “survival in a hostile [and challenging] environment” (Kupferman, 2004, p. 43). Because western approaches to learning in the RMI have not always resulted in positive outcomes for those engaged within the education system, as school leaders who value our cultural knowledge and practices, and aspire to maintain our language with the next generation, we turn to Kanne Lobal, a practice embedded in our navigation stories, collective aspirations, and leadership. The significance in the development of Kanne Lobal, as an appropriate framework for education and leadership, resulted in us coming together and working together. Not only were we able to share our leadership concerns, however, the engagement strengthened our connections with each other as school leaders, our communities, and the Public Schooling System (PSS). Prior to that, many of us were in competition for resources. Educational Leadership: IQBE and GCSL Leadership is a valued practice in the RMI. Before the IQBE programme started in 2018, the majority of the school leaders on the main island of Majuro had not engaged in collaborative partnerships with each other before. Our main educational purpose was to achieve accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an accreditation commission for schools in the United States. The WASC accreditation dictated our work and relationships and many school leaders on Majuro felt the pressure of competition against each other. We, the authors in this paper, share our collective bwebwenato, highlighting our school leadership experiences and how we gained strength from our own ancestral knowledge to empower “us”, to collaborate with each other, our teachers, communities, as well as with PSS; a collaborative partnership we had not realised in the past. The paucity of literature that captures Kajin Majol (Marshallese language) and education in general in the RMI is what we intend to fill by sharing our reflections and experiences. To move our educational practices forward we highlight Kanne Lobal, a cultural approach that focuses on our strengths, collective social responsibilities and wellbeing. For a long time, there was no formal training in place for elementary school leaders. School principals and vice principals were appointed primarily on their academic merit through having an undergraduate qualification. As part of the first cohort of fifteen school leaders, we engaged in the professional training programme, the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL), refitted to our context after its initial development in the Solomon Islands. GCSL was coordinated by the Institute of Education (IOE) at the University of the South Pacific (USP). GCSL was seen as a relevant and appropriate training programme for school leaders in the RMI as part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded programme which aimed at “Improving Quality Basic Education” (IQBE) in parts of the northern Pacific. GCSL was managed on Majuro, RMI’s main island, by the director at the time Dr Irene Taafaki, coordinator Yolanda McKay, and administrators at the University of the South Pacific’s (USP) RMI campus. Through the provision of GCSL, as school leaders we were encouraged to re-think and draw-from our own cultural repository and connect to our ancestral knowledge that have always provided strength for us. This kind of thinking and practice was encouraged by our educational leaders (Heine, 2002). We argue that a culturally-affirming and culturally-contextual framework that reflects the lived experiences of Marshallese people is much needed and enables the disruption of inherent colonial processes left behind by Western and Eastern administrations which have influenced our education system in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Kanne Lobal, an approach utilising a traditional navigation has warranted its need to provide solutions for today’s educational challenges for us in the RMI. Education in the Pacific Education in the Pacific cannot be understood without contextualising it in its history and culture. It is the same for us in the RMI (Heine, 2002; Walsh et al., 2012). The RMI is located in the Pacific Ocean and is part of Micronesia. It was named after a British captain, John Marshall in the 1700s. The atolls in the RMI were explored by the Spanish in the 16th century. Germany unsuccessfully attempted to colonize the islands in 1885. Japan took control in 1914, but after several battles during World War II, the US seized the RMI from them. In 1947, the United Nations made the island group, along with the Mariana and Caroline archipelagos, a U.S. trust territory (Walsh et al, 2012). Education in the RMI reflects the colonial administrations of Germany, Japan, and now the US. Before the turn of the century, formal education in the Pacific reflected western values, practices, and standards. Prior to that, education was informal and not binded to formal learning institutions (Thaman, 1997) and oral traditions was used as the medium for transmitting learning about customs and practices living with parents, grandparents, great grandparents. As alluded to by Jiba B. Kabua (2004), any “discussion about education is necessarily a discussion of culture, and any policy on education is also a policy of culture” (p. 181). It is impossible to promote one without the other, and it is not logical to understand one without the other. Re-thinking how education should look like, the pedagogical strategies that are relevant in our classrooms, the ways to engage with our parents and communities - such re-thinking sits within our cultural approaches and frameworks. Our collective attempts to provide a cultural framework that is relevant and appropriate for education in our context, sits within the political endeavour to decolonize. This means that what we are providing will not only be useful, but it can be used as a tool to question and identify whether things in place restrict and prevent our culture or whether they promote and foreground cultural ideas and concepts, a significant discussion of culture linked to education (Kabua, 2004). Donor funded development aid programmes were provided to support the challenges within education systems. Concerned with the persistent low educational outcomes of Pacific students, despite the prevalence of aid programmes in the region, in 2000 Pacific educators and leaders with support from New Zealand Aid (NZ Aid) decided to intervene (Heine, 2002; Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). In April 2001, a group of Pacific educators and leaders across the region were invited to a colloquium funded by the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency held in Suva Fiji at the University of the South Pacific. The main purpose of the colloquium was to enable “Pacific educators to re-think the values, assumptions and beliefs underlying [formal] schooling in Oceania” (Benson, 2002). Leadership, in general, is a valued practice in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Despite education leadership being identified as a significant factor in school improvement (Sanga & Chu, 2009), the limited formal training opportunities of school principals in the region was a persistent concern. As part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded project, the Improve Quality Basic Education (IQBE) intervention was developed and implemented in the RMI in 2017. Mentoring is a process associated with the continuity and sustainability of leadership knowledge and practices (Sanga & Chu, 2009). It is a key aspect of building capacity and capabilities within human resources in education (ibid). Indigenous knowledges and education research According to Hilda Heine, the relationship between education and leadership is about understanding Marshallese history and culture (cited in Walsh et al., 2012). It is about sharing indigenous knowledge and histories that “details for future generations a story of survival and resilience and the pride we possess as a people” (Heine, cited in Walsh et al., 2012, p. v). This paper is fuelled by postcolonial aspirations yet is grounded in Pacific indigenous research. This means that our intentions are driven by postcolonial pursuits and discourses linked to challenging the colonial systems and schooling in the Pacific region that privileges western knowledge and learning and marginalises the education practices and processes of local people (Thiong’o, 1986). A point of difference and orientation from postcolonialism is a desire to foreground indigenous Pacific language, specifically Majin Majol, through Marshallese concepts. Our collective bwebwenato and conversation honours and values kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness) (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Pacific leaders developed the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative for and by Pacific People (RPEIPP) in 2002 to take control of the ways in which education research was conducted by donor funded organisations (Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). Our former president, Dr Hilda Heine was part of the group of leaders who sought to counter the ways in which our educational and leadership stories were controlled and told by non-Marshallese (Heine, 2002). As a former minister of education in the RMI, Hilda Heine continues to inspire and encourage the next generation of educators, school leaders, and researchers to re-think and de-construct the way learning and education is conceptualised for Marshallese people. The conceptualisation of Kanne Lobal acknowledges its origin, grounded in Marshallese navigation knowledge and practice. Our decision to unpack and deconstruct Kanne Lobal within the context of formal education and leadership responds to the need to not only draw from indigenous Marshallese ideas and practice but to consider that the next generation will continue to be educated using western processes and initiatives particularly from the US where we get a lot of our funding from. According to indigenous researchers Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu (2010), doing research that considers “culturally appropriate processes to engage with indigenous groups and individuals is particularly pertinent in today’s research environment” (p. 37). Pacific indigenous educators and researchers have turned to their own ancestral knowledge and practices for inspiration and empowerment. Within western research contexts, the often stringent ideals and processes are not always encouraging of indigenous methods and practices. However, many were able to ground and articulate their use of indigenous methods as being relevant and appropriate to capturing the realities of their communities (Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014; Thaman, 1997). At the same time, utilising Pacific indigenous methods and approaches enabled research engagement with their communities that honoured and respected them and their communities. For example, Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian researchers used the talanoa method as a way to capture the stories, lived realities, and worldviews of their communities within education in the diaspora (Fa’avae, Jones, & Manu’atu, 2016; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014; Vaioleti, 2005). Tok stori was used by Solomon Islander educators and school leaders to highlight the unique circles of conversational practice and storytelling that leads to more positive engagement with their community members, capturing rich and meaningful narratives as a result (Sanga & Houma, 2004). The Indigenous Aborigine in Australia utilise yarning as a “relaxed discussion through which both the researcher and participant journey together visiting places and topics of interest relevant” (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010, p. 38). Despite the diverse forms of discussions and storytelling by indigenous peoples, of significance are the cultural protocols, ethics, and language for conducting and guiding the engagement (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014). Through the ethics, values, protocols, and language, these are what makes indigenous methods or frameworks unique compared to western methods like in-depth interviews or semi-structured interviews. This is why it is important for us as Marshallese educators to frame, ground, and articulate how our own methods and frameworks of learning could be realised in western education (Heine, 2002; Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). In this paper, we utilise bwebwenato as an appropriate method linked to “talk story”, capturing our collective stories and experiences during GCSL and how we sought to build partnerships and collaboration with each other, our communities, and the PSS. Bwebwenato and drawing from Kajin Majel Legends and stories that reflect Marshallese society and its cultural values have survived through our oral traditions. The practice of weaving also holds knowledge about our “valuable and earliest sources of knowledge” (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019, p. 2). The skilful navigation of Marshallese wayfarers on the walap (large canoes) in the ocean is testament of their leadership and the value they place on ensuring the survival and continuity of Marshallese people (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019; Walsh et al., 2012). During her graduate study in 2014, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner conceptualised bwebwenato as being the most “well-known form of Marshallese orality” (p. 38). The Marshallese-English dictionary defined bwebwenato as talk, conversation, story, history, article, episode, lore, myth, or tale (cited in Jetnil Kijiner, 2014). Three years later in 2017, bwebwenato was utilised in a doctoral project by Natalie Nimmer as a research method to gather “talk stories” about the experiences of 10 Marshallese experts in knowledge and skills ranging from sewing to linguistics, canoe-making and business. Our collective bwebwenato in this paper centres on Marshallese ideas and language. The philosophy of Marshallese knowledge is rooted in our “Kajin Majel”, or Marshallese language and is shared and transmitted through our oral traditions. For instance, through our historical stories and myths. Marshallese philosophy, that is, the knowledge systems inherent in our beliefs, values, customs, and practices are shared. They are inherently relational, meaning that knowledge systems and philosophies within our world are connected, in mind, body, and spirit (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Nimmer, 2017). Although some Marshallese believe that our knowledge is disappearing as more and more elders pass away, it is therefore important work together, and learn from each other about the knowledges shared not only by the living but through their lamentations and stories of those who are no longer with us (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). As a Marshallese practice, weaving has been passed-down from generation to generation. Although the art of weaving is no longer as common as it used to be, the artefacts such as the “jaki-ed” (clothing mats) continue to embody significant Marshallese values and traditions. For our weavers, the jouj (check spelling) is the centre of the mat and it is where the weaving starts. When the jouj is correct and weaved well, the remainder and every other part of the mat will be right. The jouj is symbolic of the “heart” and if the heart is prepared well, trained well, then life or all other parts of the body will be well (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). In that light, we have applied the same to this paper. Conceptualising and drawing from cultural practices that are close and dear to our hearts embodies a significant ontological attempt to prioritize our own knowledge and language, a sense of endearment to who we are and what we believe education to be like for us and the next generation. The application of the phrase “Majolizing '' was used by the Ministry of Education when Hilda Heine was minister, to weave cultural ideas and language into the way that teachers understand the curriculum, develop lesson plans and execute them in the classroom. Despite this, there were still concerns with the embedded colonized practices where teachers defaulted to eurocentric methods of doing things, like the strategies provided in the textbooks given to us. In some ways, our education was slow to adjust to the “Majolizing '' intention by our former minister. In this paper, we provide Kanne Lobal as a way to contribute to the “Majolizing intention” and perhaps speed up yet still be collectively responsible to all involved in education. Kajin Wa and Kanne Lobal “Wa” is the Marshallese concept for canoe. Kajin wa, as in canoe language, has a lot of symbolic meaning linked to deeply-held Marshallese values and practices. The canoe was the foundational practice that supported the livelihood of harsh atoll island living which reflects the Marshallese social world. The experts of Kajin wa often refer to “wa” as being the vessel of life, a means and source of sustaining life (Kelen, 2009, cited in Miller, 2010). “Jouj” means kindness and is the lower part of the main hull of the canoe. It is often referred to by some canoe builders in the RMI as the heart of the canoe and is linked to love. The jouj is one of the first parts of the canoe that is built and is “used to do all other measurements, and then the rest of the canoe is built on top of it” (Miller, 2010, p. 67). The significance of the jouj is that when the canoe is in the water, the jouj is the part of the hull that is underwater and ensures that all the cargo and passengers are safe. For Marshallese, jouj or kindness is what living is about and is associated with selflessly carrying the responsibility of keeping the family and community safe. The parts of the canoe reflect Marshallese culture, legend, family, lineage, and kinship. They embody social responsibilities that guide, direct, and sustain Marshallese families’ wellbeing, from atoll to atoll. For example, the rojak (boom), rojak maan (upper boom), rojak kōrā (lower boom), and they support the edges of the ujelā/ujele (sail) (see figure 1). The literal meaning of rojak maan is male boom and rojak kōrā means female boom which together strengthens the sail and ensures the canoe propels forward in a strong yet safe way. Figuratively, the rojak maan and rojak kōrā symbolise the mother and father relationship which when strong, through the jouj (kindness and love), it can strengthen families and sustain them into the future. Figure 1. Parts of the canoe Source: https://www.canoesmarshallislands.com/2014/09/names-of-canoe-parts/ From a socio-cultural, communal, and leadership view, the canoe (wa) provides understanding of the relationships required to inspire and sustain Marshallese peoples’ education and learning. We draw from Kajin wa because they provide cultural ideas and practices that enable understanding of education and leadership necessary for sustaining Marshallese people and realities in Oceania. When building a canoe, the women are tasked with the weaving of the ujelā/ujele (sail) and to ensure that it is strong enough to withstand long journeys and the fierce winds and waters of the ocean. The Kanne Lobal relates to the front part of the ujelā/ujele (sail) where the rojak maan and rojak kōrā meet and connect (see the red lines in figure 1). Kanne Lobal is linked to the strategic use of the ujelā/ujele by navigators, when there is no wind north wind to propel them forward, to find ways to capture the winds so that their journey can continue. As a proverbial saying, Kanne Lobal is used to ignite thinking and inspire and transform practice particularly when the journey is rough and tough. In this paper we draw from Kanne Lobal to ignite, inspire, and transform our educational and leadership practices, a move to explore what has always been meaningful to Marshallese people when we are faced with challenges. The Kanne Lobal utilises our language, and cultural practices and values by sourcing from the concepts of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). A key Marshallese proverb, “Enra bwe jen lale rara”, is the cultural practice where families enact compassion through the sharing of food in all occurrences. The term “enra” is a small basket weaved from the coconut leaves, and often used by Marshallese as a plate to share and distribute food amongst each other. Bwe-jen-lale-rara is about noticing and providing for the needs of others, and “enra” the basket will help support and provide for all that are in need. “Enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara” is symbolic of cultural exchange and reciprocity and the cultural values associated with building and maintaining relationships, and constantly honouring each other. As a Marshallese practice, in this article we share our understanding and knowledge about the challenges as well as possible solutions for education concerns in our nation. In addition, we highlight another proverb, “wa kuk wa jimor”, which relates to having one canoe, and despite its capacity to feed and provide for the individual, but within the canoe all people can benefit from what it can provide. In the same way, we provide in this paper a cultural framework that will enable all educators to benefit from. It is a framework that is far-reaching and relevant to the lived realities of Marshallese people today. Kumit relates to people united to build strength, all co-operating and working together, living in peace, harmony, and good health. Kanne Lobal: conceptual framework for education and leadership An education framework is a conceptual structure that can be used to capture ideas and thinking related to aspects of learning. Kanne Lobal is conceptualised and framed in this paper as an educational framework. Kanne Lobal highlights the significance of education as a collective partnership whereby leadership is an important aspect. Kanne Lobal draws-from indigenous Marshallese concepts like kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness, heart). The role of a leader, including an education leader, is to prioritise collective learning and partnerships that benefits Marshallese people and the continuity and survival of the next generation (Heine, 2002; Thaman, 1995). As described by Ejnar Aerōk, an expert canoe builder in the RMI, he stated: “jerbal ippān doon bwe en maron maan wa e” (cited in Miller, 2010, p. 69). His description emphasises the significance of partnerships and working together when navigating and journeying together in order to move the canoe forward. The kubaak, the outrigger of the wa (canoe) is about “partnerships”. For us as elementary school leaders on Majuro, kubaak encourages us to value collaborative partnerships with each other as well as our communities, PSS, and other stakeholders. Partnerships is an important part of the Kanne Lobal education and leadership framework. It requires ongoing bwebwenato – the inspiring as well as confronting and challenging conversations that should be mediated and negotiated if we and our education stakeholders are to journey together to ensure that the educational services we provide benefits our next generation of young people in the RMI. Navigating ahead the partnerships, mediation, and negotiation are the core values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). As an organic conceptual framework grounded in indigenous values, inspired through our lived experiences, Kanne Lobal provides ideas and concepts for re-thinking education and leadership practices that are conducive to learning and teaching in the schooling context in the RMI. By no means does it provide the solution to the education ills in our nation. However, we argue that Kanne Lobal is a more relevant approach which is much needed for the negatively stigmatised system as a consequence of the various colonial administrations that have and continue to shape and reframe our ideas about what education should be like for us in the RMI. Moreover, Kannel Lobal is our attempt to decolonize the framing of education and leadership, moving our bwebwenato to re-framing conversations of teaching and learning so that our cultural knowledge and values are foregrounded, appreciated, and realised within our education system. Bwebwenato: sharing our stories In this section, we use bwebwenato as a method of gathering and capturing our stories as data. Below we capture our stories and ongoing conversations about the richness in Marshallese cultural knowledge in the outer islands and on Majuro and the potentialities in Kanne Lobal. Danny Jim When I was in third grade (9-10 years of age), during my grandfather’s speech in Arno, an atoll near Majuro, during a time when a wa (canoe) was being blessed and ready to put the canoe into the ocean. My grandfather told me the canoe was a blessing for the family. “Without a canoe, a family cannot provide for them”, he said. The canoe allows for travelling between places to gather food and other sources to provide for the family. My grandfather’s stories about people’s roles within the canoe reminded me that everyone within the family has a responsibility to each other. Our women, mothers and daughters too have a significant responsibility in the journey, in fact, they hold us, care for us, and given strength to their husbands, brothers, and sons. The wise man or elder sits in the middle of the canoe, directing the young man who help to steer. The young man, he does all the work, directed by the older man. They take advice and seek the wisdom of the elder. In front of the canoe, a young boy is placed there and because of his strong and youthful vision, he is able to help the elder as well as the young man on the canoe. The story can be linked to the roles that school leaders, teachers, and students have in schooling. Without each person knowing intricately their role and responsibility, the sight and vision ahead for the collective aspirations of the school and the community is difficult to comprehend. For me, the canoe is symbolic of our educational journey within our education system. As the school leader, a central, trusted, and respected figure in the school, they provide support for teachers who are at the helm, pedagogically striving to provide for their students. For without strong direction from the school leaders and teachers at the helm, the students, like the young boy, cannot foresee their futures, or envisage how education can benefit them. This is why Kanne Lobal is a significant framework for us in the Marshall Islands because within the practice we are able to take heed and empower each other so that all benefit from the process. Kanne Lobal is linked to our culture, an essential part of who we are. We must rely on our own local approaches, rather than relying on others that are not relevant to what we know and how we live in today’s society. One of the things I can tell is that in Majuro, compared to the outer islands, it’s different. In the outer islands, parents bring children together and tell them legends and stories. The elders tell them about the legends and stories – the bwebwenato. Children from outer islands know a lot more about Marshallese legends compared to children from the Majuro atoll. They usually stay close to their parents, observe how to prepare food and all types of Marshallese skills. Loretta Joseph Case There is little Western influence in the outer islands. They grow up learning their own culture with their parents, not having tv. They are closely knit, making their own food, learning to weave. They use fire for cooking food. They are more connected because there are few of them, doing their own culture. For example, if they’re building a house, the ladies will come together and make food to take to the males that are building the house, encouraging them to keep on working - “jemjem maal” (sharpening tools i.e. axe, like encouraging workers to empower them). It’s when they bring food and entertainment. Rubon Rubon Togetherness, work together, sharing of food, these are important practices as a school leader. Jemjem maal – the whole village works together, men working and the women encourage them with food and entertainment. All the young children are involved in all of the cultural practices, cultural transmission is consistently part of their everyday life. These are stronger in the outer islands. Kanne Lobal has the potential to provide solutions using our own knowledge and practices. Connie Joel When new teachers become a teacher, they learn more about their culture in teaching. Teaching raises the question, who are we? A popular saying amongst our people, “Aelon kein ad ej aelon in manit”, means that “Our islands are cultural islands”. Therefore, when we are teaching, and managing the school, we must do this culturally. When we live and breathe, we must do this culturally. There is more socialising with family and extended family. Respect the elderly. When they’re doing things the ladies all get together, in groups and do it. Cut the breadfruit, and preserve the breadfruit and pandanus. They come together and do it. Same as fishing, building houses, building canoes. They use and speak the language often spoken by the older people. There are words that people in the outer islands use and understand language regularly applied by the elderly. Respect elderly and leaders more i.e., chiefs (iroj), commoners (alap), and the workers on the land (ri-jerbal) (social layer under the commoners). All the kids, they gather with their families, and go and visit the chiefs and alap, and take gifts from their land, first produce/food from the plantation (eojōk). Tommy Almet The people are more connected to the culture in the outer islands because they help one another. They don’t have to always buy things by themselves, everyone contributes to the occasion. For instance, for birthdays, boys go fishing, others contribute and all share with everyone. Kanne Lobal is a practice that can bring people together – leaders, teachers, stakeholders. We want our colleagues to keep strong and work together to fix problems like students and teachers’ absenteeism which is a big problem for us in schools. Demetria Malachi The culture in the outer islands are more accessible and exposed to children. In Majuro, there is a mixedness of cultures and knowledges, influenced by Western thinking and practices. Kanne Lobal is an idea that can enhance quality educational purposes for the RMI. We, the school leaders who did GCSL, we want to merge and use this idea because it will help benefit students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Kanne Lobal will help students to learn and teachers to teach though traditional skills and knowledge. We want to revitalize our ways of life through teaching because it is slowly fading away. Also, we want to have our own Marshallese learning process because it is in our own language making it easier to use and understand. Essentially, we want to proudly use our own ways of teaching from our ancestors showing the appreciation and blessings given to us. Way Forward To think of ways forward is about reflecting on the past and current learnings. Instead of a traditional discussion within a research publication, we have opted to continue our bwebwenato by sharing what we have learnt through the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL) programme. Our bwebwenato does not end in this article and this opportunity to collaborate and partner together in this piece of writing has been a meaningful experience to conceptualise and unpack the Kanne Lobal framework. Our collaborative bwebwenato has enabled us to dig deep into our own wise knowledges for guidance through mediating and negotiating the challenges in education and leadership (Sanga & Houma, 2004). For example, bwe-jen-lale-rara reminds us to inquire, pay attention, and focus on supporting the needs of others. Through enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara, it reminds us to value cultural exchange and reciprocity which will strengthen the development and maintaining of relationships based on ways we continue to honour each other (Nimmer, 2017). We not only continue to support each other, but also help mentor the next generation of school leaders within our education system (Heine, 2002). Education and leadership are all about collaborative partnerships (Sanga & Chu, 2009; Thaman, 1997). Developing partnerships through the GCSL was useful learning for us. It encouraged us to work together, share knowledge, respect each other, and be kind. The values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity) are meaningful in being and becoming and educational leader in the RMI (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Miller, 2010; Nimmer, 2017). These values are meaningful for us practice particularly given the drive by PSS for schools to become accredited. The workshops and meetings delivered during the GCSL in the RMI from 2018 to 2019 about Kanne Lobal has given us strength to share our stories and experiences from the meeting with the stakeholders. But before we met with the stakeholders, we were encouraged to share and speak in our language within our courses: EDP05 (Professional Development and Learning), EDP06 (School Leadership), EDP07 (School Management), EDP08 (Teaching and Learning), and EDP09 (Community Partnerships). In groups, we shared our presentations with our peers, the 15 school leaders in the GCSL programme. We also invited USP RMI staff. They liked the way we presented Kannel Lobal. They provided us with feedback, for example: how the use of the sail on the canoe, the parts and their functions can be conceptualised in education and how they are related to the way that we teach our own young people. Engaging stakeholders in the conceptualisation and design stages of Kanne Lobal strengthened our understanding of leadership and collaborative partnerships. Based on various meetings with the RMI Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) team, PSS general assembly, teachers from the outer islands, and the PSS executive committee, we were able to share and receive feedback on the Kanne Lobal framework. The coordinators of the PREL programme in the RMI were excited by the possibilities around using Kanne Lobal, as a way to teach culture in an inspirational way to Marshallese students. Our Marshallese knowledge, particularly through the proverbial meaning of Kanne Lobal provided so much inspiration and insight for the groups during the presentation which gave us hope and confidence to develop the framework. Kanne Lobal is an organic and indigenous approach, grounded in Marshallese ways of doing things (Heine, 2002; Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Given the persistent presence of colonial processes within the education system and the constant reference to practices and initiatives from the US, Kanne Lobal for us provides a refreshing yet fulfilling experience and makes us feel warm inside because it is something that belongs to all Marshallese people. Conclusion Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices provide meaningful educational and leadership understanding and learnings. They ignite, inspire, and transform thinking and practice. The Kanne Lobal conceptual framework emphasises key concepts and values necessary for collaborative partnerships within education and leadership practices in the RMI. The bwebwenato or talk stories have been insightful and have highlighted the strengths and benefits that our Marshallese ideas and practices possess when looking for appropriate and relevant ways to understand education and leadership. Acknowledgements We want to acknowledge our GCSL cohort of school leaders who have supported us in the development of Kanne Lobal as a conceptual framework. A huge kommol tata to our friends: Joana, Rosana, Loretta, Jellan, Alvin, Ellice, Rolando, Stephen, and Alan. References Benson, C. (2002). Preface. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. Benson (Eds.), Tree of Opportunity: re-thinking Pacific Education (p. iv). Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education. Bessarab, D., Ng’andu, B. (2010). Yarning about yarning as a legitimate method in indigenous research. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 3(1), 37-50. Fa’avae, D., Jones, A., & Manu’atu, L. (2016). Talanoa’i ‘a e talanoa - talking about talanoa: Some dilemmas of a novice researcher. AlterNative: An Indigenous Journal of Indigenous Peoples,12(2),138-150. Heine, H. C. (2002). A Marshall Islands perspective. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. 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The Routledge Handbook of language and culture represents a comprehensive study on the inextricable relationship between language and culture. It is structured into seven parts and 33 chapters. Part 1, Overview and historical background, by Farzad Sharifian, starts with an outline of the book and a synopsis of research on language and culture. The second chapter, John Leavitt’s Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations discusses further the historical development of the concept of linguistic relativity, identifying different schools’ of thought views on the relation between language and culture. He also tries to demystify some misrepresentations held towards Boas, Sapir, and Whorf’ theories (pp. 24-26). Chapter 3, Ethnosyntax, by Anna Gladkova provides an overview of research on ethnosyntax, starting from the theoretical basis laid by Sapir and Whorf and investigates the differences between a narrow sense of ethnosyntax, which focuses on cultural meanings of various grammatical structures and a broader sense, which emphasises the pragmatic and cultural norms’ impact on the choice of grammatical structures. John Leavitt presents in the fourth chapter, titled Ethnosemantics, a historical account of research on meaning across cultures, introducing three traditions, i.e. ‘classical’ ethnosemantics (also referred to as ethnoscience or cognitive anthropology), Boasian cultural semantics (linguistically inspired anthropology) and Neohumboldtian comparative semantics (word-field theory, or content-oriented Linguistics). In Chapter 5, Goddard underlines the fact that ethnopragmatics investigates emic (or culture-internal) approaches to the use of different speech practices across various world languages, which accounts for the fact that there exists a connection between the cultural values or norms and the speech practices peculiar to a speech community. One of the key objectives of ethnopragmatics is to investigate ‘cultural key words’, i.e. words that encapsulate culturally construed concepts. The concept of ‘linguaculture’ (or languaculture) is tackled in Risager’s Chapter 6, Linguaculture: the language–culture nexus in transnational perspective. The author makes reference to American scholars that first introduced this notion, Paul Friedrich, who looks at language and culture as a single domain in which verbal aspects of culture are mingled with semantic meanings, and Michael Agar, for whom culture resides in language while language is loaded with culture. Risager himself brought forth a new global and transnational perspective on the concept of linguaculture, i.e. the use of language (linguistic practice) is seen as flows in people’s social networks and speech communities. These flows enhance as people migrate or learn new languages, in permanent dynamics. Lidia Tanaka’s Chapter 7, Language, gender, and culture deals with research on language, gender, and culture. According to her, the language-gender relationship has been studied by researchers from various fields, including psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, who mainly consider gender as a construct that preserves inequalities in society, with the help of language, too. Tanaka lists diachronically different approaches to language and gender, focusing on three specific ones: gender stereotyped linguistic resources, semantically, pragmatically or lexically designated language features (including register) and gender-based spoken discourse strategies (talking-time imbalances or interruptions). In Chapter 8, Language, culture, and context, Istvan Kecskes delves into the relationship between language, culture, and context from a socio-cognitive perspective. The author considers culture to be a set of shared knowledge structures that encapsulate the values, norms, and customs that the members of a society have in common. According to him, both language and context are rooted in culture and carriers of it, though reflecting culture in a different way. Language encodes past experience with different contexts, whereas context reflects present experience. The author also provides relevant examples of formulaic language that demonstrate the functioning of both types of context, within the larger interplay between language, culture, and context. Sara Miller’s Chapter 9, Language, culture, and politeness reviews traditional approaches to politeness research, with particular attention given to ‘discursive approach’ to politeness. Much along the lines of the previous chapter, Miller stresses the role of context in judgements of (im)polite language, maintaining that individuals represent active agents who challenge and negotiate cultural as well as linguistic norms in actual communicative contexts. Chapter 10, Language, culture, and interaction, by Peter Eglin focuses on language, culture and interaction from the perspective of the correspondence theory of meaning. According to him, abstracting language and culture from their current uses, as if they were not interdependent would not lead to an understanding of words’ true meaning. David Kronenfeld introduces in Chapter 11, Culture and kinship language, a review of research on culture and kinship language, starting with linguistic anthropology. He explains two formal analytic definitional systems of kinship terms: the semantic (distinctions between kin categories, i.e. father vs mother) and pragmatic (interrelations between referents of kin terms, i.e. ‘nephew’ = ‘child of a sibling’). Chapter 12, Cultural semiotics, by Peeter Torop deals with the field of ‘semiotics of culture’, which may refer either to methodological instrument, to a whole array of methods or to a sub-discipline of general semiotics. In this last respect, it investigates cultures as a form of human symbolic activity, as well as a system of cultural languages (i.e. sign systems). Language, as “the preserver of the culture’s collective experience and the reflector of its creativity” represents an essential component of cultural semiotics, being a major sign system. Nigel Armstrong, in Chapter 13, Culture and translation, tackles the interrelation between language, culture, and translation, with an emphasis on the complexities entailed by translation of culturally laden aspects. In his opinion, culture has a double-sided dimension: the anthropological sense (referring to practices and traditions which characterise a community) and a narrower sense, related to artistic endeavours. However, both sides of culture permeate language at all levels. Chapter 14, Language, culture, and identity, by Sandra Schecter tackles several approaches to research on language, culture, and identity: social anthropological (the limits at play in the social construction of differences between various groups of people), sociocultural (the interplay between an individual’s various identities, which can be both externally and internally construed, in sociocultural contexts), participatory-relational (the manner in which individuals create their social–linguistic identities). Patrick McConvell, in Chapter 15, Language and culture history: the contribution of linguistic prehistory reviews research in this field where historical linguistic evidence is exploited in the reconstruction and understanding of prehistoric cultures. He makes an account of research in linguistic prehistory, with a focus on proto- and early Indo-European cultures, on several North American language families, on Africa, Australian, and Austronesian Aboriginal languages. McConvell also underlines the importance of interdisciplinary research in this area, which greatly benefits from studies in other disciplines, such as archaeology, palaeobiology, or biological genetics. Part four starts with Ning Yu’s Chapter 16, Embodiment, culture, and language, which gives an account of theory and research on the interplay between language, culture, and body, as seen from the standpoint of Cultural Linguistics. Yu presents a survey of embodiment (in embodied cognition research) from a multidisciplinary perspective, starting with the rather universalistic Conceptual Metaphor Theory. On the other hand, Cultural Linguistics has concentrated on the role played by culture in shaping embodied language, as various cultures conceptualise body and bodily experience in different ways. Chapter 17, Culture and language processing, by Crystal Robinson and Jeanette Altarriba deals with research in the field of how culture influence language processing, in particular in the case of bilingualism and emotion, alongside language and memory. Clearly, the linguistic and cultural character of each individual’s background has to be considered as a variable in research on cognition and cognitive processing. Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia, in Chapter 18, Language, culture, and prototypicality bring forth a survey of prototypicality across different disciplines, including cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. According to them, linguistic prototypes play a critical part in social (re-)cognition, as they are socially diagnostic and function as linguistic identity markers. Moreover, individuals may develop ‘culturally blended concepts’ as a result of exposure to several systems of conceptual categorisation, especially in the case of L2 learning (language-contact or culture-contact situations). In Chapter 19, Colour language, thought, and culture, Don Dedrick investigates the issue of the colour words in different languages and how these influence cognition, a question that has been addressed by researchers from various disciplines, such as anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience. He cannot but observe the constant debate in this respect, and he argues that it is indeed difficult to reach consensus, as colour language occasionally reveals effects of language on thought and, at other times, it is impervious to such effects. Chapter 20, Language, culture, and spatial cognition, by Penelope Brown concentrates on conceptualisations of space, providing a framework for thinking about and referring to objects and events, along with more abstract notions such as time, number, or kinship. She lists three frames of reference used by languages in order to refer to spatial relations, i.e. a) an ‘absolute’ coordinate system, like north, south, east, west; b) a ‘relative’ coordinate system envisaged from the body’s standpoint; and c) an intrinsic, object-centred coordinate system. Chris Sinha and Enrique Bernárdez focus on, in Chapter 21, Space, time, and space–time: metaphors, maps, and fusions, research on linguistic and cultural concepts of time and space, starting with the seminal Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), which they denounce for failing to situate space–time mapping within the broader patterns of culture and world perspective. Sinha and Bernárdez further argue that although it is possible in all cultures for individuals to experience and discuss about events in terms of their duration and succession, the specific words and concepts they use to refer to temporal landmarks temporal and duration are most of the time language and culture specific. Chapter 22, Culture and language development, by Laura Sterponi and Paul Lai provides an account of research on the interplay between culture and language acquisition. They refer to two widely accepted perspectives in this respect: a developmental mechanism inherent in human beings and a set of particular social contexts in which children are ‘initiated’ into the cultural meaning systems. Both perspectives define culture as “both related to the psychological make-up of the individual and to the socio-historical contexts in which s/he is born and develops”. Anna Wierzbicka presents, in Chapter 23, Language and cultural scripts discusses representations of cultural norms which are encoded in language. She contends that the system of meaning interpretation developed by herself and her colleagues, i.e. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), may easily be used to capture and convey cultural scripts. Through NSM cross-cultural experiences can be captured in a thorough manner by using a reduced number of conceptual primes which seem to exist in all languages. Chapter 24, Culture and emotional language, by Jean-Marc Dewaele brings forth the issue of the relationship between language, culture, and emotion, which has been researched by cultural and cognitive psychologists and applied linguists alike, although with some differences in focus. He considers that within this context, it is important to see differences between emotion contexts in bilinguals, since these may lead to different perceptions of the self. He infers that generally, culture revolves around the experience and communication of emotions, conveyed through linguistic expression. The fifth part starts with Chapter 25, Language and culture in sociolinguistics, by Meredith Marra, who underlines that culture is a central concept in Interactional Sociolinguistics, where language is considered as social interaction. In linguistic interaction, culture, and especially cultural differences are deemed as a cause of potential miscommunication. Mara also remarks that the paradigm change in sociolinguistics, from Interactional Sociolinguistics to social constructionism reshaped ‘culture’ into a more dynamic as well as less rigid concept. Claudia Strauss’ Chapter 26, Language and culture in cognitive anthropology deals with the relationship between human society and human thought/thinking. The author contends that cognitive anthropologists may be subdivided into two groups, i.e. ones that are concerned with the process of thinking (cognition-in-practice scholars), and the others focusing on the product of thinking or thoughts (concerned with shared cultural understandings). She goes on to explore how different approaches to cognitive anthropology have counted on units of language, i.e. lexical items and their meanings, along with larger chunks of discourse, as information, which may represent learned cultural schemata. Part VI starts with Chapter 27, Language and culture in second language learning, by Claire Kramsch, in which she makes a survey of the definition of ‘culture’ in foreign language learning and its evolution from a component of literature and the arts to a more comprehensive purport, that of culturally appropriate use of language, along with an appropriate use of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic norms. According to her, in the postmodern era, communication is not only mere transmission of information, it represents construal and positioning of the self and of self-identity. Chapter 28, Writing across cultures: ‘culture’ in second language writing studies, by Dwight Atkinson focuses on the usefulness of culture in second-language writing (SLW). He reviews several approaches to the issue: contrastive rhetoric (dealing with the impact of first-language patterns of text organisation on writers in a second language), or even alternate notions, like‘ cosmopolitanism’, ‘critical multiculturalism’, and hybridity, as of late native culture is becoming irrelevant or at best far less significant. Ian Malcolm tackles, in Chapter 29, Language and culture in second dialect learning, the issue of ‘standard’ Englishes (e.g., Standard American English, Standard Australian English) versus minority ‘non-standard’ speakers of English. He deplores the fact that in US specialist literature, speaking the ‘non-standard’ variety of English was associated with cognitive, cultural, and linguistic insufficiency. He further refers to other specialists who have demonstrated that ‘non-standard’ varieties can be just as systematic and highly structured as the standard variety. Chapter 30, Language and culture in intercultural communication, by Hans-Georg Wolf gives an account of research in intercultural education, focusing on several paradigms, i.e. the dominant one, investigating successful functioning in intercultural encounters, the minor one, exploring intercultural understanding and the ‘deconstructionist, and or postmodernist’. He further examines different interpretations of the concepts associated with intercultural communication, including the functionalist school, the intercultural understanding approach and a third one, the most removed from culture, focusing on socio-political inequalities, fluidity, situationality, and negotiability. Andy Kirkpatrick’s Chapter 31, World Englishes and local cultures gives a synopsis of research paradigm from applied linguistics which investigates the development of Englishes around the world, through processes like indigenisation or nativisation of the language. Kirkpatrick discusses the ways in which new Englishes accommodate the culture of the very speech community which develops them, e.g. adopting lexical items to express to express culture-specific concepts. Speakers of new varieties could use pragmatic norms rooted in cultural values and norms of the specific new speech community which have not previously been associated with English. Moreover, they can use these new Englishes to write local literatures, often exploiting culturally preferred rhetorical norms. Part seven starts with Chapter 32, Cultural Linguistics, by Farzad Sharifian gives an account of the recent multidisciplinary research field of Cultural Linguistics, which explores the relationship between language and cultural cognition, particularly in the case of cultural conceptualisations. Sharifian also brings forth illustrations of how cultural conceptualisations may be linguistically encoded. The last chapter, A future agenda for research on language and culture, by Roslyn Frank provides an appraisal of Cultural Linguistics as a prospective path for research in the field of language and culture. She states that ‘Cultural Linguistics could potentially create a paradigm that “successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’.” She further asserts that Cultural Linguistics has the potential to function as “a bridge that brings together researchers from a variety of fields, allowing them to focus on problems of mutual concern from a new perspective” and most likely unveil new issues (as well as solutions) which have not been evident so far. In conclusion, the Handbook will most certainly serve as clear and coherent guidelines for scholarly thinking and further research on language and culture, and also open up new investigative vistas in each of the areas tackled.

The United Nations states that more than four million hectares of African forests are being cut down annually. Policies being taken by governments to combat this scourge have continued to hit brick walls. However, in precolonial African societies, forests were significant in the sustenance of the lives of the people, insects, and animals that dwelt therein. The trees in the forests serve as medicinal herbs and also provide shelter for the metaphysical beings believed to determine the existence of the living. People lived in forested terrains as a result of the close relationship between the African and his natural environment. Festivals were celebrated to venerate the forests and solidify man’s kinship with the woods. However, a question that is pertinent at this juncture is: what could be responsible for the massive deforestation of trees and the disconnection of the African from his natural environment on the continent? What alternative solutions could be used to replace the top-down approaches instituted by the government? This study examines the trajectory of the disconnection of the African from his natural environment and investigates the factors responsible for this displacement. I argue that policies formulated by the government are not enough to mitigate deforestation and displacement of communities. The contention here is that Threats of fines and other punitive measures were no deterrent to people cutting down trees to sell. Also, with the failure of the government’s policies on the preservation of forests, indigenous communities impacted by deforestation should employ traditional festivals to promote the conservation of forests and improve traditional medicine. The Edegberode festival of the Sapele people in Nigeria is used as a paradigm of this study.

The study applied desk research method to analyse literatures to gain a broader perspective on the influence of Ujamaa policy in developmental social work; it was developed by the late Dr. Nyerere’s in post-colonial Tanzania in the process of decolonization and restore development approach relevant to African context. Review shows that Ujamaa became the social development model (Developmental social welfare or the developmental approach) with a broad approach that promoted collective and holistic well-being of a nation. Ujamaa embraced values that entail African history, cultural values and ecology, applicability of Ujamaa policy marked the essence and applicability of developmental social work in Africa. Despite of various challenges, Ujamaa succeeded to achieve collective development through strengthening people and their communities’ livelihood capabilities, ameliorate social and economic problems. The model integrated families, kinships and groups into community participation and empowerment to achieve collective development in human face. Ujamaa’s principle of universal welfare, communalism, interdependence, shared resources, human dignity and participatory development, is widely studied in the world today. Based on the success of Ujamaa model, in October 2009 the UN General Assembly named Dr. Nyerere ‘a World hero of social justice’ and August 2014 he was awarded as Ubuntu Champion by the National Heritage Council of South Africa for his practical contribution in African Ubuntu. Conclusively, application of Ujamaa model in realization of SDGs by 2030 is vital. It’s recommended for social workers to demonstrate how developmental social work could contribute to building a better Africa and a better world.How to cite this article using ASWNet styleLembuka M. H. (2023). The influence of ujamaa policy in realization of developmental social work in Tanzania – Ubuntu perspective. People centred – The Journal of Development Administration (JDA), 8(3), 83-90. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jda.v8i3.5 Visit journal website: https://jda.africasocialwork.net

The amalgamation of indigenous Muscogee and Africans brought to North America in slavery produced a dynamic and robust subculture that contributes to the shaping of the socio‐political landscape of the Southeastern United States, across the Indian territories of Oklahoma, and into the high deserts of Texas and Mexico. Understanding the influential elements of the merger of these two distinct ethnicities offers keen insight into what emerges as a unique “Black Seminole” identity and a legacy that legend, lore, and history alike, have so fondly chronicled. Seminole and African attributes paint vivid portraits of this great people and remain true to nature and symbolism in the very name they have been given. Texas has become the central gathering point for Black Seminole heritage, more specifically the areas adjacent to Brackettville, Texas, and Fort Clark, Texas, and shelters the historical significance of those making gallant contributions to securing the boundaries of the state, the Black Seminole. Although their story begins in the Southeastern approaches of the United States, there can be no denial of Black Seminole contribution to the taming, protection, and promoting of Texas and the Southwest. The research consideration and project objective concern itself with the determination of the phenomenological and ontological evidence and factors that are the identifiers for individual self‐awareness for those that acknowledge an ethnogenetic heritage or association with and as a Black Seminole as it pertains to the demographic of Southwest Texas. The traditional tribal method of associative identity establishment as employed in other Native American cultures fails to capture or authenticate a genuine and coherent phenomenological individual identity. The traditional Native American heritage may be described by the common “tree” as with familiar ancestry models, but Black Seminole lineage follows and flows in a pattern more akin to a “web” which, in turn, renders conventional and long established methods of ancestral determination inadequate. The employment of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing is an efficacious technique[1] that can determine the baseline foundation for Native American identity, but does not establish the phenomenological or ontological evidence that assumes one's identity with regard for specific ethnic or ethnogenetic association. The demonstrations of the literal meaning of the term “Seminole” are far more telling than the name itself. Seminole is the moniker attached to this group that would have been characterized as “breakaways,” “runaways,” or “separatists” and becomes the imperative consideration in establishing an alternative method for gathering and interpreting data to establish Black Seminole phenomenological and ontological identity. There does exist, however, a body of literature and research concerned with Black Seminole identity, but it appears to be singularly interpreted in nature and rather broad in scope and does not appear attentive to the matter of identity as it applies to the past, present, or future of those that acknowledge Black Seminole heritage and identity. To overcome the challenges presented by conventional and accepted techniques to establish heritage and ancestry, student researchers at Southwest Texas Junior College developed a questionnaire consisting of seventeen questions directed toward ethnicity, culture, language, heritage, and identity. Student researchers conducted interviews and observations at three separate and independent events at locations in Southwest Texas in an effort to gather interpretive data to establish phenomenological identity. From those observed, queried, and interviewed, researchers were able to ascertain that the phenomenological and ontological identity of the Black Seminole is exclusive and is a rich and synergistic composition of Native American (Seminole), African American, and Mexican identifying factors, further confirming the “web” composition of ancestry and an identity that does not emerge from unadulterated or unmixed blood, but to the contrary demands the blending of these three distinctive cultures to envisage its identity. Disciplined prosecution of gathered data, both quantitative and qualitative, presents a rather unexpected outcome. Seemingly, those individuals that phenomenologically identify as Black Seminole, although acknowledging a relational association with Native American, African American, and Mexican heritage and culture, overwhelmingly describe their sense of being and self‐awareness in relation to family rather than ethnic or cultural factors; in essence, kinship and familial connection is the imperative basis for identity. With this understanding, identification of an exclusive nature with governmental or tribal organizations that possess exclusivity for the Black Seminole is a hard won battle. Identity is the moniker that produces the unique brand and exclusivity of a person or a group. The obvious point of entry into the study of the Black Seminole, befittingly, should be at the most primitive level with a simple question concerning the importance of identity. Although the question appears rather simple in its nature, the reactions and responses are potentially emotionally and intellectually sticky. To simply ask if identity matters is, in essence, to merely ask a close‐ended question end does not open the matter of Black Seminole identity for conversation or intellectual discussion. There has been much interest of late in the matter of identity as it pertains to the ontological or phenomenological concepts as they relate to racial identity and cultural literacy. Society appears to find, at some point at least, a way to bring each unique people group into a relative relationship within a diverse landscape while maintaining the exclusiveness of ethnicity and culture. The corresponding trademarks of Mexican American, African American, or Native American have become an attempt to gather the multitudes into an American identity that values the uniqueness of culture and ethnicity. The phenomenological basis for Black Seminole identity is nuclear and an exclusive aggregation of Native American, African American, and Mexican American origins and values. The Humanities Project and Club at Southwest Texas Junior College at Eagle Pass is funded by the Student Activities department through annual budgetary request. Augmentation of funding is accomplished through fundraising activities. Research and interpretive data to be shared at the conference.Support or Funding InformationProfessional development funds provided to Veronica Williams and Dennie Johnson Jr

Throughout the history of mathematics, Eurocentric approaches in developing and disseminating mathematical knowledge have been largely dominant. Building on the riches of African cultures, this paper introduces ethnomathematics as a discipline bridging mathematical ideas with cultural contexts thereby honoring diversity and fostering respect for cultural heritages. Ethnomathematics promotes a conceptualisation of culture to include the authentic humanity of the people sharing collective beliefs, traditions, and practices. I propose the term African humanicity to refer to the authentic African experience that reflects genuine African cultural identity. I further argue that immersion in the ethnomathematical practices of African cultures provides insight into critical factors shaping African students’ success in mathematics. Drawing upon the vast literature on the ingenuity of African cultures, I present ethnomathematical ideas that permeate numerous African indigenous knowledge systems that could be introduced in the mathematics curriculum. These systems include folk games and puzzles, kinship relations, and divination systems.

The Brazilian colonial context led the Tupiniquim, an Indigenous group, and the Portuguese, a colonizing group, from the São Vicente area to connect with two places in Rio de Janeiro. In this scenario emerges the genealogy of two Tupiniquim women of the 16th century from São Vicente, which allowed us to trace six generations of women who formed kinship relationships with Portuguese men. They moved to Rio de Janeiro to create the Cara de Cão fortification and Camorim sugar plantation. They were members of the communities that appropriated and transformed Portuguese coarse ware ceramics into what is now termed Paulistaware. This article shows a new understanding of the social role of Indigenous women and the entry of European men into symmetrical gender relations based on the logic of Tupiniquim social collaboration. Tupiniquim women initially produced Paulistaware before 1550. After 1600 these ceramics were also made and consumed by people from the African diaspora and others from outside, adding decorative elements found in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The intensive analysis of archival data breaks the traditional model of homogenization and Europeanization of historical processes and events, highlighting the itinerancy of practices and mobility of people.

Abstract Background and Objectives Black, African, and Caribbean (BAC) families are disproportionately affected by dementia but engage less with services. Studies reporting their experiences of dementia have tended to aggregate people from diverse backgrounds, without considering the impact of this diversity, or researchers’ ethnicities. We investigated participants’ and researchers’ ethnic identities, exploring how this relates to findings. Research Design and Methods We searched electronic databases in September 2018, for qualitative studies exploring how participants of Black ethnicity understand and experience dementia and dementia care. We reported participants’ and researchers’ ethnicities, and meta-synthesized qualitative findings regarding how ethnicity influences experiences and understanding of dementia. Results Twenty-eight papers reported 25 studies; in United States (n = 17), United Kingdom (n = 7), and Netherlands (n = 1). 350/492 (71%) of participants were in U.S. studies and described as African American; participants in U.K. studies as Caribbean (n = 45), African/Caribbean (n = 44), African (n = 28), Black British (n = 7), or Indo-Caribbean (n = 1); and in Netherlands as Surinamese Creole (n = 17). 6/25 (24%) of studies reported involving recruiters/interviewers matching participants’ ethnicity; and 14/25 (56%) involved an author/advisor from a BAC background during analysis/procedures. We identified four themes: Dementia does not relate to me; Inappropriate and disrespectful services; Kinship and responsibility; Importance of religion. Discussion and Implications Studies were mostly from a U.S. African American perspective, by researchers who were not of BAC background. Themes of dementia diagnosis and services feeling less relevant to participants than the majority population resonated across studies. We caution against the racialization of these findings, which can apply to many differing minority groups.

Most studies have documented experiences of single parents focusing more predominantly on realities of females. This is especially so in studies on Africa where single parenting has been commonly narrated as core cluster of patriarchy and feminization of gender oppression. In this article, the authors contribute to knowledge by examining single parenting from experiences of men – male single parents in patriarchal context of Africa thereby nuancing essentialist explanations of single parenting that have reified traditional patriarchy as mainstreaming single parenting into existences of a particular gender. This empirical article explores male single parenting through 30 in-depth interviews triangulated with autoethnography leveraging over 10 years of the authors’ primary insights, contextual lived experiences and observation. Issues examined include: worldviews about male single parents, consequences of male single parenting, companionship deficits occasioned by male single parenting, support systems and perceived benefits of male single parenting in context. Findings show many male single parents do not get formal supports, like from government agencies and non-governmental organizations, but they get informal supports from their kinship and social networks like families, friends and neighbours. Sense of maleness – sense of wanting to show being a strong man – do not make many male single parents seek supports from people as they do not want to be seen as weak if they seek supports. While some single fathers enjoy emotional supports from networks, they suffer serious financial pressures and insufficiency as they are not able to get financial assistance from anyone or organization. This is very important against the background of poor economic system in which male single parents live.