Abstract
This chapter explores how traditional Liberian communities decimated by colonization, multi-generational trauma, and war found healing through ancient wisdom and ritual. The events related here highlight some of the ways that guidance from other-than-human realms, particularly from nature and the dead, makes quantum healing possible by restoring respectful relationships with all life as well as with the unseen world that is its source. The discussion highlights the urgency for international peacebuilding and foreign aid policy to re-examine the erroneous assumption that outside experts and money will solve the dilemmas caused by colonization, commodification, and greed. In the experiences related here, the authors show how dreaming, divination, ritual, offerings, and community councils helped divided communities work together for the sake of peace. The unexpected appearance of elephants—traditionally understood to be harbingers of peace—reawakened an ancient understanding of how to work in alliance with the natural world. The mysterious, interwoven events related here reveal new ways of working collaboratively across cultures and beyond the human realm. This suggests an innovative role for outsiders wishing to support the efforts of traditional communities seeking peace and stability after war, with the awareness that impending global extinction requires an unprecedented cultural shift to re-invigorate lived reciprocity within and beyond the human community for the sake of all life.
TopIntroduction
In many traditional cultures, dreams are understood as a way for the spirits, the animals, and the ancestors to be in conversation with living human beings. It is only within the last century – and only in the West – that dreams have come to be dismissed as superstition or an expression of individual neuroses and, therefore, dismissed as pathology. Traditional Liberians understand that dreams often come to individuals on behalf of the community, carrying specific guidance and information. Sometimes those recipients are the least likely to receive such a message, a kind of confirmation that the dream material could not easily have been contrived by the dreamer’s psyche. In addition to paying attention to dreams, other Indigenous technologies come into play, including divination, honoring the dead and the ancestors, and observing signs from the Natural World. This chapter explores how a mixed Liberian and American team from the non-profit peacebuilding organization, everyday gandhis(www.everydaygandhis.org) has been working with traditional communities in Northwest Liberia to support peace and reconciliation following the Liberian civil war of 1989-2004. As founding director of the organization, I worked closely with Liberian and American colleagues and with the grassroots community peacebuilders who so graciously welcomed us, and patiently helped us to understand what was going on.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Mourning Feast: A traditional Liberian rite of grieving and peacemaking in which the family and community of the deceased come together to resolve extant conflicts, after which the dead are sent 'across the river' with drumming and dancing, making it possible for those conflicts to be removed from the community and put to rest with the dead. Afterward, the act of partaking in the communal meal is an oath of reconciliation; in Liberia, traditional mourning feasts are highly valued by people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Natural World: The world of animals, Earth, weather, soil, water, insects, birds, reptiles, plants and microbes; and the natural systems and functions that make life possible.
Ancestors: Our human and other-than-human family whose lives made our lives possible, including animals, trees, and all other physical and spiritual entities that came before us, and to whom we remain connected.
Western Mind: The mindset that predominates in Western consumer culture, privileging things over relationships; commodification over interdependence; and linear, logical, data-driven ways of knowing and decision-making at the expense of felt experience, living systems and other-than-human beings, such that the intactness of the Whole is subsumed by short-term anthropogenic preferences; term first used by author and teacher, Deena Metzger ( www.deenametzger.net ).
Mutual Accountability: A relational agreement to hold ourselves and each other accountable to behave with respect, dignity, honesty, transparency and love in all our interactions, be they among humans or between humans and other-than-humans; a term first used by Habuka Bombande, co-founder of WANEP (West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, www.wanep.org ).
Dreams: A form of communication from the spirit world to teach, warn and guide human beings in order that we may live in right relationship with each other and with the natural and spirit worlds.
everyday gandhis: Non-profit peacebuilding organization registered in the U.S. and in Liberia focused on peacebuilding, community reconciliation, sustainable agriculture and ecological restoration, whose work is based on dreams and community councils ( www.everydaygandhis.org ).
Liberia: A country on the Atlantic coast of equatorial West Africa, founded in the 1820's by freed slaves sent back to Africa from the United States, causing ethnic and economic strife, destruction of Indigenous communities, ecological devastation and political manipulation that eventually led in a brutal civil war lasting from 1989 – 2004.
Councils: A means of gathering community members to share stories, dreams, observations, questions and concerns in order to give voice to all stakeholders for the purpose of finding common ground and consensus in order to resolve differences, and to make plans and decisions together.
Other-Than-Humans: All non-human beings with whom we share the Earth as well as the spirit plane.
Elephants: A highly evolved keystone species with a sophisticated social structure, long understood by traditional people in Liberia to be bringers of peace; in spite of being endangered due to habitat loss and hunting, elephants continue to communicate with humans in order to offer guidance.
Lorma, Mandingo: Two of the prominent tribes of Liberia, especially in Lofa County, with a long history of intermarriage, collaboration, ceremonial and trade relationships, who clashed violently throughout the civil war. The Lorma tend to be animist and Christian while the Mandingo tend to be animist and Muslim, connected to the Mandé people elsewhere in West Africa, including Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Senegal and beyond
Offerings: An ancient form of dialogue with the spirit world emanating from a variety of intentions, from a simple invitation to be connected, to a request for a specific result such as protection, peace or helpful information; a practice that seeks to create a language of humility, gratitude, respect and reciprocity that acknowledges and seeks to align with the extraordinary generosity of the Natural World and Her mysteries.
Ecocide Precedes Genocide: The understanding that violence toward the Earth and the ecological destruction that ensues (deforestation, erosion, habitat loss, pollution) precedes and predicts violence, especially genocide and civil war.