Nonviolent roots, shoots, fruits

Indigenous mentoring

When some ponder nonviolence in this ahistoric era, they seem to dismiss it as an artifact from the historic peace churches in Europe; this is only a tiny part of the rich legacy of nonviolence, and not its most important thread. From Gandhi to King to Aung San Suu Kyi to Rosa Parks, Rigoberta Menchu, Cesar Chavez and countless more people of color, the traditional roots of nonviolence are apparent.

There are those, of course, who would deny that even Gandhi would count as a non-European initiator of nonviolence, since he was educated in London and took influence from Tolstoy, Thoreau and others. But his roots were not only clearly in his own culture, his direct mentors were virtually all Indians, beginning with his political mentee relationship to Gopal Krishna Gokale and others. (Erickson: 178) Further, Gandhi increasingly shed the ways of the West as he matured, reaching more deeply into his own indigenous roots for ongoing strength, wisdom and inspiration.

The same is true for the vast majority of Native American warriors of the nonviolent spirit, and is noticeable both in group-to-group nonviolent struggle and in community efforts to mitigate and eliminate the various forms of violence in Native American communities, where, for example, tribal men are often taught by their mentors that, before whites conquered Native nations, domestic abuse was virtually nonexistent because it was so powerfully frowned upon that there was a disincentive to engage in such negative practices. (Warters: online)

Peace education

One of the elements in a war system is an educational system that glorifies nationalism, excuses or even praises violence, teaches tolerance only as long as everyone wishes to be like us and intolerance otherwise, dismisses nonviolence, and focuses on dominant cultural stories, narrative and solutions.

One of the elements in a peace system, then, is an educational system where nonviolence is admired, where multiculturalism is valued as more than quaint appreciation for curiosities in funny costumes with bizarre customs, and where students and teachers believe that each culture offers a great deal for all.

Sometimes, in the context of a war culture, teaching peace generates fear, and, to the extent that this fear can be allayed and overcome, students and teachers can proceed toward learning how to help build societies that help humans live with each other and with the Earth. (Harris: 192) We've all been taught much about Native violence. Learning about Native American nonviolence is a challenge to each of these elements, and can offer significant steps to students and teachers intending to build a peace system.

Carrying peace education into the general discourse in society is what peace researchers Bertram I. Spector and I. William Zartman call the development of “knowledge and consciousness-raising (epistemic) communities.” (Spector and Zartman: 289) When vectors of information dissemination are used systematically, the conditions for consensus are created, social norms are morphed and we can even achieve global mores that are guarantors of some measures of peacekeeping and better conflict management. This epistemic approach can create global consensus so profound that outbreaks of previously acceptable, or excusable, behavior will not be tolerated. It can change the conditions of debate, e.g., from whether slavery is ever acceptable to how best to eliminate it when it appears. Learning nonviolent indigenous approaches to conflict management can be a significant element in this epistemological process.

198 ways, plus

Nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp assembled a list of 198 nonviolent tactics. Gandhi and King were creators of some, but many more tactics have been identified. Looking through Native American history, we may find all 198 used by one tribe or another, and they have, no doubt, added to that list. Examples are instructive.

Blockade

When an unscrupulous sewage disposal company leased land from a tribal member of the Torres Martinez tribe in the Coachella Valley of California, it wasn’t long before there were literally half a million tons of human waste in a foul mountain on the 120-acre site. Locals asked for help from other organizations both Native and non-Native, such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, Greenpeace, the United Farm Workers and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. They joined in a two-week blockade and, in conjunction with a court challenge, shut down the dump. (Lewis: 145)

That is the Native American spirit that will offer profound hope to Native peoples and non-Natives alike. When a tiny minority finds the moral high ground and can generate enough support, perhaps they can change social norms, societal practice and public policy. It has happened before and Native peoples offer shining examples of that peaceful path. We need not long dwell on the history of violent Native response to attack, robbery, invasion and other insult; many other sources do fine work in describing that history, though it sometimes serves to place nonviolence in context and so we ought to review some of that conflict at times. For the most part we ask instead, how can we learn from another Native history that has been invisible, ignored and discounted—the history of nonviolent tactic, strategy, philosophy and spirit? We do well to bear in mind the perspective of Theodore Roszak, who wrote, “People try nonviolence for a week, and when it doesn’t work, they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.” (Terkel: 115) Importing Native nonviolence may seem counterintuitive to US-Euro peoples—and most Native peoples most of the time, for that matter—but in the face of the senselessness of ongoing dysfunctional violence, isn’t it time to discipline ourselves to conduct some worthy experiments with potentially helpful elements of other cultures, other people’s historical strategies that may offer new hope to old problems?

References

Erikson, Erik H., Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969.

Harris, Ian M., and Mary Lee Morrison, Peace Education, Second Edition. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company, 2003.

Lewis, Andrea, “Native American struggle for land, liberty, and a toxics-free environment,” in: Anner, John, Beyond Identity Politics: Emerging Social Justice Movements in Communities of Color. Boston MA: South End Press, 1996.

Spector, Bertram I. and I. William Zartman, eds., Getting It Done: Post-Agreement Negotiation and International Regimes. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003.

Terkel, Susan Neiburg, People Power: A Look at Nonviolent Action and Defense. NYC: Lodestar, 1996.

Warters, Bill, “Native American men and domestic violence: An interview with Oscar Arredondo,” online: http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/warters/wartersi.shtml

Teaching nonviolence: Process paramount

Although Sarah Palin and others want us to be a Christian nation (in the Constantinian Just War sense) and are willing to create fictions to support that notion, Plato spoke at least as clearly as Jesus did to the Founders. Indeed, as I was walking in Washington one fine winter day, on my way down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Congressional end to the White House, I passed the Department of Justice and looked up to see, carved in stone at one top corner of the building, Plato's Conflict Resolution and Civil Resistance quote from 2,400 years ago, "“Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.” As I was walking toward a nonviolent act of resistance to nuclear weapons that would soon land me in the clogged arteries near the heart of the justice system in D.C., the words spoke to me quite clearly. Justice takes work; even the rulings of the Supremes get overturned--one wave of demagogic hatred can wipe out the footprint of a good jurist.

Nothing in the world of nonviolence is carved in stone except aphorisms noting the permanence of impermanence. Nothing is set in concrete except the one concrete principle that the ends are the means, process is product, and nothing is ever settled once and for all (time).

Christians justify war. Monks get guns. Democracy is installed and forcibly shoved down the throats of those who never voted for it and never rose up seeking it--even as it naturally thus devolves in the mother country into bickering reactionaries jerking each other's chains and serving up kneejerk ripostes rather than authentic appeal to altruism. There is no system of governance nor belief that does not require constant upkeeping and generation-to-generation renewal, maintenance and evolution. The live spirit in a faith can be usurped quickly into killer identity politics and greed can move like cancer into the heart of free people who do not guard against it. For those overcoming injustice, impermanence is hope; for those who are sure they've established a timeless practice, time will teach better.

This is the calling to which educators answer. Yes, growth and progress are important, but protecting our intellectual flanks from revisionist invasion and occupation takes devotion to pedagogy and andragogy that is both critical and repetitive. I am currently teaching students for whom Gulf War I is ancient history from before they were born and the fall of the Berlin Wall is nearly writ in hieroglyphics. Lessons from the Civil Rights movement are suspect and Gandhi is a myth. These are all students who have come through high school, and few of those schools send on students with a good set of balanced and informed priorities.

Hence, the need to teach and the need to teach process. In the field of Conflict Resolution and Civil Resistance (CR2) the way we learn and the way we decide are the way we make friends and organize. It is all adaptive and process-oriented or it doesn't work. The mythos of violence is the quick and permanent fix. The way we teach CR2 is that all our work is iterative and necessarily redundant. My slogan, from Denzel Washington in the film Philadelphia, is "Tell me like I'm a fourth grader." Keep it simple, or at least add simple layers one at a time, and build up understanding of the complexities of conflict management and our methods.

Indeed, that is the message I use when discussing the finding of the Freedom House 2005 study, showing that nonviolence is far more sustainable if we want civil rights, human rights, and democracy. Violence is a poor producer of all those metrics over the long haul, so that whatever the revolutionaries were dreaming of achieving with violence is a chimera, a polluted process that tries to guarantee finality and thus assures ephemera. CR2 is not only the only chance at win-win, it's the best hope for an outcome that mirrors the path we take to get there. That is what students need to learn.

Frosty should last forever, right? Actually, he's a digital moment and a neural bit in three minds. He's lost a lot of weight and little Alexa is already taller and heavier. Will nothing stop changing? Sigh...

Education to end war

Peace education represents a celebration of life rather than a support for the death-bearing values implied in violent militaristic cultures. Peace education confronts the horrors of these images and presents a vision of a different, nonviolent world.
—Ian Harris and Mary Lee Morrison, Peace Education, p. 229.

The resources a culture directs toward conflict can often predetermine the range of options it feels it has. Currently, the US spends more than $1T annually on its military, which is approximately equal to what the entire rest of the planet’s nation-states spend on their combined militaries, or about half the entire discretionary budget that Congress can spend (trust funds like Social Security are not discretionary). These funds are such an overwhelming commitment to militarism that they work their way into every aspect of our society, into every subsystem of our culture, and therefore each piece of society is more militarized.

Education is no exception. The direct influences are numerous, including the requirement that all schools receiving federal funding provide access to military recruiters. This is written into the No Child Left Behind Act that describes all the strings attached to funding education. Since education is mandatory age 5 or 6 either through high school or until age 16, 17, or more normally, 18, the vast majority of our youth are directly, by law, exposed to military recruiters. This is not only high school students. There are programs that bring the military into schools at almost every level, including even the Starbase program that brings the military into grade schools and brings elementary school children to military bases.

Other military influences on education are found in the curricula. History books focus far more on wars than on peace. Major DoD contracts are awarded to universities to do military research, which thus serves to set up a brain drain from the technical side away from civilian applications to military technologies. Often our finest young minds are seduced into exotic big-budget research into devising more sophisticated methods of murder instead of learning to combat cancers, AIDS, flus, heart disease, diabetes or other human health challenges.

Like the plumber confronting a flooded and damaged home due to broken pipes, the first step is not necessarily to bring in the brilliant new items, but to turn off the water main, to stop the flow of funding toward teaching destructive conflict management. Peace educators who are operating on a Marine base school find it generally harder to overcome debilitating disbelief in students compared to those who are teaching conflict resolution to Amish children or Costa Rican children who are surrounded by civil society that handles conflict without the heavy military presence.

Every term I teach approximately 150 new students and much of what I teach is counternarrative peace education to students who have been exposed to very little of it and who have instead been educated in our militaristic society. Each term many students express chagrin that they are only just learning conflict management techniques that they rightly feel should have been taught to them literally decades earlier. Like other peace educators, my teaching begins with the assumption that we can learn the hypothetical methods of constructive conflict management, and then we proceed to the principles and self-reflection practices that introduce students to an adaptive self-management model of conflict management processing. What they do, then, is learn how to learn to manage more and more of the conflicts in their lives in more constructive and less destructive ways. They love it and they know they can use it forever.

Then I imagine all colleges and universities requiring students to take even one such course, then all high schools, and so forth. The skill levels would escalate, the engaged and informed public would see the dysfunction of our “do you want to bomb someone or do nothing?” false dichotomy, and we would expect a slow turnaround in the norms that lead to so much armed conflict. We would expect more depth of analysis from our mainstream media and we would get it as more and more journalists would enter the field understanding the dynamics and methods of constructive conflict management.

So when I tell classrooms full of my students that they are the seed crops, I get nodding heads of understanding. They know they can change mores, norms and practices. They develop an inevitable sense of human agency.
Eventually, peace education can be crucial to ending war. Our students will make it so as they become the leaders and policymakers.

References
Harris, Ian M., and Mary Lee Morrison (2003). Peace Education (2nd ed.) Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company.