Re: How to handle bad behavior?

[Guest guest]

Saw Fast Runner last night. Was thinking who was earning banishment halfway

through. Didn't make the banishment in the end any less.

Wanita

> How tribes dealt with " bad behavior " (re: Fast Runner). This is really

> interesting to me because of the latest discussion about

> Libertarianism. How DO you handle those few people who really,

> really, foul up your society?

>

> -- Heidi

>

> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/national/18BANI.html?hp

>

> Plagued by Drugs, Tribes Revive Ancient Penalty

>

> Their experience has been repeated hundreds of times on this sprawling,

desperately poor reservation of 2,000 Lummi, where addiction and crime have

become pervasive. It is the reason that the Lummi tribe has turned as a last

resort to a severe and bygone punishment, seeking to banish five of the

young men in jail and another recently released. It is also the reason for

evicting Yevonne Noland, 48, the matriarch of the Noland clan, from her

modest blue house on the reservation, because her son, a convicted drug

dealer, was listed on the lease.

>

> Banishment once turned unwanted members of a tribe into a caste of the

" walking dead, " and some people criticize it as excessive and inhumane, more

extreme than the punishments meted out by the world outside and a betrayal

of an already fragile culture.

>

> But a growing number of tribes across the country, grappling with a rise

in drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, poverty and violence, have used

banishment in varying forms in the last decade. Tribal leaders see this

ancient response, which reflects Indian respect for community, as a painful

but necessary deterrent.

>

> " We need to go back to our old ways, " said Darrell Hillaire, chairman of

the Lummi Tribal Council, shortly before an early morning meeting on the

reservation recently about the tribe's new campaign against drugs. " We had

to say enough is enough. "

[Guest guest]

>Saw Fast Runner last night. Was thinking who was earning banishment halfway

>through. Didn't make the banishment in the end any less.

>

>Wanita

I was thinking that this threat of banishment is/was likely a much

more effective method of dealing with crime .. if you can just

toss a sociopath out into the cold (literally) it's a lot easier

than supporting them in jail, and quite effective. But it requires

that you have a tribe to be banished FROM. A lot of people

today have no " group " ties to speak of, or none they value

so highly. And where would you banish someone TO,

in this crowded world?

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

> >Saw Fast Runner last night. Was thinking who was earning banishment

halfway

> >through. Didn't make the banishment in the end any less.

> >

> >Wanita

>

> I was thinking that this threat of banishment is/was likely a much

> more effective method of dealing with crime .. if you can just

> toss a sociopath out into the cold (literally) it's a lot easier

> than supporting them in jail, and quite effective. But it requires

> that you have a tribe to be banished FROM. A lot of people

> today have no " group " ties to speak of, or none they value

> so highly. And where would you banish someone TO,

> in this crowded world?

>

> -- Heidi

Sure it's effective. The examples of shaming done by the first wives to

Puja and the shame Puja was given by husband just before her banishment are

effective too. Actions are louder than words in those instances. In Fast

Runner there was a group, male and female which would bode better for their

survival. Alone in the wilderness it's a sign the person has been banished,

should be left alone, unaided, is trouble. There's an interesting book

Touching Spirit Bear. Fictional but based on restorative justice, circle

sentencing in a U.S. court system. Boy is banished to an island that one of

circle's member's tribe used for such purposes. Heartwarming story.

Wanita

[Guest guest]

I haven't seen the movie, but can't comment more generally:

Banishment is one of the primary modes of adjudication in an egalitarian*

society. Dealing with " crime, " or, more accurately, offensive behavior, is

primarily solved by

-- argument

-- banishment

-- murder

In the first, typically what has been observed is two people will engage in

an argument. Members of the group will listen to the argument and, over time,

side with one or the other person by moving over to stand with them. When one

person clearly has most of the group on their side, the " loser " will give in.

When argument cannot successively adjudicate a dispute, banishment can occur.

Perhaps even more common than banishment, murder is used as a way of settling

disputes. Almost all egalitarian societies have very high murder rates,

much, much higher than ours, when anthropologists study them over long enough

periods of time. Murder is usually avenged by the family of the victim killing

the murderer in his sleep.

Chris

_____

* " egalitarian " refers to an organization where there is even distribution of

wealth and as many positions of prestige as there are people to fill them.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/21/04 12:08:33 AM Eastern Standard Time,

Dpdg@... writes:

> can you add this one to the growing list of requests for qualifications

> asked but not answered?

Sure, I'll include murder and warfare:

Percentage of male deaths caused by warfare:

Jivaro: 60%

Yanomamo: 38%

Mae Enga: 36%

Dugum Dani: 30%

Murngin: 28%

Yanomamo (Namowei): 22%

Huli: 20%

Gebusi: 10%

US and Europe, 20th century: 1%

_Blank_Slate_, Pinker p 57

[These are taken from a graph, so numbers are accurate within 2-3 % points

since I had to visually estimate]

" Among the Jivaro, head-hunting was a ritual obligation of all males and a

required male initiation for teenagers. There, too, most men died in war. "

Tierney, as quoted in _ibid_, p 117.

" Modern foragers, who offer a glimpse of life in prehistoric societies, were

once thought to engage only in ceremonial battles that were called to a halt

as soon as the first man fell. Now they are known to kill one another at rates

that dwarf the casualties from our world wars. The archaeological record is

no happier. Buried in the ground and hidden in caves lie silent witnesses to

a bloody prehistory stretching back hundreds of thousands of years. They

include skeletons with scalping marks, ax-shaped dents, and arrowheads

embveddedd

in them; weapons like tomahawks and maces that are useless for hunting but

specialized for homicide; fortification defenses such as palisades of shaprpened

sticks, and paintings from several continents showing men firign arrows,

spears, or boomerangs at one another and being felled by these weapons. "

_ibid_,

p 306.

" The Fayu consist of about 400 hunter-gatherers, divided into four clans and

wandering over a few hundred sq. mi. According to their own account, they had

formerly numbered about 2000, but their population had been greatly reduced

as a result of Fayu killing Fayu. They lacked political and social mechanisms,

which we take for granted, to achieve peaceful resolution of serious

disputes. " Diamond, , _Guns_Germs_and_Steel_, p 266.

" Anthropologiests formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and

nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of

25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn't: it's

easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to

the inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than

murder, could not perpetuate itself f in addition one of its dozen adults

murdered

another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information

about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is the leading cause of

death. For example I happened to be visiting New Guinea's Iyau people at a time

when a woman anthropologiest wa interviewing Iyau women about their life

histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several

sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like

this: 'My

first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a

man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed

by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder.' Such

biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to

the

acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger. "

_Guns_Germs_and_Steel, p 277.

As to murder as a means of adjudicating disputes and to the other means that

I outlined, I refer you to any modern introductory anthropology textbook;

unfortunately, I don't have one offhand to quote.

For extra emphasis, " Much more extensive long-term information about band and

tribal societies reveals that murder is the leading cause of death. "

Chris

[Guest guest]

<<Almost all egalitarian societies have very high murder rates,

much, much higher than ours, when anthropologists study them over long enough

periods of time.>>

can you add this one to the growing list of requests for qualifications asked

but not answered?

TIA

Dedy