Ik-y (sigh, sorry)

I was lured to the Ik by Vollmann's incredible "Rising Up and Rising Down." Specifically a quote by Colin Turnbull, a social anthropologist studying the Ik, in which he stated, "I am hopeful that their isolation will remain as complete as in the past, until they die out completely." The reason for this, Vollmann explains, is that Turnbull witnessed the Ik as a completely Machiavellian society in which food is stoled from the starving, children are cast out at 3 and the necessities of life are stolen from the needy to suit the greedy. Such accusations warranted investigation, and I find that Turnbull is widely discredited.

From Wikipedia:

Colin Turnbull wrote an extremely successful ethnography about the Ik, titled The Mountain People, which was quite disparaging.[1] While highly popular, the book was controversial, and the accuracy and methodology of much of Turnbull's work has been questioned.

Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government forcible relocation of random tribal members (with no more than ten people in any relocated group). He defended this by arguing that the Ik society was already destroyed and all that could be done was to save individual tribal members.[2]

There is strong evidence that Turnbull had limited knowledge of the Ik language and cultural traditions, as well as almost no knowledge of the flora and fauna of the area. He completely misrepresented the history of the Ik by claiming they were traditionally hunters and gathers who were forced to become farmers. There is ample linguistic and cultural evidence that the Ik were farmers long before the creation of Kidepo National Park, which Turnbull claims caused the Ik to be driven from their major hunting grounds and forced them to become farmers.

Some of his main informants were not Ik, but Diding'a. Lomeja who helped him learn the Ik language was undoubtedly Diding'a, and according to informants of Bernd Heine (a linguist), who studied the Ik in early 1983, spoke only broken Ik. Further, three out of the six villages Turnbull studied were headed by non-Ik.

Turnbull's claim that Ik raided cattle and frequently "do a double deal" by selling information concerning the raid to the proposed victims are at odds with both the Dodoth County Chief's monthlty reports and the files of the Administrator in Moroto between 1963-1969. Rather, what these files and reports suggest is that the largest number of cattle raids occurred in parts of Dodoth County where any involvement by the Ik can be ruled out. No mention of Ik raiding livestock can be found in any of these reports and files.

Turnbull's claims that adultery was common is completely opposite to the statements of informants interviewed by Bernd Heine in 1983. They reported that during the two years Turnbull stayed in Pirre there was only one case of adultery. Heine writes: "All Ik elders interviewed stated that there are no indications whatsoever in the oral traditions to suggest that adulterers were burnt in the past."

Finally, Bernd Heine states: "Secondly, Turnbull's account of Ik culture turned out to be at variance with most observations we made—to the extent that at times I was under the impression that I was dealing with an entirely different people."

This is all that was said of the Ik people:

The Ik are an ethnic group, numbering only a few thousand people, living in the mountains of northeastern Uganda near the border with Kenya, next to the more numerous Dodoth and Turkana. They were expelled from their land to create a national park and, as a result, suffered extreme famine. Furthermore, their weakness relative to other tribes meant they were regularly raided. The Ik are subsistence farmers and grind their own grain.

The Ik language, Icetot, is of interest to linguists as a member of the highly divergent Kuliak subgroup of Nilo-Saharan languages.

The Ik people create several small villages in clusters, forming a "community". Each small village is surrounded by an outer wall, then sectioned off into familial- or friend-based "neighborhoods" called Odoks, also surrounded by a wall. Each Odok is sectioned into walled-off households called asaks, with front yards (for lack of a better word) and, in some cases, granaries.

It has been observed that children are expelled from the household at three years old and not allowed into the house afterward. They form groups called age-bands with people in their age group. The Junior Group consists of children from the ages of three to eight and the Senior Group is a band of children between eight and thirteen. There are no adults that look after these children, so they teach each other the basics of survival. Howewer, it is not certain whether this tradition is typical for the Ik or was temporarily caused by unusual famine conditions.

I plan to look deeper into the heart of the matter, and will report further when more is known.