Ik people

The Ik are divided into patrilineal clans, of which Heine in 1985 noted twelve. Clans are led by the J’akama Awae, an inherited position. Rituals There are known rituals in Ik culture, the most significant of which are ipéyé-és and tasapet. Both are considered rites of passage and are practiced by only men: ipéyé-és marks the beginning of manhood, and tasapet the initiation to elderhood. In ipéyé-és, young men must slaughter a male goat instantaneously, using a spear that may not penetrate the other side of the goat's body. Tasapet may not be completed by a man until all of his older brothers have gone through it. Once this has occurred, his hair will be shaved and he will be taken to live in the bush for a month, as well as slaughtering a bull. Men who have completed tasapet are considered the highest members of the Ik: no decisions can be made without their consent, and they are entitled to respect from those younger. As of 1985, this tradition may be endangered due to the expense of purchasing cattle from neighboring groups. A habitually peaceful people, the Ik are frequently raided by neighboring tribes. They have a ritual dance in which they practice responding to an attack, in which the men defend the village and women help lead children to hidden positions, as well as caring for wounded. ==Livelihood==

, 2005The Ik are primarily subsistence farmers. Their staple crops include sorghum, millet, corn and tobacco. Their diets are supplemented with hunting as well as gathering of certain foods, including honey, various fruits and white ants, known as danj. They may trade with neighboring groups for products such as cattle. The Ik are known to brew beer, and the drink plays an important role in some of their traditions. ==The Mountain People==

In 1972, anthropologist Colin Turnbull published an ethnography about the Ik, The Mountain People. The research provides an examination of Ik culture based on his fieldwork during a drought and famine in 1965–66. He depicts the Ik as a people forced into radical individualism to survive, such that they take no care or responsibility for others, sharing nothing, never cooperating on anything, and treating the elderly, infirm and even their own children as little more than burdens. He relies on the few surviving elderly Ik as sources for describing the earlier, less dysfunctional Ik society, including hunter-gatherer practices, marriage, childbirth, death rituals/taboos, and religion. Turnbull records his horror at many of the events he witnesses, such as their disregard for familial bonds, leading to the death of children and the elderly by starvation. He writes warmly about certain Ik, and describes his "misguided" efforts to give food and water to those too weak to farm or forage, standing guard over them to prevent others from stealing their food. The book raises questions about human nature, and the abandonment of love and altruism in time of severe hardship; it also suggests parallels to the individualism of Western society. His time with the Ik exasperated Turnbull and aggravated his innate melancholy, yet he dedicated his work "to the Ik, whom I learned not to hate". Given the Ik's subsistence crisis and (apparent) cultural collapse, Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government that the tribe be broken up and resettled "with no more than ten people in any re-located group" to alleviate the Ik tendency of alienating their neighbors. Criticism Turnbull's research is controversial among other researchers, who question the accuracy of many 'vivid' claims by his study subjects. In 1983, Bernd Heine argued that Turnbull's methods and conclusions were flawed: • Evidence indicates Turnbull possessed limited knowledge of the rapidly-evolving Ik language and tradition and virtually no knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region. He asserted the Ik had been hunter-gatherers but were forced to learn farming after being expelled from their homeland by the formation of Kidepo National Park. However, linguistic and cultural evidence suggests that the Ik had been farmers long before that displacement. • Some of Turnbull's informants were not Ik but Diding'a, including Turnbull's translator, named Lomeja, who Heine claimed spoke a broken form of Ik. Moreover, half of the six villages Turnbull studied were headed by non-Ik. • Turnbull's claim of extensive Ik cattle stealing is contradicted by official government reports. • Heine's own research contradicted Turnbull's claim of frequent non-monogamy among the Ik; during the two years Turnbull stayed among them, there was only one documented instance of non-monogamous sexual activity. Heine concluded, "...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." Heine endorsed the conclusion of T.O. Beidelman: Cultural references Turnbull's book provided material for a 1975 play called The Ik by Colin Higgins and Dennis Cannan. Directed by Peter Brook, the play premiered in Paris in 1975, and was produced in London in 1976 by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The group toured the United States in 1976 as a bi-centennial gift from French tax-payers. The physician and poet Lewis Thomas wrote an essay, "The Ik", which Cevin Soling read as a child and sparked a documentary, Ikland (2011). It was produced in the mid-2000s by Spectacle Films and was directed by Soling and David Hilbert. The film depicts the Ik people in a positive light by showing how easily befriended they are, how they survive and live as families, their music and dancing, and their ability to step into acting roles. The documentary concludes with members of the tribe mimicking a staged performance of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as a Western metaphor for 'redemption'. ==References==