User:Likesthesouth/sandbox

!Kung women and child sharing a meal.

The !Kung is how the tribe is called to other people outside of the tribe but the !Kung people call themselves the Ju/’hoansi. Most tribes have either a patriarchal or matriarchal society, but he !Kung lives in harmony with each other and have certain tasks for men and women. Marjorie Shostak says, “Here, in the society of ancient traditions, men and women live together in a nonexploitative manner, displaying a striking degree of equality between the sexes.” Other agricultural and herding tribes have followed the !Kung’s ways of society. Some relations between the sexes the prevailed during the majority of human prehistory were comparable to those seen among the !Kung today.”

Although no society is perfect and there are always some confrontations among men and women. The lack of privacy in the !Kung life also protects women from being battered by their husbands, and children from being abused by either parent.

Marriage Life

In the !Kung tribe marriage is the major focus of alliance formation between groups of !Kung. When a woman starts to develop they are considered ready for marriage. Every marriage is arranged for the first marriage. The culture of the !Kung is “being directed at marriage itself, rather than at a specific man.” Even though it doesn’t matter who the man is the women’s family is looking for a specific type of man. The man should not be too much older than the daughter, unmarried men are preferred rather than already being divorced, having hunting ability, and willingness to take on the responsibilities of the wife’s family. The husband has to take on many responsibilities for his wife’s family because the family depends heavily on the husband’s family when there are times of scarcity they can trade.

On the marriage day, the tradition is the “marriage-by-capture” ceremony in which the bride is forcibly removed from her hut and presented to her groom. During the ceremony the bride has her head covered and is carried and then laid down in the hut while the groom is led to the hut and sits beside the door. The couple stay a part from each other being respectful and don’t join the wedding festivities. After the party is over they spend the night together and the next morning they are ceremonially rubbed on with oil by the opposite mother.

Divorce

Girls who are displeased with their parents’ selection may violently protest against the marriage by kicking and screaming and running away at the end of the ceremony. After she had run away, it may result in the dissolution of the arrangement.

Half of all first time marriages end in divorce but because it is a common thing the divorce process is not long. Based off of Marjorie Shostak’s book, she generalizes that, “Everyone in the village expresses a point of view,” on the marriage if they should be divorced or not. After that they are divorced and can live in their separate huts with their family. Relations between divorced individuals is usually quite amicable, with former partners living near one another and maintain a cordial relationship. After the women’s first divorce they are free to marry either the man they truly love or stay single and live on their own.

The Healing Process

The healing rituals are a primary part to the !Kung culture. In the !Kung state of mind having health is equivalent to having social harmony meaning that relationships within the tribe are stable and open between other people in the tribe. Any member of the !Kung tribe can become a healer because it,” is a status accessible to all,” but it is a grand aspiration of many members because it is an important position. Even though there is no restriction of the power,” Nearly half the men and one-third of the women are acknowledged of having the power to heal,” but with the responsibility comes great pain and hardship. To become a healer, you have to be an apprentice and go through lessons with older healers. Their training includes the older healer having to,” go into a trance to teach the novices, rubbing their own sweat onto the pupils’ centers- their bellies, backs, foreheads, and spines.” Most of the apprentices have the intensions of becoming a healer but then become frightened or have a lack of ambition and discontinue.”

The !Kung term of this powerful healing force is n/um. This force resides in the bellies of men and women who have gone through the training and has become a healer. Healing can be transmitted through the !kia dance that begins at sundown and continues through the night. The !kia can be translated to “trance” which is can give a physical image of a sleeping enchantment. While they dance,” in preparation for entering a trance state to effect a cure, the substance [the n/um] heats up and, boiling, travels up the healer’s spine to explode with therapeutic power in the brain.” While the healers are in the trance they propel themselves in a journey to seek out the sickness and argue with the spirits. Women on the other hand have a special medicine called the gwah which starts in the stomachs and kidneys. During the Drum Dance, they enter the !kia state and the gwah travels up the spine and lodges in the neck. In order to obtain the gwah power the women, “chop up the root of a short shrub, boil it into a tea and drink it.” They don’t need to drink the tea every time because the power they obtain lasts a lifetime.

The community of the !Kung fully supports the healers and heavily depends on them. They trust in the healers and have, and the teachers, to psychologically and spiritually guide them through life. The !Kung have a saying, “Healing makes their hearts happy, and  happy heart is one that reflects a sense of community.” Because of their longing to keep the peace between people, their community is tranquil.