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Peacebuilding Institute Opens with 'Ritual of the Americas'

Nancy Beall Hedren (l.) and Tin Tin Yee, a CJP student from Burma perform the dance of the eagle and condor as part of a 'Ritual of the Americas' at the opening session of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. Yee is wearing a costume from Mexico and Hedren native dress of Peru.
Photo by Jim Bishop

Shuk shunkulla (only one heart).
Shuk makilla (only one struggle).
Shuk yuyailla (only one voice).

At the May 8 opening of EMU’s 2006 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), 107 participants from 34 nations joined in reciting this message from the Andean Quichua language – concluding a "Ritual of the Americas" ceremony scripted by Charito Calvachi-Mateyko of Ecuador.

Cross-cultural Friendships

Since 1994, more than 1,500 international workers in humanitarian, conflict resolution and other peacebuilding areas have attended SPI. In four sessions spread over six weeks on EMU’s campus, they form cross-cultural friendships and working partnerships while studying many aspects of solving conflict.

New courses this year will include "Circle Processes: Weaving Old Ways into Contemporary Contexts," with Yako Tahnagha, a Mohawk of the Bear Clan, leading an exploration of the ancient process of resolving community disputes in a circle.

SPI alumni have helped form similar institutes in the Philippines, Fiji and two African regions.

"Mother Earth, Father Sun, here we are," began the Americas ritual – incorporating the symbols of earth, air, fire and water, and led by José María Varacela and his wife, María Gabriela Varacela, of the Saraguro tribe from Ecuador’s Andean highlands. The couple - attending SPI for the first time - are friends of Rosario (Charito) Calvachi-Mateyko, a 2006 masters in conflict transformation graduate of EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She wants to do restorative justice work among indigenous Ecuadorians, and hopes the Varacelas can guide her.

"We return to Mother Earth our pain of being dismembered to give birth to Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and California," said a "voice of Mexico," one of several ritual participants wearing colorful Latin American dress.

Flower of Peace

The ritual, drawn from traditional stories, included a Guatemalan white flower of peace held up to a montage of the world’s soldiers, and an Ecuadorian tradition of gathering mountaintop ice for healing water.

Dancers portrayed a Peruvian prophecy of a condor (representing the heart) meeting an eagle (symbolizing the head and technology). The prophecy foresees the two birds emerging from a clash of civilizations to make a world “in which only peace is possible.”

Nyaw Nyaw Paw, a student in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, welcomes Joe Bob Amara (l.) from Sierra Leone and John Magafu from Tanzania to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. The first SPI session drew 107 participants from 34 countries to EMU.
Photo by Jim Bishop

Khamseng "Seng" Homdouangxay, from Laos, translates for Mennonite Central Committee and works with the Global Family Project, bringing rural children into cities for education. Both Seng and Gwynneth Mudd - an Episcopal priest from Virginia Beach who works with domestic violence victims - enrolled in SPI’s "Introduction to Conflict Transformation." "I’ve met the most interesting people here," Mudd says.

SPI Highly Recommended

"I’m doing my masters by the long route," says Alan Marr, a Baptist minister from Australia who is applying SPI studies toward a conflict transformation degree. As chair of the Asian Baptist Peace Network, Marr emailed fellow-activists when searching for such a program, and "Six out of eight recommended EMU."

Now here for his third summer, Marr expressed concern about his government’s interest in uranium mining as well as the plight of aborigines, who make up 2 percent of Australia’s population but 20 percent of prisoners.

Yet always, Marr admits, "The first 24 hours I’m here I feel like a real fool. I have such an easy life."

Four Iraqis arrived late the night before SPI’s opening, following delays with authorities in Chicago, said SPI Director Pat Hostetter Martin.

'We are Peacebuilders'

The opening concluded with CJP student Keith Lyndaker Schlabach’s song, "We are Peacebuilders," accompanied by guitar, Nigerian finger piano, Indian tabla drum, Mexican tone woodblock, and shakers.

All attending were then asked to introduce themselves and say "We are peacebuilders" in their native languages. Variations included an Indian guest’s comment, "I am not a peacebuilder. I am a peace seeker"...and a South Carolinian’s greeting: "We are peacebuilders, y’all."

Nations represented that morning in EMU’s Strite Auditorium also included England, Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Nepal, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Argentina, Jamaica, Haiti and Canada.

- Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer from Harrisonburg, Va.

— article by: Chris Edwards; posted May 11, 2006