Learning about another culture is always a rewarding experience, even when it is through the eyes of someone else. Bruce Knauft has given readers all over the world a lifetime opportunity in this regard, as the Gebusi people will never be the same as they are in the stories he has given us. Whether their changes are culturally for better or worse throughout time hardly matters; that they exist and have a culture to study is what is important. The intense speed at which Gebusi culture changed between 1982 and 1998 is unique, however, as globalization has shown a tendency in other cultures to take longer to turn a society around so much as it did the Gebusi. Incredible changes occurred especially in Gebusi customs of religion, marriage, sexual maturation, perceptions of time, and traditional rituals. In order to best understand how all of these things fit together in the Gebusi mindset, however, one must first consider the idea of kogwayay.
Kogwayay is a Gebusi concept that, on one hand, is the culture of the Gebusi while also, on the other hand, is impossible to define simply as ‘culture.’ Knauft writes that kogwayay is the idea of laughing and telling jokes loudly and happily together.[1] It is the backbone of Gebusi understanding of their culture, and truly it is present in all aspects of Gebusi culture. Traditions of séances, joking, and the intense camaraderie among Gebusi men encapsulate the idea of kogwayay. Every aspect of Gebusi culture comes full circle to kogwayay in one way or another, and thus it is extremely important to have even a slight grasp of this all-encompassing concept.
Gebusi religion in 1980 relied heavily upon the belief in spirits, especially those lusty female spirits whom would possess spirit mediums to charm men during séances. This belief in spirits and a further belief in sorcery created the fundamentals of Gebusi religious practices. A man or woman who died could be avenged if an investigation was launched (as often it was) to find the sorcerer who had afflicted the individual and killed them. The death rate among the Gebusi during this time was very high because of this, as few deaths were not attributed to sorcery. In 1998, Christianity came to Nomad and Gasumi Corners, paving the way for complete change in religious custom. Spirit mediums, such as Swamin, began to go to church, and held fewer and fewer spirit séances, until 1998 when they stopped occurring altogether. The door was shut on the spirit world, and access to the spirits of old was lost when the last spirit medium died and no more had been initiated. While Nolop knew how to hold a spirit séance, her status as a woman prevented her from ever truly becoming a spirit medium. Belief in God and Jesus had an incredible impact on Gebusi perspectives on death, however, as the Gebusi became more open to the idea of God taking the deceased unto him and into Heaven. Predictably, the homicide rates decreased significantly.
Marriage changed significantly, as well. While women were more prone to being given the freedom to choose their husbands in 1998, changes in the environment led to changes in the search for a wife. In 1998, Wayabay was the perfect Gebusi made for the 1980s. He was a traditionalist – hunting, gardening, and maintaining the old ways of life in the rainforest – and in a world that was trying to modernize, he was having extreme difficulties finding a woman who would have him as her husband. In 1980, this would not have been the case – Wayabay was strong, successful in his hunting, and a gentle person; he would have found a wife incredibly quickly following his initiation had he been of age in 1982. But in 1998, Knauft describes him as being the oldest of the bachelors, and actively looking to find a wife. The modernizing of Gasumi Corners, however, made it difficult for Wayabay to find a wife; hence his age and his desperation as he went to Bruce for help. Luckily for Wayabay, by 2001 he was married to Gami and eagerly awaiting his first child.
Related to marriage, sexual customs surrounding maturation changed dramatically in sixteen years. Boys were no longer being initiated into adulthood – a process that allowed for the easy selection of mates – and this meant that they no longer needed to be helped along in their growth by the men in the village. In 1980, Knauft observed that young, uninitiated males would often go off with initiated men for sexual trysts, the end goal being the consumption of the semen to give them enough to grow and become manlier, in effect increasing their own inherent maleness. Hawi and Doliay, neither of whom were initiated when Knauft first met them, partook in this custom, but also seemed to be incredibly involved with one another, even saying that they were never going to marry, as they had the other for sexual escapades. In 1998, these customs completely disappeared, replaced by religious teachings, practices, and the lack of passing the information on from the older generation to the younger. Sayu, Didiga, and Wayabay were completely unaware of these customs in 1998 until Knauft dropped the “cultural bomb” on them regarding the subject when Wayabay went to him for help.
The perception of time in Gebusi culture came into existence by 1998, with Gebusi all going to church, work, and school at the same times every day or every week. Dates appeared when discussing time and the past, something quite unusual to the Gebusi before then. In 1980, the idea of time was nowhere near as firm as it would become, with the Gebusi following more relaxed schedules that often revolved around how much work had to be done that day, and whether or not and major events were coming up. Dated years did not exist, and the concept of an hour was vague at best. The modernization of the culture in 1998 brought with it a stringent perception of time that was new to the Gebusi, as Knauft experienced when he was first invited to attend church with his friends, and found himself late due to following old Gebusi customs.
Traditional rituals were perhaps one of the most intensely changed. In 1980, traditions of the Gebusi were very important; initiations had to take place in just such a way, etiquette of visitors and then of hosts was very specific, etc;. When visitors came to Yibihilu, they traditionally displayed anger and aggression, which would be soothed and placated by the accommodating manner of the hosts, who would joke and then celebrate with the visitors in traditional Gebusi fashion. In 1998, during the Independence Day Festival at Nomad, visitors came from all over, but their aggression and anger was nowhere to be found in polite society. The Gebusi still played the gracious hosts, but the old traditions were gone, and it seemed to me that this new way was less warm and inviting and far more distant. Initiations in 1982 resulted in beautiful, meticulous costumes that sponsors contributed to, and spirit séances had as much a sacred and infallible air about them as they did a fun and joking air. The 1998 Independence Day Festival at Nomad also brought with it several plays and skits on the old customs – costumes looked vaguely similar to traditional wear, but were still very much costumes. The plays and skits exaggerated the “foolishness” of traditional ways, and poked fun at them in a manner that was widely accepted as comical. Knauft wrote that he had difficulty with these, because he was trained to respect the customs of other cultures, and yet was faced with the Gebusi mocking their own customs for all to see.
These examples are just a few out of many changes that occurred between the years 1982 and 1998, a sixteen year gap that would not have yielded such change in most other cultures. Of course, the Gebusi are not most other cultures, and are to be respected and appreciated for their own culture. Globilization dramatically changed Gebusi society by 1998, and the absence of government money by 2008 led to the furthered change of the Gebusi back towards their traditional heritage. They began to integrate the old and the new in a manner that was most fitting to their rainforest environment and continued survival as a people. Still Christian (the majority were Catholic), the homicide rate has remained remarkably low (no homicides occurred at all between 1998 and 2008), the sexual customs of maturation seem to remain dissipated, and the spirits remained closed-off from the Gebusi. However, the traditional methods of subsistence have remained, including farming and the half-domestication of wild pigs, and the Gebusi have built a new long house in Gasumi Corners, meaning that a new generation of Gebusi have been initiated.
The Gebusi have gone through globalization to a limited extent, and while many of the modern resources they had enjoyed in 1998 are no longer available to them, they have still maintained the things that they learned during that time, and have created yet another new culture for themselves that is very fitting for their history. They will never be able to return to their traditional ways ever again, simply because they have been influenced by many outside forces, particularly religion. Unique in their experience because of their voluntary contact with the outside world, the Gebusi have continued to change and grow as a society and as an indigenous people over the last thirty years in ways that no one could have predicted. Because of this, I greatly look forward to reading the next edition of Bruce Knauft’s The Gebusi, to see what gift he will give us next in teaching about the changes that have taken place among the Gebusi since 2008.
References:
Knauft,Bruce. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. 2nd ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2010.
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