What tribal societies can tell us about justice and liberty

[RhondaRShearer]

Even in the famed movie Rashomon where 4 defendants all had different viewpoints about a woman's murder in Japan--they all shared one fact. One woman's dead body. That is a verifiable fact. Facts do exist.

Prediction of certain facts are possible too. Step front and center in front of van moving 60mph and that will be another fact .

In my research I focus on such facts--hence why I first looked to find Isum in the remote bush as Diamond said he was paralyzed from a "cut" spine and in a wheelchair for 11 years (an implausible claim IMO). He wasn't. We knew hospital records would give a more complete verification-- which we then obtained.

The way witness statements are collected and who the witnesses are also makes a difference. For example if the supposed victims of "genocide" tell you such a claim is untrue, along with the supposed perpetrators, it's rather persuasive especially when everyone's story lines are basically the same.

In Papua New Guinea, accurate tribal history telling--especially about conflicts--is important. In the Wola area of the Southern Highlands Papua New Guinea such histories equal agreements consisting of what happened and who did what to who. Deviations from such agreed upon histories are easily viewed as attacks or betrayals of peace agreements.

Likely because of this, both sides of the 2 Kina fight and the neutral parties all had remarkably similar tellings of the conflict of 1993.

It was also striking that the Handas would simply acknowledge fault and say flat out with no guile (and without the excuses, hemming and hawing that would invariably occur here) that our guy started the fight and the trouble! I asked anthropologists who work in PNG and they are not surprised by this at all.

With that said, our informants testimonies were able to be cross referenced between memories and documents. If someone said "we remember the fight started when so and so child was born" --we would find the birth record of the child to check and see if it agreed.