The Drum Beat 195 - Annan and a Talking Stick

This issue of The Drum Beat represents a change of style from normal editions. The present CI plan, discussed and debated by the Partners, emphasises an increased level of critical analysis of the communication for change field - drawing from material that is contributed to this peer learning process. To commence this analysis, the Director of The CI - Warren Feek - will contribute one commentary per month over the next 6 months on issues and items that have attracted his attention. The first contribution follows. We would welcome your critiques. If you wish to contribute please contact Deborah Heimann [email protected]

This issue coincides with a new Pulse Poll on the same topic, please click here to participate (no longer available) in the poll and submit your comments. Does Annan's statement resonate with other cultures?

Finally, we will also distribute the text below through the drumbeatchat forum so that people wishing to debate the ideas below have a forum in which to engage. To join this forum please click here for the subscription page and subscribe at the top of the page (no longer available).

We look forward to the discussion. The normal Drum Beat style returns next week.

***

Annan and a Talking Stick

We are in Tofino with Kofi Annan and a Talking Stick. Well, not exactly personally with the UN Secretary-General. He is a little too busy just now to personally visit a small, peaceful community such as Tofino. But somehow he made it to this isolated place via the pages of an extensive interview in the New Yorker magasine, in the course of which he made some very interesting and perhaps pertinent observations about communication in an African setting. Perceptions that were reinforced by the experience of the Talking Stick, lovingly carved in rare yellow cedar by a local First Nations artist and hanging in a gallery by the beautiful local harbour.

Let's start with the Secretary-General: "I feel profoundly African, my roots are deeply African, and the things that I was taught as a child are very important to me...growing up in Africa, you had lots of people around you - cousins, aunts, grandparents and friends of the family - so there always were people to talk to, people to seek advice from, people to play with, and a sense of friendship and love... Patience was very much part of the culture... And this is why I sometimes find it very difficult to understand the African dictators of today, because in traditional African society people discussed issues. They talked and talked - you know, the tradition of palaver, you go under the tree and you talk. If you can't solve the problem, you meet the next day and you keep talking till you find a solution..."*

The Talking Stick provides further example of this process from a very different culture. In the First Nations Bands of the islands off the west coast of Western Canada the Talking Stick is a crucial element for communication and decision-making. In essence, an artist and local Band member explained, if you hold the talking stick in any community meeting then you can talk for as long as you like about whatever you like and in any way you want. No one can interrupt. You can go for seconds or for days - and some people have - never letting go of the Talking Stick. When you feel you are finished you hand it on to the next in line. The process continues with these very striking sticks [one that I saw was carved with intertwined eagle, raven, bear, salmon and thunderbird] being passed from hand-to-hand and all having the right to speak uninterrupted. No time management here. This is an ongoing dialogue process.

What is striking about these two communication insights is how different both are in values, styles and intent compared with the predominant communication strategies introduced to take on priority development issues. Our stress tends to be on discrete message development; target group understanding; time managed and often externally facilitated focus groups; effective communication delivery channels; and the other standard modus operandi of what appear to be western traditional communication processes. It almost seems like there is little time or patience, to use Kofi Annan's word, for the dialogue-based, people-most-affected-and-engaged, take-as-much-time-as-you-need-to-figure-it-out, communication forms that are central to many cultures as exemplified by the Secretary-General and the Stick.

This is borne out by the information contributed to The Communication Initiative process. Unless we have somehow missed receiving information describing a whole body of experience in the development communication field, comparatively little attention has been paid by the international development community to beginning and structuring our work embedded in local cultural communication values and structures. Amongst the 1,500 programme experiences summarised there are few that have as their starting point a local cultural communication value. The work with The Griot in Mali (click here for more information) is one clear example. But there seem to be few others. And even when traditional communication forms are adopted, such as local drama and music, they are recognised as mainly having value for embedding messages and effectively carrying those messages rather than placing the relevant priority development issues - as issues and concerns rather than as well tailored messages - into those communication forms. This is very different.

The observations of Kofi Annan and the implications of the Talking Stick point to additional, deeper questions for communication strategies that seek to have an impact on major development issues from HIV/AIDS to the environment. Every culture has its own inherent communication values and structures, many of which may be diametrically opposed to those of Annan's Ghana and the Talking Stick. These are powerful processes, generations old, with the central communication principles and protocols being transferred across generations and from rural to urban settings - as personally exemplified in the full interview with Annan.

So why would any organisation want to develop, support and/or fund communication processes that were not based on local cultural communication patterns? Why, if you found it important for your organisation's mandate and interests to work with the First Nations people of the West Coast of Canada would you want to superimpose a different set of communication values and structures upon that culture? Why establish a parallel system just for your goals with meetings 2pm to 4pm, an agenda to which people must adhere, a Chairperson and others interrupting, with posters and a radio show as the centre-piece of the action and a narrow focus on only one issue - your issue? Likewise for Ghana. Why have such processes as message development, focus groups, communication delivery mechanisms and target groups when there are such vibrant and strong cultural communication processes?

Why do we do this? Why does so much money, time and effort appear to be spent on communication strategies that are probably very foreign to the local communication forms? What is the chance of taking a big stick to this process - I can recommend one - and very patiently moving to invest in placing issues within local cultural communication patterns?

Perhaps these questions are just the irrelevant musing of an incurable romantic on communication. Perhaps Kofi Annan's reflections on the cultural communication patterns in Ghana have been embellished and sanitized by time and the years living away from the country. Ghana, along with many other countries appears to have changed remarkably over the past 30 years. Maybe the Talking Stick is now only of symbolic value - years of exposure to western media and communication patterns eroding it's role and power along with the communication values it embodies.

Or maybe not? What do you think? What are the insights from your work and experience?

Warren Feek
[email protected]
March 24, 2003 

* Source: The New Yorker, March 3, 2003, page 58.

***

PULSE POLL

Does this Kofi Annan observation about communication patterns in African society resonate with your culture?: "...because in traditional African society people discussed issues. They talked and talked - you know, the tradition of palaver, you go under the tree and you talk. If you can’t solve the problem, you meet the next day and you keep talking till you find a solution..."

***

This issue of The Drum Beat is an opinion piece and has been written and signed by the individual writer. The views expressed herein are the perspective of the writer and are not necessarily reflective of the views or opinions of The Communication Initiative or any of The Communication Initiative Partners.

***

The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann [email protected]

To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see our policy.

To subscribe, click here.