September 2024: Interview with Adam Boyette, Cultural and Psychological Anthropologist
The BaYaka are egalitarian. No single person has political power. No one can coerce others!
All photos by Adam Boyette, 2010, Central African Republic
I met Adam and his family walking in my neighborhood. He was on vacation from the Max Plank Institute, in Leipzig, Germany. They were visiting his wife’s parents. I had heard many years ago from them that Adam had caught malaria while working in Africa and that he worked with indigenous peoples. My interest was piqued. Adam kindly came by and talked about his work in the Central Africa Republic (CAR) and the Republic of Congo (ROC).
I was brought up in Sebastopol, northern California. My mother was from Minnesota and my father from Louisiana. They met in Santa Rosa. My parents separated when I was five after my younger brother was born. My father was always present in my life. I went to the local schools and graduated from Analy High in 1998.
My first degree was in psychobiology at UCSC (University of California Santa Cruz). During my senior year, I took an evolutionary psychology course. This was pretty new at the time. Anthropologists were doing similar work.
I started to work for a biotech company on intercellular messengers. When they malfunction, it can be one of the routes to getting cancer. I was in a lab mostly sectioning and staining tissue samples. I realized this was not what I wanted to be doing and applied to grad school at Washington State University to study evolutionary anthropology. That took me on my first field trip to CAR.
For my Ph.D., I found an advisor, Barry Hewlett, who’d been working in CAR for 30 years or more. We worked really well together. Barry is best known for his book, “Intimate Fathers” During his first study with pygmies, now more often called, “forest-foragers,” or “hunter-gatherers,” he noticed dads were holding their babies a lot.
Previous research had focused on the mother/child attachment. This may complement the father/child bonding within the Aka/BaYaka people. Fathers didn’t play with babies, they held their babies a lot using a sling in front. The front sling facilitates on-demand breastfeeding and babies can see. When they are tied to the back, they can only see behind.
Barry Hewlett was also trained as a cultural anthropologist. His major finding, based on systematic observation from the 80s and 90s was that Aka men held their infants 25% of the time they were with them.
In their own language Moaka means a single person, while BaYaka means multiple people. (The “Ba” is a Bantu prefix meaning plural.) The UK decided that Aka were the world’s greatest fathers. There’s a film, “Caterpillar Moon.” on Barry Hewlett’s site.
I found that everything the BaYaka do is extremely FLEXIBLE! Parenting is very flexible. Barry has seen men offer their nipple to a crying baby. Some roles are more gender-based.
The BaYaka are egalitarian. No single person has political power. No one can coerce others! There are maybe between 900,000 and 1 million forest foragers and they comprise several ethnic groups. They have maintained genetic isolation and they all live in the Congo Basin.
I was encouraged by Barry Hewlett to look at middle childhood. I was interested in the relation between culture and development.
I mentioned a 2-minute YouTube which showed a hunt the men and women participated in using a net to catch a small mammal. Adam explained. Net hunting has disappeared. Groups of BaYaka are linked to Bantu groups in villages who exchange goods such as flashlights, plates, buckets, and produce from their gardens. The Bantu lend their guns to the BaYaka when they hire them for their hunting skills. BaYaka aren’t permitted to have guns. After the hunt, the Bantu take their weapons back.
I focused on 7- to 12-year-olds but the research encompassed 4- to 17-year-olds, to enable a comparison across development and I wanted to look at the transition from toddlers onward. At 7, adrenarche begins. This relates to hormones that begin the process of sexual maturation such as testosterone and estrogen. How are kids learning when there is no school?
I compared two people, the Ngandu and the BaYaka, who live in the same ecosystem but have very different cultures. I hung with both groups and recorded systematically how they were learning and what they were doing.
It’s very different from child psychologists in the West, who often live in university towns and tend to sample middle-class children.
Similar Findings
Kids are playing less as they grow. In both groups, they are learning through doing with very little active teaching. When there are teaching interventions, they include a broad scope of behaviors. Mostly, they learn through observation. For example, someone may be directing their attention to what they should learn. In both groups, kids receive direct orders when being given tasks.
There was teaching about more abstract things that you might not see. For example, “There are bees here. Can you see the signs in the tree?”
Initiations into spiritual life begin between age 7 and adolescence.
Differences
Because the BaYaka are egalitarian, their children have autonomy and equal respect as adults. Children are just as likely to teach other children as adults were. This is true of certain teaching behaviors, but not others requiring much more knowledge. Among the Ngandu, adults are more likely to teach the children, and more directive forms of teaching are a little more common.
This was consistent with cultural differences in their societies. The Ngandu are hierarchical. Older or higher-status adults can tell others what to do. The status is inherited through families who either are large landowners or were village chiefs. In the Republic of Congo, chiefs are elected or when there is no agreement, sometimes chosen by the administration. Children are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Research by linguists and archeologists shows the Ngandu, who are Bantu-speaking, were hierarchical and patriarchal before colonization.
The BaYaka are not at all patriarchal. The women form a coalition and are just as likely to beat their husbands if needs be, or dance and sing and make fun of men’s genitalia, or show a force of strength.
For the most part, the BaYaka are conflict-averse and, at times, will shout a lot and make fun of each other.
Here is the link to a blog post on Adam’s recent work: https://ces-transformationfund.org/news/ces-transformation-fund-field-report-change-and-wellbeing-in-the-congo/
This examines the ways in which global cultures and economic systems influence people’s daily lives in a village in the rural, northern part of the Republic of the Congo (ROC). Life for many people in this tropical forest region exemplifies the complexities and contradictions of international development and globalization. New economic and cultural opportunities come at the expense of control over land and an increasing necessity for cash. What determines people’s choices in this unstable economic and ecological landscape? And what is the impact of globally-influenced environmental change on people’s wellbeing locally?
Following on from June and July’s interview with Aaron Hargrove, I’d like to share in October’s issue my experience of an event I attended in February 2024, “The Healing Power of Forgiveness.” There was a panel of six speakers, two of whom were victims of crime and four of whom were perpetrators. Diana Badger will add her experience in this field. My hope is that this will give a broader context to a few of the restorative justice movements in California.
New Moon’s Old Tale
See the new moon rocking still
in the sky, high above darkening
pines and the streaming
cricket chorus. She speaks
of times before us
when her rhythms melded
waves, ice, and snow, and
she cradled life
in tidal pools as it waited
for just the right moment
to birth the very first
wrigglings.
And she speaks of time
after us when we will be
but a memory, a possibility
that flashed across, a little longer
than a lightning storm
yet shorter than all the ages
she has witnessed. And
there is no trace
of regret in her voice
but a quiet ring
whose peaks exceed
our imaginations.
As the crickets grow
louder with constant
changing tones, the moon
begins to soften,
or perhaps it’s me,
chastened by her wonder.
From The Dreams We Share
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Mamos Puja
Diane Barker gave an interview that includes a description and explanation of the Mamos Puja in February and March 2023. She writes;
Dear Friends,
A Mamos Puja will be held again this October 2024, at Jangchub Jong (Dorzong Monastic Institute – a Drukpa Kargyu Buddhist Monastery) in Himachal Pradesh, India. The exact date to be announced in a few weeks. I will keep you all posted!
The Mamos puja is an ancient Tibetan ritual used to help keep society in harmony with the natural world. Support in the form of prayers for our precious Earth when the puja takes place, or donations to fund the puja, would be greatly appreciated.
More information can be found on two pages here:
https://www.dianebarker.net/mamos.php
Thank you to everyone who supported the puja with prayers and funds last year. The ceremony felt incredibly powerful and Choegyal Rinpoche, the Yogis, Lamas and nuns were very pleased with the “signs” at the ceremony’s end!
Please consider donating to this ceremony for our Earth.
Stories for a Living Future –
Podcasts with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Llewellyn shares three new podcasts in Series 4 that are more autobiographical and personal. In the Song of the Heart of the World, he “explores the way the teachings of the two great masters, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, give us a “firm foundation” to living in these toxic times, helping us to reconnect to the song of creation, the primal spirit that moves through all things.” In The Wall, Llewellyn “…reveals a historical background to our present darkening world. However, I do feel that it would be helpful to share this vision at this time, to help understand the road we are traveling.” And in Death, “I talk about death, a subject central to the life of a mystic…Here I wait, watching the seasons change, until the door opens and I can fully pass into the vastness.”
Kalyanee Mam – What Does Love Have To Do With It?
Bringing Mystery to Peacebuilding
The New School at Commonweal offered three interviews, hosted by Serena Bian, an amazing 27-year-old. This third one with Kalyanee Mam, a documentary filmmaker starts slowly before moving into deep waters. I find it lovely. Kalyanee shares deeply her discoveries about the land and her senses. Born in Battambang, Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge regime, Kalyanee and her family were displaced from both their land and their home. Kalyanee has spent most of her life trying to understand the root cause of war, destruction, and displacement and how we can return home again.
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee | The Essence of Spiritual Ecology: An Embodied Communion
This powerful talk was given this summer at St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London. As Emmanuel shares, “We cannot limit the ways that we praise the Earth. In this time of ecological crisis, we must sweep the dust of forgetfulness, remember the Earth as a sacred divine being, and hold the Earth in our hearts with love.”
You can find additional recent talks Emmanuel gave earlier this year on the themes of prayer and the mystical journey, and remembering Earth time on the Golden Sufi site at https://goldensufi.org/playlist/prayer-and-the-mystical-journey/ and at
https://goldensufi.org/playlist/remembering-earth-time/
New Review of The Dreams We Share
Rebecca Patrascu has written a very well-researched and insightful review of my latest book, It was published in the Colorado Review and you can read it at
https://raphaelblock.com/the-dreams-we-share/
“Raphael Block’s new collection, The Dreams We Share, is a work of sustained and reverent attention to the natural world. The poet’s fifth book, it contains eighty-nine poems in five sections, and names over a hundred different plants and nearly as many species of birds, animals, and insects. This abundance might suggest the volume reads like a life list, but Block’s language is plush, his approach that of a pilgrim rather than a collector. He is notably faithful to place. Each redwood tree, fence lizard, and redtail hawk populates the lines as naturally as it would its native habitat…”
For those of you who are local:
Join us for this amazing event on the Sonoma Coast with the Sonoma County Pomo Dancers!
Parking on Carlevaro Way will be on a first come first serve basis, so arrive early. The event starts at approximately 4PM. Once at the Carlevaro parking lot, give yourself enough time to find parking, and walk to the event site – about 5 to 10 minutes.
Be sure to bring something to eat, drink and a folding chair if you need to sit.
If you would like to be kept up to date on future events with the Sonoma County Pomo Dancers, please subscribe to Stewards of the Cost and Redwoods e-news at
https://stewardscr.org/newsletter-signup/
Please login / quick register to make a reservation:
Receive the Earth-Love Newsletter, event invitations, and always a poem.