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A N T H R O N O T E SMUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY PUBLICATION FOR EDUCATORS

VOLUME 26 NO. 2 FALL 2005

WINTER COUNTS AND COUP COUNTS:PLAINS PICTORIAL ART AS NATIVE HISTORY

by Candace S. Greene˜ ˜ ˜

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[Editor’s Note: Candace Greene, an ethnologist longinterested in Plains Indian art, is coeditor of the forth-coming publication, The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Win-ter Counts at the Smithsonian, available in 2007. She wasalso one of the developers of a new interactive onlineexhibit, Lakota Winter Counts (http://wintercounts.si.edu), which recently won a UN WorldSummit Award in e-culture, and is the subject of thisissue’s Teacher’s Corner. At this website, viewers canexplore these visual histories and hear how they areviewed by contemporary Lakota people.]

There is an old saying that history is written bythe victor—meaning that the voices of thedefeated are often muted in the historical record,

overwritten by the perspectives of the more powerful.I would add a further caveat to this truism—history iswritten by the literate. During the course of the nine-teenth century, all of the Indians of the Great Plainsregion of North America were either conquered ormarginalized, and almost all were non-literate. It is there-fore not surprising that their views were long omittedfrom the story of American history, which has tradi-tionally relied heavily on written source material.

History is always being rewritten, however, asnew information is discovered or biases in old infor-mation are recognized. Oral history is a major sourcethat scholars have tapped to incorporate Native viewsinto a wider American history, using both contempo-rary narratives of the past and Indian perspectives re-corded at an earlier time. But there is another source ofinformation that has not yet been used to its full poten-

tial—the extensive pictorial record that people of thePlains produced of their experiences, both immediateand of the more distant past.

Pictorial art, more or less realistic representa-tions of people and things, was produced by many ofthe Native peoples of North America, but it was par-ticularly well developed on the Plains, where people drewor painted thousands of narrative scenes illustratingactivities and events in their lives. The oldest survivingexamples are those scratched or painted on rock sur-faces, but it seems reasonable to assume that rock artwas just a particularly durable part of a wider traditionof painting on hides. Painted hides are well known fromtravelers’ accounts from the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, and many have survived from themiddle and the later years of the nineteenth century.Buffalo robes worn as outer garments were the mostcommon site for the production and display of picto-rial art until the herds were destroyed. Plains artistsquickly found new media for their art: trade materialssuch as muslin and paper, which became available inthe latter half of the nineteenth century. In painting asin most other aspects of life, there was a clear divisionbetween men’s and women’s work: representational,pictorial art was the province of men, while womenembellished hides with geometric designs.

Categories of Pictorial ArtPlains pictorial art of the nineteenth century can bedivided into three general categories: representationsof supernatural beings, pictures depicting men’s accom-plishments, and pictorial art to create records. Thesecategories superficially resemble each other but were

AnthroNotes Volume 26 No. 2 Fall 2005throNotes

ies. Several tribes may have once producedwinter counts, but most that have survivedwere made by the Lakota (also known asthe Sioux) and the Kiowa. The Lakota werelocated west of the Missouri River duringthe nineteenth century, primarily in what isnow North and South Dakota and adjacentareas of Montana and Nebraska. The Kiowalived far south of the Lakota in a territorythat centered around what is now westernOklahoma. Both groups produced a richbody of narrative pictorial art, and in bothof their languages, the words they used formaking drawings were the same as thosethey came to use to refer to Western sys-tems of writing. For them, pictures andwords were both visual records of informa-tion.

made for quite different purposes (Greene 2001:1043).Representations of supernatural beings, often appearingin human or animal form, were painted on the shieldsthat men carried to war and sometimes on the tipis ofparticularly fortunate families. These images speak to ahistory of spiritual experiences rather than a secular event.Pictures depicting men’s accomplishments, primarily their“coups” (formally recognized deeds of war for which aman was honored by his community), were the most com-mon usage of pictorial art, and many thousands of suchcoup scenes painted on hides or drawn on sheets of mus-lin or paper survive today. These are direct narratives ofsecular events and accord most closely with Westernconcepts of history as concerned with things that oc-curred in the “real world.” Pictorial art also createdrecords, using pictures in much the same way that liter-ate societies use writing to keep lists, label maps, or leavea note regarding direction of travel. Among the mostinteresting of these records were the calenders, or win-ter counts, which tracked a series of years by recordingone or two pictures of events for each year.

Narrative pictures and winter counts have enor-mous potential as sources of information about PlainsIndian history, as recorded by members of those societ-

Drawing on paper by Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota,showing himself triumphing over a Crow enemy, 1882.National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution,Ms. 1929B, 08590800.

Lakota and Kiowa Winter CountsLakota pictorial history came to scholarly attention asearly as 1877 when Garrick Mallery, an Army officer andavocational scholar, announced with excitement that hehad discovered an object that recorded seventy years ofSioux history (Mallery 1877). It consisted of a series ofsimple pictographs painted on a buffalo hide, represent-ing one event for each year, from 1800 to 1870. LoneDog, a Yanktonai who had painted the hide, providedthe explanations of the pictures that Mallery studied.

A buffalo robe painted with scenes of warfare. Tribe unknown, UpperMissouri River, ca. 1830-40. Department of Anthropology, SmithsonianInstitution, cat. no. 2130.

AnthroNotes Volume 26 No. 2 Fall 2005

While pictorial hides with scenes of warfare were wellknown among the Plains Indians, this was the first timethat a Western scholar had encountered a record that hecould equate to a written historical text. Mallery madefurther inquiries among frontier associates, and he soondiscovered that a number of such calendric records ex-isted among the Lakota (Mallery 1886). The people calledthem waniyetu wowapi or “winter counts,” explaining thatyears were counted by winters, with each year named fora memorable event during the year that had been selectedby community leaders. A designated winter count keeperwas responsible for remembering these year names, aswell as details of the event to which they referred and forkeeping them all in order. These keepers painted simpli-fied images referencing the year names on hides (and laterother materials) as a mnemonic device to help them keepthe year names in the proper sequence.

Several of the winter counts that Mallery exam-ined shared many of the same year names, while othersrecorded different events. All of them, however, had one

entry in common, “The Year the Stars Fell.”This made it possible for Mallery to correlatethem with each other and eventually to tie themto the Western calendar system by identifyingthat event as the Leonid meteor storm of No-vember 1833, a remarkable display that was vis-ible throughout much of North America.

The Smithsonian anthropologist JamesMooney learned of the Kiowa calendars afterhe began work with the Kiowa in the 1890s. Heused the native calendar system as the frame-work for organizing a history of the tribe, whichhe published under the title Calendar History ofthe Kiowa Indians (1898). Unlike the Lakota, theKiowa recorded two events for each year, onefor the summer months and one for winter. Inthe pictorial record, winter events were con-nected to a black bar. Summer events were dis-tinguished by an accompanying picture of theMedicine Lodge where summer ceremonieswere held, or merely a picture of the forkedcenter pole of the lodge. Rare summers whenthe ceremony was not held were marked with aleafy tree.

Like the Lakota, the Kiowa used verysimple pictures to suggest the name of the associatedevent. Interviewing many Kiowa people over a periodof years, Mooney learned that there was an extensivenarrative associated with each of the simple pictures andbrief year names. He also found that the Kiowa used theyear names regularly when discussing other events, whichplaced them in time by reference to named calendar en-tries. People knew the name of the year when they wereborn, and a man might say that he went on his first warparty in “The Winter that Thunder Boy Was Killed,” orthat he had last hunted in the region of Timber HillCreek in “The Summer the Koitsenko Were Initiated.”When men met to pass the pipe and discuss triumphs orlosses, the calendar keeper was often invited to attend.If any question arose regarding the date or sequencingof events, he could be called upon to resolve it, con-necting events to other events, tying them firmly to thetemporal graph of the pictorial record.

Copy on muslin of the winter count kept by The Flame, a Sans ArcLakota, covering the years 1786 to 1876. The count begins in thelower left corner and entries are arranged in serpentine form movingback and forth across the surface. National Anthropological Archives,Smithsonian Institution, Ms. 2372, 08633800.

(continued)


eases such as smallpox, cholera, and measles that devas-tated Plains populations have been tracked through win-ter counts (Thornton 1987). Calendars document wherebands were at particular times, and they provide a uniquerecord of shifting intertribal alliances and enmities. Lakotawinter counts reveal a deep history with European trad-ers long before Lewis and Clark visited these tribes.

Such studies have creatively mined the wintercounts as indirect historical sources, records created forother purposes but which contain data of use to answerparticular questions. But very few studies have used themeffectively as direct historical documents, as native ac-counts of their own history. While historical informa-tion can be gleaned from these pictographic records, theydo not conform well to Western concepts of an histori-cal record. A list of year names offers a thin record ofthe past. Moreover, events that the keepers noted werenot necessarily ones of major importance but often onesof purely local interest. Great and decisive battles werepassed over in favor of recording “The Year that theWoman Was Struck by Lightning.”

Many other Lakota and Kiowa calendars are nowknown. Some Lakota counts reach back to the early yearsof the eighteenth century, while the Kiowa record be-gins in 1828. Calendar keeping continued well into thetwentieth century, gradually merging with and finally be-ing replaced by written systems of recording knowledge.These records took many forms as they were copied overand over, passing from keeper to keeper or being dupli-cated for use in different communities. They were drawnon lengths of muslin cloth or on large sheets of brownwrapping paper. They were copied into books and re-copied onto old buffalo robes. The pictures may be placedin spiral or serpentine form on a large surface, or movein a straight line across a page or a strip of cloth. Asliteracy became more widespread, notes might be addedto the pictures and occasionally lists of written year nameswere kept without any pictorial accompaniment.

Winter Counts as Historical SourcesWinter counts have fascinated scholars for decades, andthey have been used for a remarkable range of studies.An astronomer has looked for occurrences of celestialphenomena in Plains calendars and has found recordsnot only of widely documented lunar and solar eclipsesbut also of locally observable fireballs (Chamberlain1984). Years when the Kiowa did not hold the usual Medi-cine Lodge ceremony have been correlated with droughtepisodes, documenting the influence of environment onannual cycles of population dispersal and coalescence(Levy 1961). The spread and duration of epidemic dis-

Entries from the Kiowa winter count kept by Little Bear. Thefigure on the right designates the Peninsula Medicine Lodge(summer 1839), with a line representing the Washita Riverbending around a picture of the Medicine Lodge. To the left,a picture of a man covered with spots drawn above a blackbar indicates Smallpox Winter (1839-40).

Entries from two Lakota winter counts. Left, Storm of StarsWinter, Battiste Good, 1833-34. Right, Young Man with Small-pox Shot Himself, American Horse, 1784-85.


Native View of HistoryBefore we can fully use winter counts as a native recordof a people’s own history, we must seek to gain a betterunderstanding of their concepts of history and its re-cording. James Mooney and later scholars who spent sub-stantial time working with Kiowa and Lakota peoplelearned that they held vast stores of historical informa-tion that was not noted in these records but was trans-mitted instead by oral tradition. These stories could beplaced in time by reference to the years named in thewinter counts. Winter counts, it seems, were not createdto stand as independent records, but were integrally con-nected to a vast web of knowledge carried in memoryand transmitted orally. The counts served as sequencingtools, not as major repositories of knowledge. Year nameswere indeed richer and more evocative than year num-bers, but their purpose was much the same.

While some individuals such as winter countkeepers no doubt had a particularly deep knowledge ofhistorical events, such knowledge was not consolidatedin a single person or a central repository. It was dispersedthroughout the community, with various individuals car-rying knowledge of importance to them. The mainte-nance of the winter counts as a central reference tool,however, provided a mechanism for this dispersed butoverlapping knowledge base to be fitted together if onewanted. The continued existence of winter counts indi-cates that people did indeed want to fit these pieces to-gether, to look for meaning in the patterns of the past.Counts were not independent histories but armaturesaround which a shared history could be constructedthrough social discourse. Their maintenance over such along period of time suggests an active historical con-sciousness.

Coups Counts as Personal NarrativesThe pictures in winter counts contrast strikingly with thescenes painted on hides or drawn on the pages of ledgerbooks. These narrative scenes are more elaborately de-veloped and contain a wealth of significant detail. Theyare full illustrations of events, rather than terse mnemonicdevices. To those familiar with the conventions of Plainsart, these drawings tell remarkably detailed stories. Indi-vidual men are identified by items of clothing and weap-onry or by the designs painted on their shields. Key ele-ments of hairstyle and dress signify the tribal affiliation

of opponents, and the nature of the encounter is madeclear by flying arrows or bullets.

These pictures differ from the winter counts incontent as well as in style. Warfare was a major focus ofmen’s lives at this period of time and features promi-nently in both types of art but with an important differ-ence. The narrative drawings illustrate the coups of par-ticular men, their personal achievements. Winter countsrecord wars more generally or note deaths in battle, butthey include almost no references to personal honors.The content of the two types of records is mutually ex-clusive. Why?

Public and Private Ownership of KnowledgePlains societies such as the Kiowa valued independencehighly, and many aspects of “tribal culture” were actu-ally individually owned, ranging from beadwork designsto the right to perform religious ceremonies. Much knowl-edge was similarly viewed as private property and couldnot be publicly displayed without proper authority(Greene 1993). Men’s heroic deeds, their coups, were seenin this light, and the right to tell of them, either verballyor visually, was closely guarded. The story of these eventswas a form of personal property, although an intangibleone. Each man “owned” his heroic deeds and only hehad the right to recount them publicly. Winter counts,on the other hand, were very public, a common refer-ence work that might be cited by anyone. Events includedthere were necessarily in the public domain.

When men gathered to talk of their past, to sharetheir achievements and tragedies, individuals of note wereinvited to tell their stories. Communal history, a richmosaic built from the pieces contributed by many indi-viduals, came together only at such times when peoplegathered to share it formally. The calendar provided theframework around which this history could be con-structed, as each man knew the name of the year in whichhis particular event had occurred.

The two types of pictures, the winter counts andthe more detailed narrative scenes, thus represent twotypes of historical knowledge, one public, one private.Both types were enduring visual representations of amuch wider base of knowledge carried in memory, whichagain was divided into what might be reproduced orallyby any member of the community, and what could onlybe told by authorized individuals.


Today much of the historical knowledge once carried inoral tradition has been lost through a harsh history ofdeath and oppression, yet a great deal has survived.Indian communities are actively engaged in reconstitut-ing that knowledge, creating new forums in which to shareit and redefining their history in their own terms. Thevisual record of winter counts and coup counts createdby their forebearers is a rich and valued resource.

For Further ReadingBurke, Christina E. 2000. Collecting Lakota Histories:Winter Count Pictographs and Texts in the National An-thropological Archives. American Indian Art Magazine26(1): 82-103.

Chamberlain, Von Del. 1984. Astronomical Content ofNorth American Plains Indian Calendars. Archaeoas-tronomy supplement 15(6): S1-S54.

DeMallie, Raymond J., and Douglas Parks. 2001. TribalTraditions and Records. Handbook of North American In-

dians, vol.13 Plains, pp. 1062-1073.Smithsonian Institution.

Greene, Candace S. 1993. The Tepee withBattle Pictures. Natural History Magazine102 (10): 68-76.

Greene, Candace S. 2001. Art Until 1900.Handbook of North American Indians, vol.13 Plains, pp. 1039-1054. Smithsonian In-stitution.

Greene, Candace S., and RussellThornton, eds. The Year the Stars Fell:Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian. Inpress. University of Nebraska Press. Aninteractive online exhibit based on thebook is available at http://

wintercounts.si.edu

Levy, Jerrold C. 1961. Ecology of theSouthern Plains. In Viola Garfield, ed., Pro-ceedings of the 1961 Meeting of the AmericanEthnological Society, pp. 18-25. University of

Mooney, James. 1898. Calendar History of the Kiowa.Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnol-ogy, 1895-1896, pp. 129-460. Smithsonian Institution.

Thornton, Russell. 1987. American Indian Holocaust andSurvival: A Population History since 1492. University of Okla-homa Press.

Candace S. Greene is an anthropologist in the Smithsonian’sDepartment of Anthropology.

The “Lakota Winter Counts” online exhibit is an access point to explore tendifferent winter counts in Smithsonian collections. Viewers can follow eachcount year by year, compare all the counts for any given year, or search bytopic or keyword. Other sections of the website include background informationon the Lakota and videos of contemporary Lakota people discussing their history(http://wintercounts.si.edu).

Washington Press.Mallery, Garrick. 1877. A Calendar of the Dakota Na-tion. U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey, Bulletin 3(1): 3-25.

Mallery, Garrick. 1886. Pictographs of the North Ameri-can Indians. Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ameri-can Ethnology, 1882-1883, pp. 1-256. Smithsonian Institu-tion.


TEACHERS CORNER: USING PRIMARY SOURCESby Anh-Thu Cunnion

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[Editor’s Note: This lesson plan for high school studentswas adapted from the author’s Teacher’s Guide created forthe Lakota Winter Count website and authored by Cunnion.Winter counts are pictorial calendars or records used bythe Plains Indians. Additional educational material is avail-able for download on the Learning Resources page, http://wintercounts.si.edu]

Primary sources expose students to multiple per-spectives on events and issues of the past andpresent. Incorporating winter counts into the class-

room can encourage students to develop visual literacyskills, greater analytical abilities, and a deeper understand-ing about the Lakota people and their culture. By dealingdirectly with archival records, students engage in askingquestions, thinking critically, and developing reasonedexplanations and interpretations of events, issues, andpeoples of the past and the present.

For this lesson, students will become “investiga-tive historians” whose task is to use the winter counts tolearn as much as they can about the Lakota people’s his-tory during the nineteenth century. Once divided intoeight groups, students will be assigned one of the eightpictographic winter counts to use as their primary re-source (do not use the “text only” winter counts for thisexercise). Using the searchable database of winter countentries, students will look for general information aboutthe community whose history is documented in the win-ter count. Students will report back to the class as a wholewith their findings, citing individual entries as evidenceand correlating the events mentioned in the winter countwith events studied in their textbooks.

Curriculum StandardsBecause each state has its own social studies curriculumstandards, the National Council for the Social Studies’1994 publication, Expectation of Excellence: Curriculum Stan-dards for Social Studies, was used as a guideline for thislesson plan. In accordance with this set of standards, thelesson focuses on themes of Time, Continuity, andChange. At this level, students engage in “more sophisti-cated analysis and reconstruction of the past, examining

Cloud Shieldpictograph,1807-08. Manypeople campedtogether andhad many flagsflying.

its relationship to the present and extrapolating into thefuture.” Through the study of both primary and second-ary resources, students integrate individual stories aboutpeople, events, and situations to form a more holisticconception, in which continuity and change are linked intime and across cultures. These skill objectives, or varia-tions of them, are also found in several states’ curricu-lum standards for high school students. The ability touse technology for research is also a skill required ofmany states’ high school students.

Performance ObjectivesBy completing the lesson, students will be better able to:

• Identify, seek out and evaluate multiple perspec-tives of past events.• Obtain historical data from alternative sources ofhistorical documentation.• Question issues of voice when evaluating histori-cal sources.

Materials• Computer Lab with at least eight computersequipped with high-speed internet.

• Image of a winter count, either for overheadprojection or general distribution. Digital imagesof the winter counts can be downloaded off theSmithsonian’s Lakota Winter Count online resource<http://wintercounts.si.edu>. (Images are locatedin the “Learning Resources” section, under theTeachers’ Guide in “Downloadable Images.”)

• Writing material.


Procedure1. Divide the students into eight equal groups and assigneach group a different pictographic winter count (LoneDog, Long Soldier, American Horse, Battiste Good,Cloud Shield, Flame, Rosebud, Swan). If the majority ofgroups have more than three students, create more groupsand overlap assigned winter counts. Each group shouldhave its own computer to use for research.

2. Discuss the difference between primary sources andsecondary sources. Ask the students to identify examplesof primary sources and secondary sources that they haveencountered during their studies. The definitions usedby the Smithsonian Archives are as follows:

a. Primary sources are documents or objectscreated as part of daily life—birth certificates, photo-graphs, diaries, letters, etc.—or reports from people di-rectly involved in the subject.

b. Secondary sources are documents that in-terpret, analyze, or synthesize information, usually pro-duced by someone not directly involved in the subject.Examples include textbooks and obituaries.

3. Provide background information on the Lakota. Lo-cate the region of the United States that the Lakota peoplelived, from prior to the eighteenth century to the present(South Dakota, North Dakota).

4. Introduce the winter counts. Show images of the win-ter counts, preferably a variety of them so that studentscan compare and contrast each winter count keeper’s styleand medium (students should not think that winter countswere only produced on buffalo skin or hide).

5. Explain how the Lakota used winter counts as mne-monic devices (memory aids) to recall their community’shistory.

a. Each pictograph represents a memorable eventoccurring during each year of the community’s past.

b. One person, the keeper, was responsible fornot only maintaining the winter count, but also for re-membering the entire history recorded within it.

c. The oral history tradition survived the U.S.government’s campaign to outlaw the expression of bothAmerican Indian culture and language.

d. Winter counts are among the few primarysources that remain that document American Indian his-tory during the nineteenth century from a non-Whiteperspective.

6. Next class (in the Computer Lab). Describe to thestudents how the winter counts are accessible throughthe searchable database on the Lakota Winter Countonline exhibit (http://wintercounts.si.edu). As practice,ask them to zoom in, zoom out and rotate the picturesof the whole winter count; view individual entries; scrollacross the database; access collector’s notes for individualcounts; and “collect” entries.

7. Inform the students that they will be doing historicalinvestigation using their assigned winter count, in orderto discover ideas about how the people represented intheir count lived and what happened to them during thenineteenth century.

8. Instruct students to answer the following researchquestions using their assigned winter count as a refer-ence and citing individual entries as evidence. Studentsmay not be able to find evidence to complete some ques-tions, but they should do their best to extrapolate as muchinformation as they can. In this case, it is best for themto “make an educated guess” rather than to leave a sec-tion blank. However, students should be instructed thatif they are unsure of an answer, they should make noteof it (as any good scholar should). Students should worktogether but be asked to record their own answers.

Page from the Cloud Shield winter count. The winter countspans 1777-1878 and is stored at the Smithsonian’s NationalAnthropological Archives.


9. Next class (in the classroom). Ask students to nameprimary and secondary sources from their own lives. Thenreview winter counts with the class by asking students toexplain why winter counts are considered primary sources.Have groups present their answers to the research ques-tions to the class. Once all the groups have presented,work with the class as a whole to identify similarities anddifference among the counts. Students should be takingnotes on their classmates’ findings as well as the classdiscussion. Issues that should be addressed are:

a. What would account for the differences amongthe counts? The similarities?

b. What events documented in the popular ver-sion of U.S. history are also documented in the wintercounts?

c. Why don’t the winter counts seem as compre-hensive as the textbook version of history? (Wintercounts are not the definitive history of the Lakota com-munity, but rather mnemonic devices used to support anoral history, which was more elaborate and detailed, con-taining not only the most memorable event, but otherimportant events that are associated with the year.

Research Questions

1. Where did the Lakota live? Describe geographi-cal landmarks (rivers, streams, hills, etc) as wellas environs (wildlife, plants and animals).

2. How did the Lakota live? What did they eat? Howdid they get food?

3. What health issues did the Lakota face?4. What other groups of people did the Lakota in-

teract with? How did they interact? Were theyfriends or enemies? Did that relationship changeover time?

5. When did the Lakota first meet White explorersand settlers? What types of interactions occurredbetween the two cultures?

6. What astronomical or meteorological phenom-ena are mentioned in the winter counts (star ac-tivity, extraordinary weather patterns)?

Unfortunately, the oral history tradition suffered greatlyfrom the U.S. government’s campaign to suppress Ameri-can Indian culture during the nineteenth and early twen-tieth centuries.)

10. Discuss winter counts as primary sources.a. Whose perspective is represented in the win-

ter counts? Who is the author?b. What traditional sources could the students

consult for additional information about the Lakota? Whois the author or authors?

c. What other types of primary sources couldthe students reference for information on nineteenthcentury U.S. history? Whose perspective do these sourcesrepresent?

d. Whose version of events is true? Can historybe recounted through only one perspective?

Homework AssignmentHave students write an essay outlining (1) the history ofthe Lakota based on what they learned from the wintercounts; (2) the history of the Lakota based on what theylearned from their textbooks and other secondarysources; and (3) an evaluation of how the two historiesrelate and where the student would go to research thetopic further.

Teacher NotesRefer to historical and cultural content on LakotaWinter Count Web site (http://wintercounts.si.edu).

Evaluation ToolsStudents will be evaluated on:1. Data collection methods (the research questions).2. Class participation and group discussion.3. Assigned essay’s ability to reflect the student’s under-standing of historical research.

Anh-Thu Cunnion is a research associate with Randi Korn andAssociates, Inc. and former museum education intern with the An-thropology Department, National Museum of Natural History.


ETHIOPIA ARISEN: DISCOVERING RASTAFARIby John P. Homiak

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[Editor’s Note: Anthropologist John Homiak has spentover 25 years conducting research on Rastafari commu-nities in Jamaica, the smaller islands of the Eastern Car-ibbean, South Africa, Panama, the United States, andEthiopia. The themes he addresses in this article will bethe focus of the first in-depth exhibit on the Rastafari atthe National Museum of Natural History, anticipated toopen summer 2007. Discovering Rastafari!, co-curated byHomiak and Ella-Maria Ray of the Denver Museum ofNature & Science, will provide an opportunity to givevoice to those architects of Rastafari culture who havesustained its vision of “equal rights and justice” for over70 years. Homiak’s long-term involvement with the RastaMovement has shaped an extraordinary level of accep-tance of his work among the Rastafari who are well-known for the guarded approach they take toward re-searchers. Today Rastafari born in Jamaica and elsewherein the Caribbean, as well as in England and NorthAmerica, reside in far-flung Rastafari communities inEthiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Malawi, Benin,Senegal, and Ghana, among other nations.]

The Ritual PilgrimageAnother annual cycle has passed. It is again Maskaram—Ethio-pian new year—a time of celebration and renewal throughout thecountryside. In observance of the occasion, two hundred or so pil-grims have already gathered at an appointed site where they areoffering praises to the Lord composed upon the ‘harps of David.’They are assembled within a specially prepared tabernacle abovewhich flies the Ethiopian flag emblazoned with the Lion of Judah.Framed by a rising moon, the structure is indistinguishable fromhundreds of rough-clad churches that punctuate the Ethiopianhighlands.

Stragglers continue to trickle-in, funneling down the coun-try road by every available means of conveyance—on foot, by truck,car, bicycle and even donkey. One venerable pilgrim, Ras Daniel,appears shortly after my own arrival. Barefoot, wielding a prophet’srod and adorned in the long flowing ‘robes of Solomon’, he is animposing presence. Striking directly for the center of the taber-nacle, the patriarch takes his place next to an assembly of ten or sodrummers. There he quickly assumes the lead role, directing the

chants and exhorting his cohorts as they play a steady heartbeatrhythm that pulsates hypnotically into the night.

Guided by this small group of ritual adepts, the assembledcongregation proceeds to explore the spiritual possibilities of a simplerepetitive chant. In the resting beats between the choral lines, Danielpunctuates the performance with short phrases in Amharic (lan-guage of the dominate Ethiopian ethnic group)—“Satta amasaganala amlak Anbessa Heuda.” As the chants go up, clouds of ‘in-cense’ drift skyward and envelope an opaque tapestry of red-gold-and-green and Judeo-Christian symbols that forms the backstageof the tabernacle. Behind this structure, two priests go about theirduties. Their crowned heads, backlit by the ceremonial fire, appearas shadows alternately surreal and gorgon-like. Unexpectedly, theprevailing mood of solemnity is broken as one of the priests driveshis staff into the core of the ceremonial fire sending a stream ofembers and pyrotechnics into the night sky. The assembly respondswith a spontaneous chorus of enthusiastic rolling ululations.

To the uninitiated, this scene might appear as an ancientritual fitting Ethiopia’s status as the only nation on theAfrican continent never to have been colonized. Thegathering described above, however, did not take placein the Ethiopian highlands—but on the island of Jamaicaat a rural site surrounded by cane fields near the villageof Hayes, Clarendon. I have attended thirty or more suchevents in Jamaica and elsewhere. The ceremony is aRastafari gathering known as a Nyahbinghi, a ritual pil-grimage lasting for seven days during which the faithfulgather to “praise Jah and chant down Babylon.” Jah issimply a praise name for His Imperial Majesty, EmperorHaile Selassie of Ethiopia—the historical figure whomRastafari brethren and sistren praise as their God andKing. ‘Babylon’ is their term of reference for the entireneocolonial power structure that enslaved, oppressed andmarginalized peoples of African descent over the past400 years.

The ‘harps of David’ are not actually biblicalharps, but the African-derived Nyahbinghi drums, andthe melodies are not psalms but evangelical Christianchants adapted to this African drumming style. The ‘in-cense’ rising around the tabernacle is neither frankin-


cense nor myrrh, but columns of smoke from the ritualganja pipes passed among male communicants. The ulu-lations of the congregation are not the high-pitched tonesassociated with the soundscapes of East Africa, but criesof ‘lightening,’ ‘earthquake,’ and ‘judgement’ hurled byRastas at the Babylonian world. And the ‘robes ofSolomon’ are not the flowing silk and gold garments ofthe Ethiopian Orthodox priesthood, but massivedreadlocks that cascade around and envelope the headand shoulders of Rastafari Elders who conduct the ritual.

Despite its hybrid and invented symbolic ele-ments, the Nyahbinghi ceremony is arguably the mostAfrican-oriented of Rastafari religious observances. De-rived from the name of a Central African anti-colonialsociety and interpreted as “death to black and white op-pressors,” the term Nyahbinghi entered the Jamaican vo-cabulary of protest in the early 1930s shortly after thebirth of the movement. Since that time, it has been awatchword symbolizing determined resistance to theEuropean colonial and neocolonial forces that are viewedthrough the prism of slavery, oppression and denigra-tion. As the Rastafari movement evolved within a cru-cible of containment in colonial Jamaica, an array of

nested meanings have become attached to the conceptof Nyahbinghi. Today, the term not only refers to the re-ligious rituals described above, but to the drums playedand chants sung at these events as well as to the loosely-knit organization (or “House” as it is termed) that spon-sors these events and the council of Elders associatedwith this organization.

In Jamaica and in most parts of the AnglophoneCaribbean, Nyahbinghi assemblies are typically island-wide events held six to seven times a year to commemo-rate important dates in a ritual calendar. Unlike reggaeconcerts and dances that are well-known expressions ofthe popular culture of Rastafari, these events are part ofa guarded ‘backstage’ that have long been significant tothe spiritual life of the Rastafari. Nyahbinghi gatheringsdo more than focus the worship of Emperor HaileSelassie, they periodically make communicants mindfulof their self-declared status as Africans-in-exile, manyof whom equate redemption with repatriation to Ethio-pia. Like all rituals, they also serve a host of subsidiarypurposes. They are an arena within which Elders—thoseesteemed for their ability to coin ideology—authenticatetheir charisma through inspired oratory. These rituals are

A rustic church in the Ethiopian highlands (left). Nyahbinghi tabernacle,Clarendon, Jamaica, 1988 (right).


also the context for observing the most austere formsof livity (i.e. spiritual way of life), and a periodic meansof establishing community. Finally, Nyahbinghi ritual isseen as a means to channel the forces of nature, thusserving as a ritual ‘weapon’ by which the Rastafari chas-tise backsliders and destroy the oppressors of blackpeople. Little known outside Jamaica until perhaps thelast two decades or so, these celebrations began to spreadto other parts of the Caribbean in the early 1980s largelythrough the impact of Elders who traveled as emissariesof the culture.

From ‘Yard’ to ‘Nation’: Rastafari GlobalizationThe House of Nyahbinghi is not the only expression ofRastafari culture and spirituality. Although organizedaround a common core of concepts and symbols, thecontemporary Rastafari movement is a large-scale socialphenomenon that encapsulates a broad range of ideo-logical and organizational diversity (Yawney & Homiak2003). At least two other main organizations within themovement orient the lifeways of specific Rastafari—one

known as the Ethiopian African Black InternationalCongress (or Boboshanti House) and the other theTwelve Tribes of Israel. Because of links betweenNyahbinghi House and the origins of the movement,however, the latter is most frequently acknowledged asrepresenting the revival core of Rastafari principles andspirituality.

A capsule history of the Nyahbinghi Housemight go something like this. In Jamaica, the aestheticand performative elements of Nyahbinghi ceremoniesevolved during the ‘yard’ and camp period of Rastafariin the legendary shanty towns of Kingston from the late1940s through the 1960s. This was a period of wide-spread internal rural-to-urban migration that saw tensof thousands of Jamaicans, many of them young malesfrom the Jamaican countryside (like Bob Marley and Pe-ter Tosh), swell the ranks of the black poor in theKingston ghettoes. During these decades, the Rastafariwere generally harassed and disparaged by members ofthe wider society. They also were routinely persecutedby the colonial authorities for claiming the right to useganja (cannabis) as a basis of their worship and for theirpractice of wearing dreadlocks to publicly declare an Af-rican identity. A network of urban and rural yards (unitsof residence) became their haven. During these years,the Rastafari collectively agitated for repatriation to Af-rica—some seeing this as a divinely inspired event andother insisting that it was the responsibility of the colo-nial government to ensure their return to the continent.

Ras Bigga with ritualganja pipe, 1985.

Repatriated Elders in the Rasta tabernacle inShashemane, Ethiopia.


“Those who took us out of Africa are the same oneswho must return us,” many declared. Tensions betweenthe movement and the wider society were exacerbatedby these demands as well as associated cries for socialjustice.

By the late 1960s, elements of the Rastafari mes-sage came to play a major role in the fledgling Jamaicanmusic industry that gave rise to a new music called“reggae.” Due largely to Rastafari-inspired reggae dur-ing the early 1970s, the movement began to spread else-where in the Caribbean. At the same time, the interna-tional popularity of the music and its principal expounder,Bob Marley, resulted in widespread co-optation of thesymbols and message of the Rastafari by Jamaica’s twopolitical parties. These developments transformedNyahbinghi celebrations into a site of political struggleover both the definition of Rastafari identity and the goalsof the movement. Nyahbinghi ceremonies became in-creasingly important as the ritual context within whichRastafari re-affirmed their African-Ethiopian identity,their symbolic separation from the wider society, and theiruncompromising demands for repatriation to Ethiopia.

During the 1970s, reggae music and its principal‘messen-Jahs’ inspired thousands of individuals to em-brace a Rastafari identity throughout the Afro-Atlanticworld. This was followed in the early 1980s by delega-tions of Nyahbinhgi Elders who began to travel toRastafari communities both inside and outside the Car-ibbean for the express purpose of formalizing the prac-tice of Rastafari livity (i.e., spiritual way of life). Individu-als of the generation of Elders who helped socialize Bob

Marley became part of a transnational culture linkingRastafari in North American and European cities likeNew York, Toronto, Miami, and London with Rastafaricommunities across the Carribean, as well as emergentRastafari communities on the African continent in Ghana,Benin, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. The resultis that the Rastafari now think of themselves as a nationor transnation, a far flung imagined community that isglobal in scope. It is increasingly in terms of the symbolsand protocols of the Nyahbinghi ritual through whichmembers of this geographically dispersed ‘community’imagine themselves bound in mutual communion. At theNyahbinghi ceremony described on page 1, one of thewell-traveled Elders in attendance addressed the congre-gation asserting his understanding of Rastafari as atransnational community:

Rastafari procession in Shashemane,Ethiopia, July23, 2002.

Beloved bredrin and sistrin, the great thing aboutIyahbingh (Nyahbinghi) is that as I-nI (we) celebratehere this light (night), Nyahbinghi is being celebrated in

Artwork proclaiming repatriation to Ethiopia. Rastafari oftenspeak of Marcus Garvey’s Black Star shipping line as theirmeans of return to Africa.


St. Lucia, in Grenada, in Antiqua, in Jamaica, inShashemene (Ethiopia), in Cape Town, in London,and all over the earth…through the power of HisMajesty Emperor Haile Selassie I.

Ethiopia Arisen: Preludes to Rastafari and theBlack TransnationAsk the average person on the street what they knowabout Rastafari, and they are likely to say “Bob Marleyand reggae.” Most are aware that Rastafarians are wellknown for wearing dreadlocks and smoking ganja (can-nabis) but they are likely to know little about the mean-ings of these practices in Rastafari religious belief. Out-siders would certainly be unaware of the fact that theherb marijuana (ganja) is considered sacred, that it isconsumed communally in a ritual pipe known as a chal-ice, or that many Jamaican Rastafari refer to well devel-oped locks and to the most potent forms of ganja by thesame term—kali (a Hindi word appropriated from EastIndian indentured laborers that came to Jamaica follow-ing Emancipation.) Few are aware that Rastafari is fardeeper and older than Bob Marley and reggae music.And even in Jamaica—where Rastafari emerged—the vastmajority of Jamaicans themselves have little to no ideaabout the role that Jamaican Elders have played in spread-ing Rastafari culture over the past 25 years. Nor are theylikely to understand the complex interplay that existsbetween the popular culture and orthodox expressionsof Rastafari as these have been disseminated globally.

Perhaps it is not surprising that a once-despisedmovement of social outcasts in the slums of a BritishCrown colony has become a world-wide movement or-ganized around issues of social and racial justice. As thedescendants of slaves in Jamaica, the Rastafari are partof the violent history of plantation slavery and its linksto the origins of modern capitalism and the spread ofEuropean Christianity. Jamaican history, in particular,resulted in more slave rebellions than anywhere else inthe Caribbean. At the same time, resistance to Europeancontrol in Jamaica from the eighteenth century onwardhas been expressed primarily in religious terms. But mostoutsiders to Rastafari are still perplexed by the connec-tion between the descendants of slaves in Jamaica andthe last Emperor of Ethiopia and the land he ruled: “WhyHaile Selassie?” and “Why Ethiopia?” many ask.

Caribbean Societies ExaminedThe answer to these queries—as to most questions aboutthe Rastafari movement—is best explored in thinkingabout Jamaica and other Caribbean societies as artifactsof modernity. These post-plantation societies are notmerely linked with European expansionism, they havelong been strategically positioned between the influencesof North America and Europe on the one hand, andAfrica on the other. Caribbean societies are ones in whichquestions of identity, as well as conceptions of socialjustice and a moral order, have long been tied to the legacyof plantation slavery and to the tragic history of exploi-tation of peoples of African descent.

So why Ethiopia? The overwhelming majorityof peoples of African descent in Jamaica came from Westand Central Africa and many of the cultural elementswoven into Rastafari culture reflect these connections.The answer to “why Ethiopia?” traces to English colo-nies in North America and to Christianity as it was in-terpreted by African American Christians as far back asat the eighteenth century. It was in the American colo-nies, after all, that a small group of educated black Chris-tian converts—including figures like Phyllis Wheatley andPrince Hall—identified themselves with references toEthiopians in the Holy Bible (Exodus 18:22-24; Psalms68:32). Also in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,literary and cartographic practices frequently referred tothe entire African continent as “Ethiopia.” English set-tlers applied the term to Africans upon their arrival inthe New World, a practice that was similarly adopted byAfricans themselves (Scott 1993: 14). Over time,Ethiopianism emerged with powerful redemptive asso-ciations. References in the Bible that depicted blacks in adignified and human light were particularly valued, themost frequently cited of these being Psalm 63: 31: “Princesshall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall soon stretchout her hands unto God.” These references to racial na-tionhood first reached Jamaica in the aftermath of theAmerican Revolution as British loyalists left the NorthAmerican colonies with their slaves for England’s Carib-bean possessions. In 1784, a black preacher from Savanna,Georgia, by the name of George Liele, started the firstEthiopian African Baptist church in Kingston, Jamaica.Then, in March of 1896, reports circulated in the worldpress that drew the worldwide attention of black peopleto the modern country of Ethiopia, the only free and


Marcus Garvey in ritualattire during a UNIAparade.

sovereign nation on the African continent. Forces of theEthiopian Emperor Menelik II had defeated a large in-vading army of Italians at Adwa in the Abyssinian high-lands and thwarted Europeans in their attempt to extin-guish the final symbol of African freedom.

Marcus Garvey’s ImpactThe Ethiopian victory at Adwa not only inspired a con-tinent of Africans under the yoke of colonialism, it mo-bilized millions of Diasporic blacks in their own localstruggles, especially in the Caribbean. Menelik’s victoryover an invading European power crystallized a new iden-tification among Afro-Americans and Afro-West Indi-ans with the actual country of Ethiopia such that virtu-ally all Pan-Africanists of the day—from Albert Thorneand Edward Wilmot Blyden to W.E.B. Dubois and Ja-maican-born Marcus Garvey—drew prominently uponEthiopianist rhetoric in their writings and public speak-ing.

It was in association with Garvey’s United Ne-gro Improvement Association (UNIA)—the largest blackmovement in history and one that spanned four conti-nents—that Ethiopianism acquired the trappings of ritualnationhood. The Garvey movement, which reached itsheight in Harlem during the 1920s, was characterized byflorid oratory, rituals, and pageantry, all organized aroundthe motif of nationhood. This included a constitution, alist of officers (including Garvey as the Provisional Presi-dent of Africa), ministers, titles, and agencies assignedto perform quasi-governmental tasks. His functions andparades featured UNIA members in variegated militaryuniforms with swords, helmets, and plumed hats. Garveydrew prominently upon both religious and back-to-Af-rica themes with Ethiopianist associations. It was Garveywho argued for a unified religious faith for all black peopleand who encouraged his followers to view God in theirown image—“through the spectacles of an Ethiopian.”

Two events in the early 1930s transformed theseprecedents into the socioreligious movement that wouldbecome Rastafari. The first of these was the crowningof a young Ethiopian nobleman, Ras Tafari Makonnen,as Emperor Haile Selassie, monarch of Ethiopia, an eventattended by representatives of the European powers andwidely reported in the world press. The other wasMussolini’s invasion in late 1935 of Ethiopia (a nomi-nally Christian country from the fourth century). Most

accounts of the Jamaican genesis of Rastafari point tothe relationship between the biblical literacy of the massesof Jamaicans and a few black preachers who submittedthe events of the coronation and the Italian-EthiopianWar to biblical interpretation. Like Ethiopian monarchsbefore him, Ras Tafari claimed descent from the biblicalunion of Solomon and Sheba and assumed the titles inthe Holy Bible reserved for the Second Coming of Christ.

The preaching of Emperor Selassie’s identity asthe Returned Christ converged with a militant form ofAfro-Christian Revivalism that had already come to becast in racial terms. This, in fact, grew out of the collec-tive experience of tens of thousands of Jamaicans who—from the last quarter of the nineteenth century throughthe first decades of the twentieth century—had beendrawn up in the cycles of labor migration throughoutthe wider Caribbean Basin and North America. Theseitinerant Jamaicans had gained a new perspective on theplace of black people in the world order—one that placedthem at the bottom and one in which they routinely suf-fered racial prejudice and insult. It was within this con-text that not only Garveyism, but a series of proto-Rastafari preachers (and their published pamphlets andtracts) gained currency as they circulated throughout theAfro-Atlantic world, from Colon, Panama to Kimberley,South Africa.

Equally important, and largely overlooked intreatments of the movement’s origins, was the nature ofnews reportage and the associated visual media relatedto the spectacle of Haile Selassie’s ascension to theThrone of David in Addis Ababa on November 2, 1930.


Virtually all of the European colonial powers as well asthe United States and Japan sent representatives to thecoronation where they paid honor to the world’s onlysovereign African ruler. American and European filmcompanies were there to record the event, and EmperorSelassie ultimately appeared on the covers of all of themajor European illustrated news publications in full coro-nation regalia. The press, in fact, objectified for Africanpeoples the sight of European nobility bowing to anAfrican counterpart whose own symbols of authority(crown, scepter, robes) were familiar (i.e., European inform). The National Geographic magazine (January 1931)ran a full 60-page spread on the coronation.

What evolved from this combination of textsand visual media was a re-ordered Christian cosmologythat interpreted the collective experiences of African-Jamaicans. This was a cosmology shaped by an opposi-tion between the domains of Zion and Babylon—bothof which are seen to entail an alliance between church-and-state—holy and unholy, respectively. Zion (Ethio-pia/Africa), identified with the theocratic state ruled by

Emperor Selassie, is regarded as a sacred and inviolatedomain. By contrast, Babylon (Europe/America) is iden-tified as the corrupt neocolonial and imperialist spheresustained in its spiritual and temporal dimensions throughan unholy alliance between church-and-state. Just asSelassie is the living and incarnate God of Zion, so thePope of Rome is seen as the embodiment of the Anti-Christ and ruler of Babylon (see Homiak 1987; 1999).

The Challenges to Representing Rasta-Far-Eye inthe Twenty-First Century

Working with and moving amongst Rastafari is not forthe faint of heart. Within the interpretive community ofspeakers that constitutes the movement, there is a gener-alized understanding that “every tub haffa siddong ‘pon itsown bottom” (i.e., that each individual stands to be judgedon his own words and deeds). Rastafari apply this prin-ciple to themselves as well as to outsiders and especiallyto researchers to whom they have always taken a guardedapproach irrespective of their race, color, or class. Suf-fice it to note here that I was fortunate to work withElders who had seen and heard both Marcus Garveyand the founders of the movement preach in the 1930sand 1940s. In their generous spirit, these Elders providedme with the cultural competency to ‘move amongst’ otherRastafari brethren and sistren.

It is notable that there has never been a singleindividual in the history of the movement authorized tospeak on behalf of the Rastafari as a whole. With a fewnotable exceptions, Rastafari has remained a diffuse, de-centralized movement structured in terms of egalitarianprinciples. Within the House of Nyahbinghi, for example,it remains the case that male adherents assert their ownindividual prophetic ‘commissions’ based on the personalvisionary relationship that each claims with Jah Rastafari.This relationship is expressed in manifold ways. The mostcommon is through the use of Rastafari speech and theterm I-n-I. The Rastafari use this term rather than thephrase “you-and-me” to express their understanding ofall communicants as a single spiritual corporate body.But the phrase also expresses the spiritual and mysticinter-dwelling of God-in-man as well as the individualityof each communicant (Homiak 1987). This gives rise toa broad range of contending voices, ones that in anygiven situation call into question who speaks for Rastafariand with what authority. And herein rests one of the

Emperor Haile Selassie on white charger (see Revelation16). This image circulated during the Italian-Ethiopian warand has become enmeshed in the visual culture of Rastafari.


most significant challenges to representing Rastafariwhether in publications or exhibition form.

In its contemporary global context, the Rastafari‘nation’ (its egalitarian ethos notwithstanding) is hetero-geneous not only in terms of race and gender, but interms of class, ideological orientations, ethnicity andnational boundaries (if not national origins). Althoughthe Rastafari movement developed as a response to thedominant white European colonial order, it is now thecase that asymmetries of power exist within the ranks ofthe Rastafari themselves that tend to shape the workingsof authority within local and global spheres of influ-ence. Since the mid-1980s, the international Rastafaricommunity has evolved its own emerging intelligentsia.The global or transnational context in which the move-ment operates is one in which some individuals are in-creasingly free to travel and speak on behalf of the move-ment while others remain ‘yard bound.’ It is also the casethat Jamaican Rastafari, based on the claim that Jamaicais the birthplace of the movement, frequently mountsomething of a rear guard action in asserting their placeas ‘first among equals’ relative to Rastafari elsewhere.Surprisingly, none of these internal factors have beenthe subject of critical scholarship to date (see, however,Homiak 2005).

All of these factors—related to what one mightcall the positioning of ‘the voice’—constitute major chal-lenges to mounting an exhibit on Rastafari in the twenty-first century. Because Rastafari (wherever they may be)have experienced oppressive treatment from the state,their contending voices also raise challenges about howto adequately cover the enormous sacrifice and strugglethat has been part of the collective Rastafari experience.Nearly all of the Elders I have known over the yearshave served prison and jail terms (mostly for marijuanapossession) and have had to find ways to support them-selves and their families outside the framework of theformal economy. But there is a danger in representingthis only as “the Jamaican” experience. Rastafari in theEastern Caribbean have suffered equally. In Grenada, itis little known that many of the first members of theNew Jewel Movement, which brought Maurice Bishopto power, were Rastafari and were subsequently harassedand killed by those who ousted Bishop. Similarly, inDominica, those who wore dreadlocks were—under alaw called the “Dread Act”—subject to being shot on

sight during the 1970s. Similar testimony of persecutionand sacrifice exists for South Africa. Beyond that, thereare challenges to incorporating the voices and story ofRastafari women who, in a movement with strong patri-archal values, have traditionally had a low profile. Finally,there is the challenge of striking a balance in giving voiceto the varied ‘Houses’ within the movement, each withits own somewhat distinctive ideology and forms of so-cial practice.

Conclusion: ‘Half the Story has Never Been Told’Rastafari has long been a maligned and poorly under-stood movement. The Rastafari themselves are fond ofpointing out that “No one knows how Rastafari has sur-vived—I-n-I are here today against all odds.” The an-swer they assert is in “the half of the story that has neverbeen told.” From an intellectual perspective, various ques-tions arise. How is it that a movement whose first preach-ers were all sent either to the mental asylum or impris-oned for sedition has now become woven into the fabricof Jamaican life and Jamaican nationalism? How is it thata movement without any formal positions of authorityor any formal organizational structures has managed tospread not only throughout the Caribbean, but aroundthe world? What actually serves to constitute culture andcommunity among such a far-flung and differentiatedgroup of communicants? How does a movement thatbegan among peoples of African descent, and, which isorganized around African symbols, incorporate and ac-commodate people of different races—including thosehistorically associated with their white oppressors? And,for that matter, how do Rastafari construct their notionsof race? The answer to these and other questions is notmerely of interest to understanding Rastafari but hasrelevance to contemporary issues in anthropology asso-ciated with concepts of diaspora, globalization, culturalhybridity, and concepts of place and belonging.

For Further ReadingCarnegie, Charles. 1999. Garvey and the Black Transnation. SmallAxe 5: 48-71.

Post, Ken. 1970. The Bible as Ideology: Ethiopianism in Jamaica,1930-1938. In Christopher Allen and R.W. Johnson, eds., AfricanPerspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(continued)


Jake Homiak is director of the Collections andArchives Program, Department of Anthropology,National Museum of Natural History.

Jake Homiak (center) with Nyahbinghi Elders Ras Irie Ions(left) and Bongo Shephan at the First Rastafari HispanicSummit, Panama City, Panama.

Homiak, John P. 2005. Understanding a Modern Antique: Chal-lenges to Representing Rastafari in theTwenty-First Century. New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-IndischeGids 79 (nos. 1&2): 79-90.

________. 1999. Movements of Jah People: from soundscapeto mediascape. In John Pulis, ed., Religion, Diaspora and CulturalIdentity: A Reader in the Anglophone Caribbean. Gordon & BreachPublishers.

________. 1987. The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari: VisionaryCommunication in a Prophetic Movement. In Barbara Tedlock,ed., Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Approaches. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Yawney, Carole D., and John P. Homiak. 2001. “Rastafari” and“Rastafari in Global Context” [with Carole D. Yawney]. In StephenD. Glazier, ed., The Encyclopedia of African and African AmericanReligions. New York: Routledge.

________. 1995. Tell Out King Rastafari Doctrine Around theWhole World: Rastafari in Global Perspective. In A. Ruprechtand C. Taiana, eds., The Reordering of Culture: Latin America, theCaribbean and Canada. Ottawa: Carleton University Press.

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