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Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota (Part of the New Immigrants Series)

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For years the Twin Cities area has been home to a surprising number of African refugees fleeing some of the world's most brutal conflicts. In the 1980s it was Ethiopians and Eritreans; in the 1990s Somalis and Sudanese joined them. Walk down any street in South Minneapolis on a warm day and you're likely to see dozens of women wearing distinctive Somali garb. Tens of thousands such people now inhabit the Twin Cities. Why are they there? How did they make the long and difficult journey? How are they adapting to life in the United States?

Anthropologist Jon Holtzman helps provide some of the answers with respect to one particular group. Minnesota's Nuer population is a tiny component of this larger group--Holtzman estimates that there were only 400 or so at the time of his study, and many have since moved on to new locations outside the state. But given the importance of the Nuer in the development of the field of anthropology (through E. Evans-Pritchard's seminal fieldwork among them), this group was a natural choice for Holtzman's attentions.

The text first provides historical background to the Sudanese civil war and the conditions that forced many Nuer to flee, first to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and eventually to the U.S. Its second section deals with the initial establishment of the Nuer population in Minnesota, and notably with the mundane but all-important realities of work, education, social services, and car payments as experienced by these newcomers. Next, Holtzman focuses on changing family dynamics and gender roles. He concludes with a section on responses to the Nuer within the wider American-born population of the Twin Cities. Throughout, his writing is extremely straightforward and his descriptions are crystal clear.

"Nuer Journeys" is strongest when it contrasts Nuer people's present first-world social environments with their previous lives in East Africa; the author shows how the refugees constantly struggle to adjust to and make sense of their new home. Their dependence on state and local social services--welfare and health care--frequently causes them stress; when they work, however, they are faced with a new and equally daunting set of challenges. The sections dealing with acquiring, operating, and paying for motor vehicles is especially revealing. ("A car is a bad cow," he quotes one of his subjects as saying: this remark must be interpreted in the cultural context of the Nuer, who traditionally have valued cattle above all else.) Holtzman presents the difficulties and absurdities of his subjects' hybrid existence with insight and compassion.

Unlike most anthropological studies today, "Nuer Journeys" contains very little theoretical discussion or reference to social thought. Holtzman's list of sources is relatively short, and consists largely of other ethnographies, as well as more prosaic documents on refugee resettlement, employment patterns, and auto accident rates. Consequently, the book reads more like an old-fashioned ethnography of half a century ago than like modern anthropology. This is fine with me, and while I would have liked to see Holtzman bring in "the big picture" a little more often, I applaud his simple and direct approach in crafting this study. He includes just enough personal anecdotes to allow a bit of himself and his own connection to the Nuer to show through the text.

Sorry for the atrocious pun, but I'm hoping to entice people to consider this insightful and concise (134 pages) examination of the way immigration to America really works in our day and age. I picked the book up because I have family connections to Minneapolis, but the situation of the Nuer is very comparable to that of other immigrants to other American cities.

The Nuer are pastoralists from southern Sudan. Their language is Nilotic and they are closely related to the Dinka. As the second largest ethnic group in their region, they number at least a million people. The Nuer are probably better known to most students of anthropology than any other ethnic group in Africa, due to the very influential studies of them by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, beginning with field work in the 1930s and continuing into the 1950s. Africa has changed dramatically and often violently since those years, but Nuer life at home has maintained many constants, including poverty and a daily routine of cultivation and animal husbandry. Evans-Pritchard described a culture in which cattle were the center of most social interactions and of self-recognition. Needless to say, the Nuer who have fled the Sudan and landed in Minneapolis have not been able to bring their cattle, and thsu their culture, along.

At the time of Jon Holtzman's study, "several hundred" Nuer families were living in Minnesota, with others scattered in various cities of the USA. Since kinship networks were not and could not be transferred to America, most of the Nuer are essentially strangers to each other, and a tight, isolated, self-sufficient community has not developed. Rather, most Nuer have found themselves in a situation of anomie, with most of their focus on material survival. Unlike some immigrant groups, the Nuer did not leave much behind in terms of material goods. In the Sudan, their material possessions were minimal and utilitarian, aside from cattle. Hence, in Minneapolis, they have readily accepted the clothing and furniture and material accoutrements of the American Way, though chiefly in second-hand and shabby forms.

"Gender, Generation, and Family Change" is the title of chapter five of Holtzman's study. The title almost tells the story, and its the familiar story of crises inside the immigrant's most precious alliance, his own family. In their Sudanese homeland, Holtzman writes, "children and adults tend to operate in very different spheres." This pattern has continued in America. While small children spend MORE time indoors with their parents here than in Africa, Nuer parents are uncomfortable with American notions of adult supervision and discipline. Most of the Nuer who came to America were themselves quite young, so at the time of Holtzman's writing, there were few teenagers, most of the kids were small, and education in American terms was just beginning to become an issue. Already, I suspect, much has changed. There has been a dispersal of Nuer families from Minneapolis to less costly living places, small children have become American teenagers, and, as invariably occurs, further immigration has followed the familial grooves cut by the earliest arrivals.

Holtzman spends a lot of his time describing the interactions of the Nuer with their hosts and neighbors, some unpleasant and edgy but many remarkably generous and tolerant. Familiar stuff, really, to any reader whose parents or grandparents were immigrants with stories to tell. Minnesota is a culture where churches serve not only individual but also communitarian needs, and Holtzamn describes the earnest efforts of various Christian denominations to include and inculcate the Nuer. It's mostly an admirable effort. Economic inclusion of the Nuer has been more problematic, even in the church context. Holtzman touchingly describes the efforts of one church to hold together a Nuer "congregation" by providing transportation; the effort collapsed when there just wasn't money in the coffers to purchase a van. Almost all Nuer have spent some time on public welfare, but fortunately for them, unskilled jobs are numerous in Minneapolis, especially in meat packing and other food processing industries. Thus employment is surprisingly high. And waht does a Nuer want first with his American paycheck? A car, of course! The car opens better employment opportunities, but it also provides self-esteem and status. The Nuer come to the automobile, however, with little experience and no mechanical training. The cheap used car they buy tend to break down fairly quickly in the harsh Minnesota climate, to the mystification of their owners. As one Nuer told Holtzman, "the car is a bad cow!"

What importance does Nuer immigration have for America at large? So far, the Nuer presence has been small, but their story is multiplied by the experiences of numerous other immigrant groups from lands dissimilar to the United States in every way. The Nuer have been lucky in meeting a generally positive and open response from the old immigrant stock of Minnesota. Immigration is a "hot button" throughout the United States, however. A tightly focused case study such as this can shed more light and less heat on the issue.

I usually hate text books but I loved this one! Keep it when your course is over or if you aren't even taking a class you HAVE to buy this book for, read it!

Holtzman, made a behavioral research on Nuer people, while designed his plot to analyse the Cultural viewpoint.

Reading this book does not only give you a broader insight of Nuer as a cultural community, but also an individual Nuer back the "prophtic" days of Ngundeng in the end of 19th Century Sudan. For many Nuers, this transformation meant lost of identity as to regard of ancestoral home, but also positively fulfilled one of Ngendengs predictions of the Better generation to come. Ngundeng was an enthusiast about the western technology, which was rejected by most Nuers elders then.

Nuer Journeys, Nuer lives also remines me of redressing issues considered to be of important cultural value in two different angles: The current cultural transformation in due to war in Sudan, and this strong, peaceful influence of American way of life. This book could also be used as a basis of peaceful cultural transformation v.s forceful coersion/assimilation in addressing the comparative advantages. The section refering to Nuer Refugees in American churches reflects an interesting Nuer cultural phenomena on how believes on freedom to worship and associate, which was not granted in the Religious governed Sudan.

Nuer culture is like a shrub which dies when transplanted, but endures when confined. This book explains Nuer culture being at odds with multiculturism, which means it takes a while for them to be transformed and transform Americans as well.

This is a piece of craft from Jon.

Peace,

Goi Yol