Rwanda Revisited

Rwanda
Gacaca Trial.
Photo by Scott Chacon. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

It has been twenty years since the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were killed in 90 days and thousands more wounded or displaced. This genocide should be remembered not just for the carnage that took place, not just for the failure of the world to provide General Romeo Dallaire, Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1993-1994, with the support he pleaded for (portrayed in “Shake hands with the devil”) and not just for the heroism of groups such as the Benebikira Sisters who refused to capitulate to the genocidal violence; it should also be remembered for the subsequent push for reconciliation led by the nation’s leader Paul Kagame.

To commemorate this genocide, the Co-Exist Learning Project Team created a documentary film that was shown on PBS the evening of April 16, 2014. This film addresses “Rwanda’s unprecedented social experiment in government-mandated reconciliation, through the stories of survivors. Can reconciliation and forgiveness be legislated?  The Coexist webpage has links for the New York Times review of the documentary and some useful teaching materials.

Another site, Insight on Conflict, has a brief but inspiring discussion of peace activities being conducted for the 20th anniversary of the genocide.

Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center,  suggests that Americans have a lot to learn from the Rwandan social experiment.

What do you think?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

A recipe for tolerance on Thanksgiving

What the first celebration of colonists and native people  symbolized more than anything else was the coming together in peace of people with different languages, different ethnicities, different cultures, and different religions.

U.S. Army soldiers eat Thanksgiving meal in Afghanistan, 2009
U.S. Army Soldiers eat their Thanksgiving meal on Combat Outpost Cherkatah, Khowst province, Afghanistan, Nov. 26, 2009. Photo in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons.

The Europeans were immigrants coming into a new land. It was the native peoples who helped assure their survival through the first winter, taught them much about farming, and celebrated with them their first successful crop.

Although George Washington issued the nation’s first proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving in 1789, it was not until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, spurred by activist Sara Josepha Hale, that the November celebration was established as an annual national holiday. Lincoln’s proclamation urged all Americans to pray for “all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” These are words to live by.

Today when the drumbeat of hatred and intolerance grows louder, fueling wars worldwide, please use this Thanksgiving  to set aside your own prejudices. With your family and friends, reflect on how a key moment in U.S. history epitomized the principles of acceptance, open-mindedness and peace.

To help you set the table for tolerance, check out the Recipe for Diversity and Teaching Tolerance. And for more information about the history of Thanksgiving as a U.S. national holiday, you might enjoy this video.

Then liven up your menus with some recipes rooted in our historical traditions:
Stewed Pompion (Pumpkin)
Sullabub (a parfait-like precursor to eggnog)

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
Pat Daniel, Managing Editor of Engaging Peace