Word: animists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...whose well-meant meddling provoked a long-ago international incident. The journalist's unveiling of how colonist and native took advantage of peculiarities in the other's mental makeup provides the revelatory pleasures of a mystery. Dickinson also manages to evoke the evolution of feminism, the modern Islamization of animist tribes, the rise of media hegemony and the fall of the British empire. His descriptions are extraordinarily vivid, his characters plausibly selfish and self-deluding, and his climax is an obliquely told yet unforgettable moment of horror...
...renegade army colonel, the insurgents now control much of the southern half of the country, where the government last week was forced to postpone indefinitely voting in 37 of the 68 constituencies in the region. The rebels claim that the mainly Muslim and Arab north discriminates against the predominantly animist and Christian blacks in the south, and have vowed to keep fighting, whoever wins the election...
...group that has faced an especially difficult shakeout period is the Hmong hill tribe of Laos, many of whose members were recruited by the CIA to fight Communist forces. An agrarian people with an animist faith and a language that had no written form until 30 years ago, many Hmong were simply overwhelmed by their new circumstances. In Philadelphia, where some 2,000 were unwisely placed in inner-city neighborhoods by resettlement officials, all but about 400 have scattered to other locations after falling frequent victim to street crime. In Minnesota's Ramsey County, where some 8,000 Hmong took...
...leadership easily quell the 10,000 guerrillas of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army who have gained ground over the past two years throughout the southern third of the country. The insurgents, representing the predominantly animist and Christian blacks of the south against the predominantly Muslim and Arab north, have cut off all but air links between the two parts of the country. Suwar al Dahab promptly sent a message to the rebels' chieftain, former army Colonel John Garang, suggesting that he was ready for talks. By the time he did, however, Garang, who has a Ph.D. in economics from...
...sensitivity toward local cultures has led even conservative Protestants to treat tribal religion with respect. Missionaries try to banish belief in, and fear of, evil spirits; yet they also plumb the animist religions for concepts of eternal life or of a remote "high god" or primordial creator that might be used to inspire belief in the one God of the Bible. After all, the missionaries point out, Christmas was originally a pagan rite that ancient preachers turned to good advantage...