CEREMONIELLE DIALOGISKE HILSNER BLANDT KUNA-INDIANERNE I PANAMA

Abstract

Joel Sherzer: Ceremonial Dialogic
 Greetings among the Kuna Indians of
 Panama
 The Kuna Indians of Panama are the most
 northern group in Niels Fock’s comparative
 survey of ceremonial dialogue in lowland
 South America. Ceremonial dialogue is the
 form in which chiefs perform myth, history,
 and personal experience, in a chanted ritual
 and metaphorical language, to the Kuna
 community. Arkan kae, the ritual greeting
 between two chiefs from separate villages, is
 also performed in this way. The language of
 arkan kae, like the language of Kuna
 ceremonial dialogue more generally, is
 ritual, metaphorical, and poetic. With regard
 to content, arkan kae deals with the health of
 the chiefs and their villages, their travels,
 and their experiences. Arkan kae is the focus
 of this report, which includes a representative
 example. While not as ritually
 elaborated or structured, the arkan kae
 pattem of ceremonial dialogic greeting
 emerges between two friends or family
 members who have not seen one another for
 a long time, as they report and narrate to one
 another about their experiences during the
 period when they were separated. It should
 also be pointed out that the ceremonial
 dialogic model for speech, widespread in
 indigenous, oral societies in Latin America,
 is gradually but sometimes brutally
 becoming replaced with another model, with
 which it has long been in competition and
 conflict, the European derived, monologic
 and literate model.