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.