CEREMONIELLE DIALOGISKE HILSNER BLANDT KUNA-INDIANERNE I PANAMA

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.