The Mursi Encountering the Other: mediating representation, research and influence

穆尔西领导的联盟将在其社区、邻国和外部世界之间建立更好的关系和政治进程。像大多数土著少数民族一样，他们与外来者的接触大多是痛苦的，而且往往是暴力的。穆尔西人是一个由大约11000至12000名农牧民组成的社区，居住在埃塞俄比亚西南部的下奥莫山谷。他们以唇板和棍棒决斗而闻名，从他们的角度来看，外人攻击他们，偷走他们的土地，破坏他们的环境，并鄙视他们，而他们的决斗主要是和平解决争端的机制。他们有盟友，但迄今为止，促进他们的权利，改善与当地政府和邻近团体关系的努力一直受到阻挠。这个由穆尔西、埃塞俄比亚和英国学者和电影制片人组成的联盟将研究穆尔西/其他人的新的代表形式，并了解利用艺术影响埃塞俄比亚决策者的过程。这一举措建立在穆尔西最近在与外部世界沟通方面取得的非凡成功的基础上。2022年7月31日，穆尔西及其盟友在阿迪斯国家剧院举行了多媒体戏剧表演，并在国家电视台播出，首次引起了全国对其政治和经济状况的关注。这奠定了基础，使与埃塞俄比亚政府的对话比过去更有可能。我们的方针是：（a）通过重视穆尔西的专业知识来颠覆知识的等级制度，（B）确保穆尔西是赠款和宣传的关键决策者，（c）假设欧洲人参与支持而不是控制，（d）渴望最高质量的研究，创造性的方法和学术成果，（e）与邻近团体，国际机构和外国政府建立新的联盟。目标是：1.研究和出版穆尔西领导的土著和非土著研究人员和创意艺术家联盟的合作和政策影响; 2.使穆尔西社区能够研究和反思什么可行，什么不可行，对谁有效，为什么有效; 3.扩大和研究穆尔西的运动，教育决策者了解他们的生活方式、挑战和发展愿望。该联盟将与邻近的牧民团体、牧民网络和国家非政府组织、埃塞俄比亚政府官员和政治家以及纽约、华盛顿、伦敦和布鲁塞尔的决策者进行接触。我们将制作一本编辑好的书、两篇期刊文章、一个网络研讨会系列和三部纪录短片，在伦敦和纽约的一个大型展览和会议上放映，以庆祝2026年联合国国际牧场和牧民年。这项研究的创新要素包括从使用电影和戏剧来教育世界了解穆尔西，到将其与更广泛的合作战略和网络相结合，以产生有说服力的证据，说服政策制定者全面和更慷慨地实施其畜牧业政策。这一项目的富有想象力的基础不是技术或方法上的创新，而是更有创造性和更公平的伙伴关系。无论是与邻近的博迪集团（Bodi group）合作创作音乐，还是说服欧洲议会议员和联合国官员与埃塞俄比亚政府进行外交，联盟都是我们研究设计的核心。我们使这一联盟取得成功的集体能力取决于所涉机构--穆尔西社区、南奥莫戏剧公司、阿迪斯大学和平与安全研究所和SOAS大学--之间建立的良好伙伴关系，以及领导研究和创造性联盟的核心团队的业绩记录。

A Mursi-led coalition will create better relationships and political processes between their community, their neighbours and the outside world. Like most indigenous minorities, their encounters with outsiders have been mostly painful and often violent. The Mursi are a community of around 11-12,000 agro-pastoralists living in the Lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Famous for their lip-plates and stick duelling, from their perspective outsiders attack them, steal their land, damage their environment and film them with disdain, while their duelling is mainly a mechanism for peaceful dispute resolution. They have had allies but to date attempts to promote their rights, and improve relationships with local government and neighbouring groups, have been thwarted. This coalition of Mursi, Ethiopian and UK scholars and filmmakers will research new forms of representation of and by the Mursi/the Other and learn about the process of using arts to influence policymakers in Ethiopia. This initiative builds on the Mursi's extraordinary recent success at communicating with the outside world. By putting on a multi-media theatrical performance at the National Theatre of Addis Ababa on 31 July 2022, also broadcast on national TV, the Mursi and allies drew national attention to their political and economic situation for the first time. This has laid the foundation from which dialogue with the Ethiopian government becomes more possible than it has been in the past. Our approach will be to: (a) subvert hierarchies of knowledge by valuing Mursi expertise, (b) ensure the Mursi are the key decision-makers in grant-making and advocacy, (c) assume that the Europeans participating support rather than control, (d) aspire to the highest quality research, creative methodologies and scholarly outputs, (e) create new alliances with neighbouring groups, international agencies and foreign governments. The objectives are: 1.To research and publish about collaboration and policy-influencing by a Mursi-led coalition of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers and creative artists; 2. To enable the Mursi community to research and reflect on what works and what doesn't, for whom and why; 3.To scale-up and research the Mursi's campaign to educate policy-makers about their way of life, challenges and development aspirations. The coalition will engage with neighbouring pastoralist groups, pastoralist networks and national NGOs, government officials and politicians in Ethiopia, and policymakers in New York, Washington, London and Brussels. We will produce an edited volume, two journal article, a webinar series, and three short documentary films to be shown at a major exhibition and conference in London as well as in New York, in celebration of the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026. The innovative elements in this research involve scaling up from the use of film and theatre to educate the world about the Mursi, to combining this with a broader range of collaborative strategies and networks to generate persuasive evidence with which to persuade policymakers to implement their policies on pastoralism in full and with more generosity. Rather than technical or methodological innovation, more creative and more equitable partnership are the imaginative foundation of this project. Whether creating music with the neighbouring Bodi group, with whom relations have been conflictual in the past, or persuading the European Parliament's MEPs and UN officials to engage in diplomacy with the Ethiopian government, alliances are central to our research design. Our collective capacity for making this coalition successful rests on well-established partnerships between the institutions involved - the Mursi community, South Omo Theatre Company, the Institute of Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University and SOAS University - and the track record of the core team to lead research and creative coalitions.