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

穆尔西领导的联盟将在他们的社区、他们的邻国和外部世界之间创造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。穆尔西人是居住在埃塞俄比亚西南部下奥莫山谷的大约11-12,000名农牧民社区。他们以唇印和棍棒决斗而闻名，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，轻蔑地拍摄他们，而他们的决斗主要是一种和平解决争端的机制。他们有盟友，但到目前为止，促进他们权利、改善与当地政府和邻近团体关系的努力遭到了阻挠。这个由穆尔西、埃塞俄比亚和英国学者和电影制作人组成的联盟将研究穆尔西/他者的新表现形式，并了解利用艺术影响埃塞俄比亚政策制定者的过程。这一倡议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。通过2022年7月31日在亚的斯亚贝巴国家剧院举行的多媒体戏剧表演，穆尔西及其盟友首次提请全国注意他们的政治和经济状况，并在国家电视台上播出。这为与埃塞俄比亚政府的对话奠定了基础，使之比过去更有可能实现。我们的做法将是：(A)通过重视穆尔西人的专业知识来颠覆知识等级制度，(B)确保穆尔西人是赠款发放和宣传的关键决策者，(C)假定参与其中的欧洲人支持而不是控制，(D)渴望最高质量的研究、创造性方法和学术成果，(E)与邻近团体、国际机构和外国政府建立新的联盟。其目标是：1.研究和出版关于合作和政策--受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影响；2.使穆尔西社区能够研究和反思什么管用，什么不管用，对谁和为什么；3.扩大和研究穆尔西的运动，教育政策制定者他们的生活方式、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、埃塞俄比亚的政府官员和政客以及纽约、华盛顿、伦敦和布鲁塞尔的政策制定者接触。我们将制作一卷编辑本、两篇期刊文章、一系列网络研讨会和三部纪录片，在伦敦和纽约举行的庆祝2026年联合国国际牧民年的大型展览和会议上放映。这项研究的创新内容包括扩大使用电影和戏剧来教育世界了解穆尔西人，并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，以说服政策制定者以更慷慨的方式全面实施其牧业政策。这一项目富有想象力的基础不是技术或方法创新，而是更具创造性和更公平的伙伴关系。无论是与邻近的Bodi乐队创作音乐，还是说服欧洲议会的欧洲议会议员和联合国官员与埃塞俄比亚政府进行外交接触，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有关机构--穆尔西社区、南奥莫剧院公司、亚的斯亚贝巴大学和平与安全研究所和南奥萨斯大学--之间牢固的伙伴关系，以及领导研究和创造性联盟的核心团队的记录。

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.