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“A Benzie Boy’s Fifty-plus Years’ Engagement in the Past and Present of the Acholi People of Northern Uganda”
Presented by: Ron Atkinson
Thursday, September 14, 7:00 pm
The Mills Community House and On Zoom (Click Below):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83070653519
This presentation will intertwine a summary account of the history of the Acholi people of the northern region of the East African country of Uganda, along with a rendering of the presenter’s more than fifty years’ engagement with both the past and the present of that people, and of Uganda more generally.
The talk will begin by locating Uganda & Acholi on a map of Africa, and then laying out the complex journey that took Ron Atkinson to Acholi in 1970, and kept him going back again and again over the next fifty years, until Covid temporarily stopped him from doing so – a journey he could not have begun to imagine when he left Benzie County to begin college at Michigan State University in 1964.
The summary discussion of Acholi history will begin with the pre-colonial dynamics that began in the 17th century that led to the emergence and consolidation of an Acholi ethnic and linguistic identity, followed by a brief overview of the British colonial period from the late 19th century to 1962. The former was the topic of his PhD research and eventually his book: The Roots of Ethnicity: The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda.
The bulk of the presentation will deal with the post-colonial era from 1962 to the present, concentrating on the role of the Ugandan military in politics and political violence. The twenty-year northern Uganda war from 1986-2006, with Acholi at its epicenter, and the still incomplete recovery from that conflict will receive special attention. This historical discussion will be interwoven throughout with Atkinson’s personal experiences and involvement with the issues of this period, particularly during the many years he was in Uganda.
After retiring in 2011 from teaching African history and directing the African Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, Ron Atkinson has been a Senior Research Associate at the University’s Rule of Law Collaborative and Walker Institute of International and Area Studies. He has lived and worked in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa. Spending nearly half his time in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda since 2005, earlier work on precolonial Acholi history has shifted to: (i) the 1986-2006 northern Uganda conflict; (ii) the main rebel group involved in that conflict, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); and (iii) the difficult recovery and reconstruction following the war’s end. This research over the last 10 years has concentrated on land issues, including a multi-year project under the auspices of the Acholi leadership to help protect and secure Acholi customary clan-based land – which Covid brought to a sudden and unfortunate end.
