3a. Introduction
Buffy Sainte-Marie is an Indigenous artist and social activist who has received four Juno awards in her decades-long career. She has many famous anti-war songs that I grew up with and she continues to write new ones that speak to contemporary social causes. Here is one called Universal Soldier that was popular during the anti-Vietnam war movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Indigenous people have many peacemaking beliefs and rituals in their diverse traditions. We will explore one of these in the module.
Rudy De Saedeleir. (2007, December 26). Buffy Sainte-Marie - Universal Soldier. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00
In this module we will look at some pre- and early-modern examples of peacebuilding. We often learn more about the violent conflicts of the past – the Crusades and other religious wars, the wars of imperialism and colonialism, the cruelty of political leaders in the ancient world. We rarely learn about the ideas and actions that were put forward to counter that violence, but many cultures, communities, and individuals did offer peaceful alternatives. Many of these early peace movements continue to influence and guide the present.
There are so many that one could choose from, but I have chosen a sampling from various time periods and cultural contexts: ancient Greece, North American Indigenous peoples, and radical religious movements of the 12th and 16th to 18th centuries. The case studies may not fit our idea of peace movements as masses of people responding to a specific conflict, but they do represent ideas, actions, and philosophies that emerged to create peace, rather than violence and war.