The 2012 GAA Heritage Arts Award

 
Originally from Benin, West Africa, Charles Ahovissi is a professional artist, dancer, drummer, choreographer, educator, costume designer and tailor. Charles began his dancing career in 1984 when he joined the National Ballet Company of Benin. He left the National Ballet in 1987 and joined the Super Anges Dance Troop that toured extensively throughout the world performing and teaching traditional African Dance and music. In 2000, he relocated to the United States.


Since moving to Omaha, Charles has taught and performed at many schools and organizations as a Nebraska Arts Council and Iowa Arts Council teaching and performing artist. He has also conducted on-going public classes in dance and drumming in connection with The Moving Company at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.


In 2006, he co-founded the non-profit African Culture Connection to be able to reach more schools and organizations in and around Nebraska. Charles teaches in order to share his knowledge and love of Africa. He uses his art form to foster understanding of Africa’s diverse and beautiful cultures. Through dancing and drumming during public performances, school assemblies, residencies, and workshops, Charles promotes unity and multiculturalism while offering students a fun, social and physical activity. He provides multicultural lessons by giving students authentic, hands-on experiences with African culture. He creates an authentic African village ambiance and uses ceremonial African clothes as well as traditional instruments to teach about African culture.


Charles continually seeks knowledge and experience to enhance his residency and performance programs. He has participated in three John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Seminars at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls: 1) Planning Effective Arts-Integrated Residencies for Students; 2) Laying a Foundation: Defining Arts Integration; and 3) Anatomy of a Lesson: Designing Instruction.

Source: nebraskaartscouncil.org 

5. Conclusion: Prospects for World Peace from the Perspective of African Traditional Religion and Culture

In a world so full of injustice, so short of harmony among humans as well as between humans and God, the divinities, the ancestors and other beings in the universe; in a world where billions profess faith in God but few have any regard for the divinely established moral order; in a world where human blood flows constantly like steams and so many innocent lives are taken in many ways, some violently and some subtly; in such a world as ours today, what possibilities does African

4. Peace: A Religious and Moral Value

In traditional African societies, peace is not an abstract poetic concept, but rather a down-to-earth and practical concept. In ATR peace is conceived not in relation to conflict and war, but in relation to order, harmony and equilibrium. It is a religious value in that the order, harmony and equilibrium in the universe and society is believed to be divinely established and the obligation to maintain them is religious. It is also a moral value since good conduct is required of human beings if

3. The World-View Implicit in African Traditional Religion

While examining the objects of belief in ATR, we have already seen that traditional Africans believe in the existence of God, the divinities, other lesser spirits and the ancestors. Below these beings are humans, animals, plants and other inanimate objects. All these realities are believed to exist in a hierarchical order established by God who is the Source of all. In this

2. The Essential Features of African Traditional Religion

 I would like to group the essential features of ATR under three headings, which may be regarded as the three principal dimensions of religion: belief, worship and morality.[2]

a) Belief
Considering Africa as a whole, the main objects of traditional religious belief are: God, the divinities, spirits and the ancestors. Belief in God, conceived as one Supreme Personal Being seems to be shared by the

Introduction

1. Introduction
It seems quite safe to assume that all human beings desire peace. What is not always very clear is what each person means by peace and how it can be attained and maintained. Religion and peace have been almost natural companions in the minds of humans in different periods of history and in different cultures of the world. This is because, although far too many adherents and leaders of the different religions in the world have

THE MEANING OF PEACE IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CULTURE

Prayer

I would like to begin this reflection with a prayer, a litany for peace, from the Kikuyu of Kenya. It is addressed to Ngai, the Supreme Being:

Praise ye Ngai… –  Peace be with us

[Say that the elders may have wisdom and speak with one voice.

Praise ye, Ngai. Peace be with us.]

Say that the country may have tranquillity

South Africa and its Culture

Culture in South Africa is about as diverse as it can come. South Africa is a multiracial society and defining distinct subgroups by skin colour only will potentially get you into trouble. Those of Afrikaner and British descent won't be too happy to be confused with one another, and there are several major and many minor groupings in the traditional black cultures.

ISLAM'S RESPONSE TO AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN NIGERIA

The history of Islam in Nigeria has examples of a wide range of interaction with African traditional belief systems and practices. At certain times, particularly when Muslims constituted a minority, a pluralist response to other cultures and religions occurred. Muslims took the view that different forms of primal religion could exist side by side with them in the same society. Coupled with this was the recognition that the social and political structure of the wider society could be accommodated. Individual Muslims, and whole communities, throughout Nigeria have incorporated into Islam to varying degrees different aspects of traditional life....

CREATION IN AFRICAN THOUGHT

African theologians have stressed that the substratum upon which all future Christian theologizing in Africa must be built is African Traditional Religion. So the question of African conceptions of nature is certainly an appropriate one. By far the largest portion of African theological discourse relevant to ecology thus far has been on the conceptions of creation and/or "nature" found in ATR. As part of the quest of the 1970s, much was written on nature in ATR during this period. We shall discover that in the 1980s African theologians have paid more attention to explicitly Christian theological reflexion on Christian ecological responsibility. In the pages which follow I shall first present some of the salient aspects of some African conceptions of nature, then move to a survey of the more recent theological responses.

Matis Indians: The Jaguar People

Believe it or not, not that far from Iquitos, Peru you can encounter recently discovered tribes of the Amazon.  In the Javari (Yavarí) Valley (the frontier of Peru with Brazil) the Matis Indians (not to be confused with the Matsés) still live like they have for thousands of years – hunting and gathering.  At one time, before inventing agriculture and pastoralism, the entire human race survived as hunter-gatherers.  Today, only a hand-full of Amazonian tribes practice this ancient way of life.  An encounter with a tribe like the Matis is more than a curiosity; it is a glimpse into the past – into our past and gives us a chance to see how our ancestors were.

Administrative and Institutional Structures

Public or Semi-public Bodies

Ministry of Culture and Social Welfare has two departments responsible for administering and implementing cultural policies. The Federal Department of Culture is responsible for the formulation and execution of the national cultural policies, for the financing and promotion of all national cultural organizations and for international cultural relations. The National Council for Arts and Culture encourages and develops all aspects of Nigerian cultures and interacts with private or public organizations.

Other federal bodies partly involved in cultural life and policies are Ministry of Information and Ministry of Education.

Recognizing the "Right to Culture"

The "right to culture" has been a key foundation of cultural policy. In 1948, soon after the United Nations was established, its members declared a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" which asserted that

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community.

Rene Maheu, Director-General of Unesco (the UN's cultural arm) at the time, amplified on this right at Unesco's International Conference on Institutional, Administrative and Financial Aspects of Cultural Policies in 1970:

Purpose and Meaning of Culture

The phrase “CULTURE” these days is used in so many marginal contexts that its original meaning has been submerged. For instance, we have an “accepted culture”, by which is meant the collective human intellectual achievements. There is a “consumerist culture”, which is taken by some as a determinant of the status of a person along with his enlightening success and/or financial force. To be an integral part of this culture, one has to have a higher spending power, which yields a greater availability of materialistic pleasures and facilities. We also hear of an “emerging culture”, which reflects the attitudes and the behavioral characteristics of a particular social group. An emerging drug or pub culture among the youngsters of today is an example. Modern colleges and universities take pride in their “competitive culture” that helps to bring out the best in students and aid their intellectual development. However, none of these descriptions highlight the essential features of the true meaning of “culture”. 

Characteristics of culture

Characteristics of culture:

William Haviland explains in Cultural Anthropology that there are four basic characteristics of culture.7 Culture is shared by a group of people (that constitutes a society); culture is learned rather than biologically inherited from parents; culture is based on symbols such as a cross, an image, an object of worship, etc; and culture is an integration of economic, political and social aspects.

Culture has several other characteristics too. It is neither the outcome of individual attempts nor the impact of a particular phase of history but evolves through the ages. It is an invaluable inheritance of uncountable experiences, experiments and endeavours. People, families, societies and civilisations develop; change or end with the flow of time but culture is not built or changed in one era. It is nurtured in the infinite lap of time, age after age. It enfolds innumerable phases of rise, fall, obstructions, destructions, reconstructions, trends and tides of the social, national and global history, and geographical, economical, political scientific, artistic, psychological and spiritual developments. 

Culture

Honoring Our Ancestors, Families, Our Culture & Humanity.

Inspired by One Love

Culture: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, beliefs, institutions, arts, and all other products of human works and thought characteristics of a community or population.

A style of social expression, peculiar to a society, or class. Intellectual activity and the works produced by.

Women’s Wright And Culture In The Society

Who Is A Woman?

A woman is a female human. The term woman (irregular plural: women) usually is used for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. However, the term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as

The term women’s rights