Lara Shelley Rosenoff Gauvin

LARA S. ROSENOFF GAUVIN, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, received a grant in April 2017 to aid research on ”We Are Sons and Daughters of Bwoc’: Refusal and Land Rights Protections in Rural Post-Conflict Acoliland, Northern Uganda.’ This study found that 85% of chiefdoms in Acoliland have reported writing indigenous governance constitutions (at either the clan or chiefdom level) since the end of the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan Government. The primary reasons for this widespread phenomena include: 1) the necessity to organize and reconcile communities upon returning to communal ancestral lands after at least a decade of forced displacement and two decades of intra-community violence; and 2) to safeguard ancestral lands in the present by regulating members’ use of land, and in the future by eventually securing formal communal title to their lands. Based on these findings, the study argues that real and perceived land pressures in the present and future have strengthened kin-based communal governance organizations in Acoliland (clans, chiefdoms), and thus kin-based relatedness that has allowed for high levels of intra-community reconciliation and unity. The widespread phenomena of clan and/or chiefdom constitutions across Acoliland also suggest communities’ hopes that these forms of legibility of Acoli indigenous rights and responsibilities will lead to more secure land rights and peaceful relations within the Ugandan State.