Background to This Study
Beginning in mid-1994, Nuer refugees—mainly from the Eastern Jikany tribe of Nuer— began resettling in Wacohtia in significant numbers. The refugees are from the bloody and protracted civil war in southern Sudan.
Most of them had spent five to ten years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya prior to resettlement in the United States. Despite this prolonged period of displacement, virtually all are substantially enculturated in rural Nuer life, and speak Nuer as their primary or only language. They are divided fairly equally between primary refugees, who were resettled directly in Wacohtia, and secondary migrants, who joined the community from other Midwestern communities, and such areas as upstate New York and San Diego. The population is quite young—with few individuals beyond their early thirties—and lives mainly in nuclear families, with some single individuals. Extended kinship networks are not present. While the size of the population has fluctuated significantly, and is difficult to track because of substantial migration in and out of the state, it has generally been on the order of approximately 300 individuals.By early 1996, domestic violence had emerged as a visible problem in the community. A number of incidents occurred in which police were involved, including at least one in which a woman was seriously injured. Additionally, several women fled their husbands to women’s shelters. While some amount of “wife-beating” is socially sanctioned within Nuer culture, in the United States it clearly was not. Social service agencies involved with the Nuer made great efforts both to make Nuer men understand that wifebeating was not acceptable, as well as to inform women of what they should do if hit or threatened.