Coming to Terms

Coming to Terms

Sometimes for a society to move forward, it has to look back—even when looking back seems just too painful. Coming to Terms features four societies forced to confront the past as they chart their course to the future.

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Feature stories heard in this hour

Relearning the Peace
Culturally, Burundi's Hutus and Tutsis are virtually identical. But decades of violence have made even the most imaginary differences tragically real. In 2005, voters approved a constitution that requires the groups to share power. For leaders of the new government, that means unlearning old habits. Producer Marianne McCune attends a retreat for members of the newly integrated national police.

Basque Family Ties
In Spain's Basque country, tensions are high—not just between pro-independence Basques and the Spanish government, but among the Basques themselves. The centuries-long struggle for self-determination has divided communities and families. Bay Area filmmaker Victoria Mauleón has always avoided political topics on her yearly visits to her father's family near Pamplona. This time she packed a microphone.

Bringing Home the Bones
Producer Allan Coukell accompanies members of the Haida Nation as they carry the remains of more than 100 ancestors, stored for a century in a museum in Chicago, home for proper burial in the Queen Charlotte Islands, off Canada's Pacific coast. It's a journey full of pain and healing—and part of a worldwide movement among native groups to reclaim what they say is theirs.

The Street of the Cauldron Makers
Modern Turkey emerged in the 1920s as a secular, westernized nation where the rule was always to look forward, never back. But novelist Elif Shafak says even where memories are buried, they have a way of rising to the surface. Excavating those memories is a central part of Shafak's work—and that has made her a controversial figure in a country that is trying to understand the relationship between its past and its future.

Bringing Home the Bones, Part I
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, museums collected artifacts from the world's indigenous groups. Among the samples were human remains. In the first part of a two-part story, producer Allan Coukell accompanies members of Canada's Haida Nation as they retrieve the bones of more than 100 ancestors at a public ceremony in the Field Museum in Chicago.

Series credits

Executive Producer: Jon Miller
Associate Producers: Lara Ratzlaff and Melissa Robbins
Senior Producers: Sandy Tolan and Alan Weisman
Host: María Hinojosa
Engineer: Robin Wise of Sound Imagery
Theme music: Samite, whose non-profit organization is Musicians for World Harmony
Website design: Jackie Cerretani of Lost Art Media

Thanks to (alphabetically): the AIR listserve, Jay Allison, Chris Ballman, Helen Barrington, Vincie Bertolino, Deb Blakeley, Peter Breslow, David L. Brown, Steve Burke, Bill Buzenberg, Betsy Gardella, Deborah George, Peggy Girshman, Nancy Hand, Beckie Kravetz, Loren Jenkins, Martha Little, Ingrid Lobet, Margaret Low Smith, Joyce MacDonald, Amy Mayer, Rebecca Nelson, Eric Nuzum, Keith Porter, Nancy Postero, Jeff Ramirez, Rod Richards, Marcus Rosenbaum, Didi Schanche, Steve Schultze, Stu Seidel, Jacqueline Sharkey, Bill Sokol, Sue Schardt, Bari Scott, Lynn Szwaja, Gwen Thompkins, Jeff Towne, Cecilia Vaisman, Gosia Wojniacka, Ellen Yuan.

Thanks also to the following people for granting interviews for the Worlds of Difference specials: Vohra Anupam, Hurriyet Babacan, Tyler Cowen, Wade Davis, Jonathan Friedman, Chip Gagnon, Barry Gills, Michael Hardt, Debra Harry, Mickey Hart, Ronald Inglehart, Pico Iyer, Mark Juergensmeyer, Smitu Kothari, Luisa Maffi, Ali Mazrui, Bill McKibben, Walter Mignolo, Ashis Nandy, Brendan O'Leary, Agnes Pareiyo, Kaiping Peng, Jules Pretty, Amartya Sen, Richard Chase Smith, Suresh Sharma, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Rhajib Vohra, Owens Wiwa, Mato Wyacopi.

Major funding for Worlds of Difference comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell University and the Department of Journalism at the University of Arizona.

Homelands Productions is a non-profit journalism cooperative specializing in radio documentaries. Its mission is to illuminate complex issues through compelling broadcasts, articles, books and educational forums, and to foster freedom of expression and creative risk through the media arts.