Performing the Nation: Genocide, Justice, Reconciliation; Genoc

A dance begins beneath the outstretched branches of the giant umunyinya tree in Rwanda. First there is drumming and clapping, then the lead dancers step into the center of the gathering. The dancing subsides and the gacaca court, the community hearings on the one hundred days of bloodshed known as the Rwandan Genocide, is called into session. This is what the ongoing process of reconciliation looks like nearly twenty years after the brutal, orchestrated murder of almost one million people in Rwanda.