In Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives Jon Holtzman performs an anthropological study of the Nuer people of southern Sudan who have migrated to Minnesota. The community of Nuer in the Twin Cities numbers about 200 people, who were either sent there directly by religious groups as they fled the destruction caused by the civil war in their country, or they moved there voluntarily to rejoin friends and relatives after having been initially placed in another city (Holtzman 9). While the migration of refugees to the United States is certainly nothing new, Holtzman notes that the migration of populations from rural Africa to America does contrast significantly with more traditional immigrant populations to the United States (Holtzman 2). Nonetheless, they now represent a growing number of groups from sub-Saharan Africa resettling in the United States. Consequently, they provide an informative and interesting anthropological analysis that could have significance for migration patterns to the United States in the future.
Anthropologists have been familiar with the Nuer people of the southern Sudan for generations. The Nuer are classified as agropastoralists, which means they subsist on a mixed economy of animal husbandry and agricultural cultivation (Holtzman 2). Current population estimates locate over a million Nuer people living today and they form the second largest ethnic group in southern Sudan (Holtzman 2). In Nuer Journeys Holtzman contends that the Nuer may be the most important cast study in the history of anthropology (Holtzman 3). E.E. Evans-Pritchard first subjected them to anthropological study as early as 1930, and he documented his research in three ethnographies: The Nuer (1940), Marriage and Kinship among the Nuer (1951) and Nuer Religion (1956). Largely due to the thorough and incisive nature of these ethnographies, the Nuer have become a "sort of touchstone in anthropology" (Holtzman 3). And the resettlement of Nuer peop...