Indigenous Ethiopia
North African indigenous dispossession and colonisation
Ethiopian indigenous peoples are threatened as much by colonial constructs of their identity as they are by bullets, drought and famine.
In the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia live the Me’en and the Mun. Traditionally they have coexisted since time out of mind in the valley, competing together in warfare and trade. Traditional trade goods are still the centre of their indigenous economy, and include cattle, grain, cotton cloth and other crops grown in complex terrace systems.
While they enjoy some limited autonomy within the modern Ethiopian state, colonial activity still threatens their lived reality. Global warming and modern agricultural activity upriver have resulted in life threatening drought and water shortages, devastating their traditional economy.
Pressure from the resulting lower standard of living is then exacerbated by state-engineered divide and conquer strategies, warping traditionally ritual warfare between the groups into a gruesome mimicry of modern warfare, with both sides now equipped with automatic weapons.
Forced removal of people from their own land to the traditional lands of their rivals brings these conflicts to a head, resulting in violent clashes that are dismissed as “ancient tribal conflicts”. This tribal conflict myth is used to justify the slaughter of millions of indigenous people worldwide. It is used to reconstruct indigenous identity in a way that promotes social fragmentation and a kind of auto-genocide.
Reconstruction of indigenous identity for the Me’en and Mun goes beyond constructs of intertribal rivalry, and extends to an intra-tribal colonisation of identity that erodes family structures and cultural practices. They have even been renamed by the state as the “Bodi” and “Mursi”, losing the right even to name themselves. The impact of this loss of identity is as devastating as the ravages of bullets and global warming.
Groups such as the Konso lose their culture also through loss of contact with traditional lands. After having been removed and resettled in the lands of traditional rivals, they face not only military attack from the Me’en, but also diseases such as malaria that they are not exposed to on their own drier ancestral lands. This sickness is deepened by a loss of connection with their own sacred places and sacred animals.
This is a good example of colonialism as an invasive war fought on many fronts simultaneously – through economics, divide and conquer, land theft, the erosion of culture and the destruction of identity.
