An Ecopoetic Approach
(Theory & Practice)
Ethiopia/Northeast
Africa
As a people we
have developed a life-style that is draining the earth
of its
priaceless and irreplaceable resources without regard
for the future
of children and people all around the world.
___Margaret Mead
Frantz
Fanon's call for the indigenous intellectual and artist to create …
to work in the
cause of constructing a national culture after liberation
still stands as
a challenge.
___Linda Tuhiwai
Smith
ABSTRACT
Using available empirical data obtained from the field through interview and observation in Oromia, central Ethiopia, in 2009 and 2010, and other sources in print, this study has two objectives to tackle. First, reflecting upon questions of the native model of origin narratives in relation to ecology, I examine some examples of Oromo ecopoetic practices to determine: a) how ecology and creative process conspire in the production of folksongs and performance, b) how the veil of nature hidden in the opacity of songs is revealed through the rites of creative process and performance as the human and ecological realms intersect. When put in relation to ecology, I theorize, the ecocultural creative act and process go beyond the mundane life activities to determine the people’s use (of nature), perceptions, and implications. Second, damages to ecology are, I posit, damages to ecoculture. Drawing on the notion of ecological archetypes, thus, the study makes an attempt to find a common ground between the idea of recurrent ecological motifs in Oromo folksongs and the people’s ecological identity. In their language, critic, imagination, and cultural referents, Oromo folksongs are voices of the people who rely on traditional agricultural life close to nature and facing challenges of the dominating religious, political and scientific cultures.
Keywords:
ecology,
folksong, ecoculture, creative process/act, ecopoetics, Oromo/Oromia/Ethiopia, ecological
archetypes/identity, performance, native model of origin
OROMO ORIGIN
NARRATIVES
Next,
the Oromo origin stories (of human & nature) are more my base of operations
than my main subject, which is the ecopoetic study of Oromo folksongs. So, one
environmentally directed story goes, Uume
Walaabuu baate, meaning, Uume
(Creation) began at Walaabu.[1]
The Oromo people largely believe this story to be the genesis of Mother
Nature/Earth at Walaabu, eastern Oromia, Ethiopia. Storying an “origin” without
being there may seem strange. But Bruno Latour and Strum, in their
“Human Social Origins” (1986:71)
alert
us:
“…there is no
difference between scientific stories (falsifiable) and mythical stories
(unfalsifiable); an explanation is always a story…When E.O. Wilson, Nietzsche,
Freud, or Dawkins tells us how social bonds first originated, they are not
describing something that happened in front of their eyes.”[2]
According
to Oromo
origin theory and time concept (which is cyclical), the beginning of Life
(Uumama) in Oromo worldview is in relation to “place”. Hence, by this account
of environmental/spatial imagination, the ecopoetics of Oromo folksong origin
relates to the Dawn of Creation (Uumaa Ganamaa) which the Oromo believe took
place at Walaabu, also referred to as Fugug or Tulluu Nam-dur—the mountain of
ancient humans. The place names “Haroo Walaabu,” “Fugug,” or “Tullu Nam-dur,”
and “Hora Finfinne” stand out as dominant spaces in Oromo place narratives
(mythscapes), mainly for four reasons: first, it is a common knowledge in Oromo
oral tradition that Walaabu is the mythical homeland of the Cushitic Oromo
people; second, Walaabu serves as a reference point of alter/native narrative
counter to the phony outside-origin-theory made up by Abyssinian and
Abyssinianist chroniclers for the Oromo; third, it can be used as a text analogous
to the Christian myth of Eden in Genesis. Fourth, Finfinne is a sacred site
with a special meaning and significance to the Oromo who reclaim it today as a
desecrated broken place.
In
this article I analyze a few songs to theorize the relationship between the
Oromo and the ecosystem they inhabit and depend on. The texts presented here
are masterpieces of those dominant spaces, hills, rocks, waterholes, trees, rivers,
grasses and other natural features, which signify peace, permanence, abundance,
and fertility. Those dominant places are associated with the activities of ancestral
beings collectively known as ayana, who
are no less ancient than the landscape itself, and believed to travel across the land and protect the physical and
social world the Oromo inhabit.
For a
similar argument about Oromo “origin theory” one may also consult Stephen
Belcher’s “The Oromo of Southern Ethiopia” in his African Myths of Origin (2005).[3]
According to this Oromo origin myth, in the beginning one male (waaqa, sky god) descended and found
footprints that ultimately led him to one female (dachi, Mother Earth) and both produced children. The story
represents metaphorically the continuing archetypal mythic union between the
sky god (waaqa) and earth (dachii) and the place of rain in Oromo
worldview to sustain life. Belcher’s
Oromo myth of human/social origin does not tell us where. The Oromo Earth Song, Dachi
Nagaa Bultee, (Good morning, Mother Earth) is another typical ecopoetic
motif that resonates widely among the Oromo as part of a morning ritual that embodies
the close union between earth/environment and its inhabitants. Thus, what
comes from culture comes from nature. Any danger to nature is danger to
culture! In all accounts, these texts are more about the “beginning” than about
“origin” because the “before-the-origin” texts are missing or nonexistent.[4]
Hence, the
question of the native through their folksongs and narratives is the same: “If
this is your land, where are your stories?”[5]
Virginia Luling (1965) reminds
us, “from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century the [Oromo] were
dominant on their own territories; no people of other cultures were in a
position to exercise compulsion over them.”[6] Not
only is the poetic persona in Oromo folksong very often mythic but the
landscape is also mythicized as a reflection of the past to create a mythscape.
The Oromo are agricultural communities with a culture enriched by folksongs,
myths, and ecological archetypes as a result of their ecological adaptations
developed overtime about their traditional pattern of life and constant
interaction with nature. Today, small-scale agriculture is identified as
another major cause of deforestation and environmental degradation in Oromia.[7]
Outline
The
main aim of this research is to clarify the ecopoetic features of Oromo
folksongs, their role to inform both the local ecological knowledge and the
people’s courage to find agency, and to serve as a critic of human-environment
relations. The study examines the symbolic connection between folksong
performances and ecopoetic practices, and how this connection to the direct
experience of the people determines their ecological identity. To proceed, I
first relocate the project back in its historical, folkloric, and cultural
background in Oromia. Here I look into the human expression, the narratives of
Oromo origin theory, to set in context the Oromo perspective of inseparable
human-environment nexus. Then I move on to discussing the methods and
theoretical underpinnings and concentrate primarily on elaborating ecopoetic
perspective as a native model. I will then discuss how different
environmentalists have used local ecological knowledge, ecological identity
approach, and ecological archetypes, and the advantage this transdisciplinary
approach has to study ecocultural creativity at the local level.
ECOPOETIC PERSPECTIVE
Interviewing
the local people in Oromia, northwest of Finfinne, the capital, and recording them
singing were the main activities in the fieldwork. I
first began collecting Oromo folksongs in Salale in a fieldtrip in 2009 and
2010 for my PhD data on Oromo folklore and resistance culture and I was
fascinated by the local indigenous culture and the people’s knowledge of place
and ecology in the area. Through revisiting the data, my field notes and sources
available in print, later I realized that the Oromo people’s deep understanding
of, connection with, and love for their land, land resources and environment
was, and still is, immense. The mythscapes and dominant places named after
ancestors, deities, historic events or a natural feature some particular place
displays impressed me most. However, at the time, my primary research focused
on social justice, not on environmental justice per se. I look forward to a future favorable time to explore this
uncharted local ecopoetic terrain further and to instill the urge of
undertaking ethnoecological research as part of folklore scholarship.
Oromo
folklore marks a transition of the people’s direct experience, a self-reflexive
embodiment of the ecocreative process, not in the sense of the Western
nature-culture duality principle, a transition from nature to culture and vice
versa. The Oromo songs sung in farm fields, laments, love songs, hunting and
historical songs, and performing ritual practices permeated the working lives
of the communities forming a distinctive ethnoecology that has been little
examined. As Conrad Kottak (1999:26) notes, ethnoecology is understood as a “traditional
set of environmental perceptions, that is, [a] cultural model of the environment
and its relation to people and society”.[8]
The ecological archetype woven into personal memories is a rich source of
ecopoetic data.
What is Ecopoetics?
To
ease some burden of methodological absurdity or theoretical incongruity, I
explained the concept “ecopoetics” in my PhD thesis in 2015 as follows:
I use “eco” to
refer to “nature,” “natural habitat,” “land/space,” or “house/home,” and “poetics,” that is, “poesis” or “making.” Hence,
“making a house,” where both human and nonhuman inhabit. In so doing, I do not
necessarily focus on the “critical” over the “creative” act but I will try to
balance both. To make it more explicit, here my intention is that, if ecocriticism is an unheeded impetus of a
call for [ecological] actions in studies like comparative literature, let ecopoetics
do the job in folkloristics.[9]
Ecocriticism
is an ecological literary criticism, an ‘activist’ environmentalist praxis that
studies the relationship between literature and the environment, a commitment
deeper than professionalism,[10]
whereas, ecopoetics is the poetics of ecology—the relationship between humans
and their environment. To Oscar Labang (2015:16), etymologically speaking,
ecopoetics “is the poetics of place…a linguistic combination of ecology and
poetics which foregrounds the intertextuality and interdisciplinarity that
typifies ecopoetic discourses as well as the “ecological imperative that in the
UNIVERSE everything is connected to everything else.”[11]
Some
may consider the effort of “creating visibility for vernacular worlds in a
democratic public sphere” as “civic professionalism,” a “…professionalism
designed to complement and strengthen a new civil politics.”[12] It
is our responsibility as folklorists, Mary Hufford. (1999) maintains,
“to
help cultivate local and regional identities in places hard hit by global
economic restructuring and related displacements.”[13]
In this continuous process of ecopoetic knowledge construction, the role of the
folklorist ethnoecologist is “not about
the building of knowledge, but about
illuminating what Foucault terms the ‘insurrection
of subjugated knowledge,’” the insurrection which “is always at risk of being
contained, domesticated, and marginalized by a status of folklore” (Hafford,
1999:159).[14]
So, if “criticism” is an expression of “disapproval” based on perceived faults
or mistakes, or the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of ideas,
beliefs or principles and practices, I bet we need “ecopoetics” both as a
creative process and critical act, and as an alternative method of analysis in
ecocultural creativity studies instead of “ecocriticism”—an environmentalist
activist literary stance primarily focusing on written environmental literature.[15]
Although, in ecocriticism, “the phrase ‘environmental literature’ is used to
describe all literary forms (oral, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama) that
investigate human-nature relationship,”[16]
“ecopoetics,” I suggest, is more suitable than “ecocriticism” for the art and
craft of ecocreative process and
critical act.
Folkloric Ecopoetics
Folkloric
ecopoetics is understood as an ecocreative
human communication with the nonhuman, a meditative human connectedness to
nature. This meditative communication involves prayers, composing and singing
songs, telling stories, naming totems, idolizing deities and offering tree
coronations, summoning and glorifying God at hilltops, sacrifices at river
banks, agricultural rites, libations, visiting graveyards and tabooing sacred
groves, symbolizing and pledging, and communicating kind relationships between
humankind and nature, which can be wrapped up in the notion of the Irreecha festival.[17] Through
this ecopoetic mediation, humans learn to struggle to find and reclaim the
place they call “home”.[18]
Put
within the backdrop of Oromo worldview, the present folkloric ecopoetics is a
theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings, conscious life-form close to nature
in the locale contrary to or complementary with the dominant Orthodox Christian
culture. Conceived as a site, perhaps not as a genre, folkloric ethnopoetics
here explores the idea that consciousness and agency are distributed “out
there,” as Bruno Latour (2011) argues, amongst “objects” of the outside world,
not here in the human “subject.”[19]
The Oromo venerate those places as sublime gifts inherited from their
predecessors, and at some point in history, that transcendent gift was
confiscated and became a symbol of the “unknown,” what is “unforeseeable” but “possible” for generations
to contemplate “waan-hafe,” i.e. a
grief of the “historical loss”.
Local
Experiences, Global Processes
The
term “local” in “local knowledge” or “local institution” refers to “a residual
category equated with whatever is not national,” and, I should add, what is not
“global” or “universal”.[20]
In ethnographic search, the “local” is a source for collecting, analyzing, and
evaluating relevant data about what can be considered part of the whole. The
“national” or the “global” cannot be unaffected by the “local” as the “local”
provides basis for a collective action and consensus on decision making about
what affects the life of the people at the local level and the environment in
which they dwell, and vice-versa. So, it is fair enough to say that local experiences
of the environment are inevitably also global ones, “but our experiences of the
global are often local” and “indeed, ‘have to be rooted in local perceptions
and experiences’” (Gifford 2012:1).[21]
In his Wisdom Sits in
Place, Keith Basso (1996) brings
to our attention “constructions of reality that reflect conception of reality,
the meaning of landscapes and acts of speech are personalized manifestations of
a shared perspective on the human condition,” which is corollary
with what Basso notes as saying, “local understandings of external
realities are fashioned from local cultural materials.”[22]
When
people who know each other better, have more rapport and sense of belonging at
the local level are removed from their home, their opportunities for
cooperation and collective action on a self-ruling basis is shuttered, the
shared values and “ecological knowledge” is disrupted.[23]
The local institutions that include rainmakers, council of elders, traditional
midwives, artisans and ritual leaders of sacred groves and tree coronations
disintegrate as a result of the removal and occupation of the indigenous
peoples.[24] The roles of local institutions range from
lineage organization, village-level governance, and common resource management
to conflict resolution and mediation with waaqa (god), ayaana (spirits) and
dachii (mother earth) according to the safuu
moral system.[25].
African Ecopoetics
An African ecopoetics
can be exemplified by verbal arts and performances as in this nature song of
Zulu children while they stalk about:
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see inyoka looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see ufudu looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see indlovu looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see ikhozi looking at me.[26]
I can see inyoka looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see ufudu looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see indlovu looking at me.
Walking through Africa, what do I see?
I can see ikhozi looking at me.[26]
The
Oromo children rain dance song below is another example that resonates with me
most:
Bokke bokkee na guddisi Oh rain rain nourish me to
grow
Wayyaa furdaa natti huwwisi Dress me thick and warm to glow.
Wayyaa furdaa natti huwwisi Dress me thick and warm to glow.
Running
naked in the rain, jumping and chanting this and other rain dance songs is not
just a fun but it also ties the knot of children-nature relations tightly as it
sets the children’s aspirations “to grow” and “to glow”. Rain represents
fertility, which is of the utmost importance to all, and it symbolizes a regeneration of life, crops and healing plants.
When the sky releases rain, most obviously it is believed, the sky god’s
(waaqa) semen wets Dachi’s womb. Hence, the fecundity of Mother Earth is a prosperity and peace for the living, a life-bringing and sustaining
prospect.
The
works of African ecopoets, particularly the environmentally conscious poets,
Tanure Ojaide, Niyi Usundare, and the martyred poet, Ken Saro-Wiwa, among
others, vocalize the people’s reclaiming of the broken places, the polluted
socio-economic landscape in their writings.[27] The
poets used ecopoetry “to address as well as to bring to the knowledge of
humanity this form of environmental devastation and inhumanity.”[28]
Ken Saro-Wiwa (1996), for example, wrote the following message from prison
against oil companies’ environmental destruction in his native home of
Ogoniland: “The environment is man's first right. Without a safe environment,
man cannot exist to claim other rights, be they political, social, or
economic.”[29]
For Ken Saro-Wiwa, ecopoetics, i.e., the poetics of ecology is not just an
environmentally oriented literary criticism, but a creative act, a serious
commitment deeper than mere civic professionalism. Damage to nature is damage
to culture. Jonathan Bate’s book, The Song of the Earth (2000) argues that
“colonialism and deforestation have frequently gone together” (see Barry, 1995:251).[30]
The
postcolonial African ecopoetics examines the poetics of other-than-Western
cultures—that of the Sub-Saharan Africa—to show how the peoples use the
environment and to reveal their encounters, the historical, cultural, and
personal realities which shape the environmental experience from an African
perspective.[31]
The local environmental crisis is “uniquely important because local/regional
activities have global consequences and so writers/critics must respond in ways
that best reflect their cultural philosophies and individual perceptions of the
environment” (Labang 2015:14).[32]
To the postcolonial local folklorist, ecopoetics is not just an aesthetic
decision/strategy used to reveal how the ecological consciousness manifests
itself but is part of the local folklorist’s existential worldview and
ontological historicity. The truth is, in postcolonial context, societies have
different relationships with the environment and an ontological philosophy or
worldview (local epistemological veracity) about it. It is problematic to
understand these human-ecological relations, i.e., use, perceptions and
beliefs, implications about how to experience, perceive, and interact with
environmental forces from purely Western discourses. In discussing different
worldviews and significances of the environment in different cultures Oscar
Labang rightly argues, “The forest to the American is an aesthetic function or
commercial value, whereas to the African it is an existential and spiritual
life force”.[33]
An Oromo ecopoetic perspective shows not just the aesthetic and instrumental
function of ecology, but also the spiritual.
Ecological
Identity
The
childhood memories of places, myths built around dominant spaces (mythscape),
our perceptions about broken places, and desecrated sites constitute our
ecological identity.[34]
The local chiefs and ritual leaders in rural Africa are environmental
archetypes or role models for their community by their age-long practical
knowledge of living close to nature. In USA indigenous peoples represent about
700 distinct communities who possess detailed ecological knowledge of their
homelands and are the stewards of fully 4% of the land area.[35]The
classic environmentalists include, among others, Henry David Thoreau, who lived
in the early 1800s contemplating nature and learning natural history in Walden
Pond, John Muir who lived close to nature in the High Sierras in the late 19th
century, and Rachel Carson, who challenged humanity’s faith in technological
progress by merging her passion for literature and science and set the stage
for the environmental movement through her canonic Silent Spring in
the 1960s. The local chiefs and ritual leaders in rural Africa who transmit
knowledge through ecological practices of everyday life and the environmental practitioners
who lived close to nature use “ecology both as science and metaphor, lending
coherence to human-nature relationships.”[36]
We
live in the age of social and environmental crisis. Humanity is to blame for
the ethically challenged relationships with environment and for the
anthropocentric damages made to Dachi/Mother Earth. The crisis demands a new
way of thinking, being, and acting for humankind to unlock the possibilities
and potentials passed down in cultural resources and to maintain resilient transformation
in the face of rapid social changes and cultural dynamism.
Native Model
Jan
Vansina’s (1985) fieldwork experience about a Rwandese performer is a typical
folkloric ecopoetic instance of composition of a folksong close to nature. In
his own words, Vansina writes: “I have seen a poet on a hill in Rwanda mulling
over his composition for hours, presumably day after day, until he felt it was
perfect.”[38]
Vansina’s example of the Rwandese oral poet (folksinger) makes a case for a
complete “deliberate composition” of a song rehearsed for performance until the
performer felt it “perfect.” By the same token, in 2010 when I asked my Oromo
informants (Gurmu Badhaadha, Taddasa Galate, and Haile Tufo) in Salale where folksongs
come from, their answer was, Oda Jila, Mogor valley, or in Haro Calanqo, in
Jama gorges, or at Tullu Qaawa, near Ilu.[39] According
to my informant Taddasa Galate of Sole, Daalatti in Yaayya, this sound-world
connectedness is real. He said, traditionally songs are composed at Tulluu
Qaawa (a mountain) where a spirit of an old lady is heard singing songs nonstop
at night on the New Year. She is called Jaartii
Qaawa or Jaartii Xoomi. And
people offer sacrifices to learn new songs. Mabre Goofe and Gurmu share the
view that Odaa Jilaa in Mogor and Holqa/Haroo Calanqoo in Jama are other sites
for composing folksongs. At Holqa Calanqo, in Hidhabu Aboote, the deity called
Abbaa Toochii is believed to guide the folksinger as a tutor and caretaker, and
anyone who seeks the deity’s refuge.[40]
According to Gurmu, for every new-year and new harvest season, traditionally,
the folksinger sojourns to Mogor River, climbs the Odaa Jila, a sacred tree,
carefully ties himself up with cord, in case he takes nap, and meditates
Ateete, the Oromo “Muse,” covered up in the foliage for days and nights in confinement.
After this ecopoetic process and creative “rites of passage,” the folksinger
comes home, a place of both sacred
and secular significance, for a continuous group rehearsal. It needs further
study to establish this native model of origin.[41]
The
creative and critical communication about harms made to the environment, and
about the human-environment relationship, constitutes the ecopoetics of the everyday
life of the people (cf. Ashenafi
B. Adugna, 2014).[42] To
consider a broader conceptual schema of “critical folklore studies” about human-environment
relations, it presupposes understanding local ecopoetics (poetics of ecology)
as a creative and critical act, as an innate human capacity for critical
thought about the environment in which they dwell. One can make a case for two
environment-oriented Oromo proverbial metaphors next:
Illeettiin marga ofirratti hin dheeddu A rabbit does not eat & ruin
the grass around its own den.
and
Risaan mannee ofiititti hin hagu An eagle does not poop in
its own nest.
In
these two particular instances of social commentary, a few ecopoetic
assumptions can be considered. First, by the established local social order one
shouldn’t ruin the “ecology,” i.e., the “eco,” oikos, from Greek, meaning “house” or “environment” as represented
here by “den” and “nest”. Second, the two texts can be understood as a
disapproval of ecocolonialism stance. It critiques the transnational
corporations and economic powers of the Global North who reserve their own
resources for future generations and turn to the Global South to seek cheap raw
materials and cheap labor, for resource extraction and captive markets for
their products, and to damp their toxic wastes. Third, put on an ideological
scale, the texts are also critic of a broken place, i.e. a place devastated by
the eco-colonial apathetic anthropogenic activities of the conservationist
Western environmental attitude and power structures “proved to be incompatible
with the indigenous concepts of conservation and human dignity”.[43]
Ecological
Archetypes
An
archetype is understood as the universal expression of particular patterns of
behavior, feeling, thinking, and acting with a compelling influence on the
human psyche beyond cultures. Folksongs can serve as a repertoire to identify
ecological archetypes built around nature and Mother Earth (Dachi), to analyze
them from ecopoetic perspective, and describe symbols, ideas, feelings,
beliefs, and images representing the collective unconscious persistent across
the culture. Every culture has belief systems about human beings and the world
in which they live. Aja among the Yoruba spirits is the Orisha (divine spirit),
a forest spirit that protects animals and herbals, as Dryads and Oreads are
Greek Nymphs or female spirits of trees and forests. Among the Oromo, Afiisolo,
Caatto, and Shaye-Lagaa are spirits of the forest, while Ateete, Ogliya,
Adbaarii, Qoollo, Geerii, and Daache relate to home, earth and land. Yet all
are some of the Macca / Sibu Oromo guardian spirits that oversee man and the
place of man in relation to nature.
The
Oromo esoteric knowledge of human-environment relations draws on ecological archetypes:
motifs about spirits of the forest and Dachi/Mother Earth. Dachii is highly
regarded as sacred in this Earth Song next because earth is believed to mediate
and appease God (Waaqa) on behalf of humanity (nama), who lives to labor on
earth under the sky-god, waaqaa-lafa:
Dachi nagaa
bultee Good
morning Mother Earth
Dachi badhaatuu
koo Symbol
of affluence and wealth
Sirra qonnee
nyaannaa We
live to plow and prosper on you
Sirra horree
yaafnaa To
bear and rear on you
5 Jiraa keenya in baatta You
carry us alive on your back
Du’aa keenya in
nyaatta And
our dead back in your womb
Jalli kee
bishaanii Where
water of life flows nonstop
Irri kee
midhaanii! And
fertility, abundance, and crop!
Kun hiyyeessa
hinjettu You
don’t discriminate the poor
10 Hiyyeessa abbaa cittoo The
poor with a skin rash
Kun sooressa hin
jettu From
the rich with sweet fragrance
Sooressa abbaa
shittoo All
are equal kin and kith
Ya wal
qixxeessituu koo! Before
your eyes, oh Mother Earth![44]
This
common Earth Worship above is a motif that resonates widely among the Oromo as
part of a morning ritual in farm fields. It embodies the close union between
earth and humankind, unlike the Western humanism which emphasizes innate human
capability and agency as well as rationalism. The song below is a symbolic
representation of a strong relationship the Oromo have with their land:
Yaa Oromoo, ya
saba guddaa garaa qulqullu oh,
Oromo, the great nation on earth
Qonnee nyaanna
lafa hin gurgurru! Say
no to land grab and yes to till it![45]
The
influence of African traditional belief system is evident in the daily lives of
the people including agricultural rites of plowing, sowing, harvesting,
funeral, birth, and wedding rituals, side by side with the intense religious
experience of Christianity and Islam. Morning is a sign of good omen in the
Oromo worldview about creation and fertility.
The
spirit communication through human and nonhuman beings, for example, through
animal or rain symbolism that the people interpret as good or bad omen, is
followed by an incantation, a song or prayer, and a ritual performance to
reverse what is believed to be a bad luck.[46]
The Oromo local knowledge tells us that when we go out to sow the farm, there
is more to the deer that crosses our path, or to the woman/girl with an empty
water jar that we meet on our way to set a marriage agreement. The people
believe their instinct will always advise them to heed to the spirit
communication to rethink and reverse the bud luck before making a decision to
take or not to take some action.
Love Songs, Ecological References
In
another example, a folksinger laments the historical loss of land and natural
resources, a revolutionary theme he introduced to the lyric titled “Amala Kee,”
meaning, “Your Vibe”:
Salgan Haroo Abbaa
Makoo The nine pools of Abba
Makoo,
Iddoo gabaa hin qotani. It is taboo to plow a marketplace.
Dur manni keenya asoo Oh, our home used to be here
gamoo itti ijaarattanii. They evicted us to erect these buildings.[47]
Iddoo gabaa hin qotani. It is taboo to plow a marketplace.
Dur manni keenya asoo Oh, our home used to be here
gamoo itti ijaarattanii. They evicted us to erect these buildings.[47]
Nature
and places represented in this song are ecological references to the ongoing
land grab, eviction, rural-urban migration, urbanization and industrialization.
Studies show that “Industrialization within the urban areas and conversion of
different land use … has caused the rapid depletion of existing tree cover
during the past 100 years”.[48] The current Oromo protest is more than opposition to
the annexation of land and reclaiming Finfinne; rather it builds on the decades
of protracted Oromo struggle for social and environmental justice.[49]
Most
recently a lyric song titled “Maalin Jira!” meaning, “Distracted!” by the young Oromo artist, Hacaaluu Hundeessaa has gone viral on the social media
as it taps into the Oromo people’s feelings of alienation, deprivation and
resentment.[50]
The lines below reiterate the deep-seated resentment about divisions and the
historical loss of those dominant places and ecology:
Gullalleen kan
Tufaa Gullalle
of Tufaa
Gaara Abbichuu
turii Abbichu’s
mountainous land
Galaan Finfinnee
dha..see And Finfinne of Galan
Silaa akka
jaalalaa Love
contains all
5 Walirraa hin fagaannuu We never chose to grow apart,
Jara t’ nu
fageessee! But
others pushed us to fall!
The
ethnonyms Gullalle, Galan, and Gaara Abbichu are toponyms used to indicate the
topographic features of the lands and to represent lineages of the same name of
the Tulama branch. Major Harris of the British envoy wrote thus his eyewitness
account of the first half of the 19th century:
“…rolling on
like the mighty waves of the ocean, down poured the Amhara horse among the rich
glades and rural hamlets, at the heels of the flying inhabitants—tramping
underfoot the fields of the ripening corn, and sweeping before them the vast
herds of cattle which grazed untended in every direction”[51]
The
conquest evicted the indigenous Oromo people in and around Finfinne and
degraded the environment in which they lived by burning “village after village
until the air was dark with their smoke mingled with the dust raised by the impetuous
rush of man and horse,”[52]
and reduced the citizens to serfs and slaves under subjugation. The bitterness was subdued by fear of
repression and ostracism imposed by “Jara”/ “Others,” the oppressors (line 6)
throughout Oromo history until the nation/region-wide Oromo Protest broke out
in 2014. Hence, the singer critiques his people’s lack of unity and solidarity
by alluding to the mountain, i.e., the oppressive system:
Diiganii, gaara
sana Level
that mountain
Gaara diigamuu
hin malle Not easy to bulldoze
Nu baasan adaan
baane They rendered us asunder
Nu addaan bahuu
hin malle Division
we never chose
The
feeling of love and desperation represented by the mountain is real and shared
through the lyric which helps the ethnographer to chart the contours of rural
consciousness to illuminate how place-based/ecological identities profoundly
influence the people’s understanding of politics from “below”. The people participate in the spatial and environmental dynamics in
traditional ways that predate industry. While their history is intertwined with
the history of conquest and subjugation, a continued deprivation,
marginalization, land grab, eviction, pollution, and resentment in the broader
sweep of history, the Oromo people show a most enduring relationship with their
places. Any external pressure and
its internal surrogates who disrupt this relationship between the people and
their environment face fierce resistance.
RETURN TO ECOCULTURE: A Coda
In
this study ecopoetics of Oromo folksongs has been considered as a compelling
case for the transformative cultural agency to explore the ethically challenged
human-ecology relationships. Ecopoetics
has been presented as an ecocultural creative process, as an act of aesthetic
force of discourse that extends the human-ecology nexus beyond the mundane
activities and use of nature to
understand the local perceptions/beliefs
and their implications about the
human close observation of, empathic interaction and ethical relationship to nature.
The
study concludes with some ecopoetic insight that the underlying aesthetic
preoccupation of ecopoetics is predicated on the ideological and aesthetic
(ideo-aesthetic) commitment to reveal the materialist underpinnings of eco-colonialism,
i.e., environmentally motivated global capitalism. Hence, ecopetics shows
solidarity with people’s resistance from “below” against the predations of
eco-colonialism by focusing on, among other preoccupations, exploring the
dynamics of ecoculture, critiquing the commodification of environment;
collecting and analyzing the ethnoecological data about the human-environment
relationship, and human responsibilities and actions to save environment. To
advance this cause this project made an attempt to reimagine folklore and
ethnomusicology scholarship (academic or public) as a way of merging
socioeconomic reality with environmentalism and as a platform for providing a
face for the invisible but real presence of eco-colonialism both in
industrialized and developing countries. To do so, ecopoetics of folksongs and
ecological archetypes create a combination of transdisciplinary approaches to
enrich the ecocultural texture and open venue for an outreach in the wider
ethnoecological research beyond humanities and social sciences.
NOTES
[1]Lemmu Baisa
claims, “The Oromo maintained a loose cultural center at Haro Wallabu since
about 1586 …until the practice was banned after the conquest…”. See Lemmu Baisa,
“The Foundation and Development of Oromo Nationalism: Some Preliminary Observations,” in Oromo Commentary, Volume V, No. 1, 1995,
(pp15-16), see p15. Cf., Feyisa Deme, “The Origin of the Oromo: a
Reconsideration of the Theory of the Cushitic Roots,” in the Journal of Oromo Studies, V. 5, Nos. 1
& 2, July 1998, pp 155-172. Feyisa
maintains that the presence of' the Oromo and other Cushitic peoples in
“Ethiopia’s” plateau dates back to “5000 B.C. (citing Christopher Ehert’s
“Kushitic Prehistory,” 1976).
[2]Bruno Latour and S.C. Strum.
“Human Social Origin” see “Story-telling and story tellers”, in the Journal of Social Biological Structure,
1986, 9. 169-187, see p171.
[3] Stephen Belcher, African Myths of Origin, (London:
Penguin Books Ltd., 2005). In his “The Oromo of Southern Ethiopia,” Belcher
presents a creation myth of the Oromo.
[4] For instance, there is an Oromo
story about the cow that ate the sacred Oromo Book of Knowledge. The story
goes, a sacred book descended from waaqa (heaven) and Ate-Loon, a sacred cow,
ate it. Today it is the book which stuck in the peritoneum of the cow that
haruspices (Abbaa Mooraa) or seers read future events in the entrails (Enrico
Cerulli, 1922. The Folk Literature of the
Oromo…, p44, citing Theophile Lefebure, 1845, v.1 pxv.
[5] See Edward
Chamberlin, If This Is Your Land, Where
Are Your Stories? (Toronto: Alfred Knopf Canada, 2003), p1.
[6]Virginia Luling,
Government and Social Control among Some
Peoples of the Horn of Africa, (MA thesis, University of London, 1965),
cited in Asafa Jalata, 2005, p18. Paulitschke (1889) reported that the Oromo
were in Northeast Africa at least during the Axumite period, i.e., about 200
B.C. – 800 A.D.” See Teshale Tibebu, The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974, (Lawrenceville,
NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1995), p.xv.
[7] Ministry of Environment, Forest
and Climate Change, Ethiopia/Oromia. “Oromia Forested Landscape Program Social
Assessment,” Addis Ababa, 2017, p23.
[8] Conrad P.
Kottak, “The New Ecological Anthropology”, American
Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 10:1 (March), 1999, pp. 23-35, see p26.
For the influences of beliefs and practices on local communities to adapt to
environment, see Roy A. Rappaport,
“Nature, Culture and Ecological Anthropology”, in Man, Culture and Society.
H.Shapiro ed. New York: Oxford University Press, (1971), pp.237-268.
[9]Assefa Tefera Dibaba,
“Ethnography of Resistance Poetics:...,” Unpublished PhD Dissertation,
Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, 2015.
[10] Simon C. Estok.
“Discourses of Nation, National Ecopoetics, and Ecocriticism in the face of the
US: Canada and Korea as Case Studies,” in Comparative
American Studies, Vol. 7 No. 2, June, 2009, 85–97, p89. See also Anne
Clement, "Rethinking Peasant Consciousness in Colonial Egypt: … Karnak and
Dendera … (1885-1914)." History and
Anthropology 21, no. 2 (2010): 73-100.
[11]Oscar Labang
“Toward a Postcolonial African Ecopoetics,” Ecocultural
Perspectives: Literature and Language.
Eds. Oscar C. Labang et al. Raytown (MO): Ken Scholars Publishing, (2015),
pp13-32, p16.
[12] Mary Hufford.
(1999). “Working in the Cracks: Public Space, Ecological Crisis, and the
Folklorist,” Journal of Folklore
Research, Vol. 36, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society
(May - Dec., 1999), pp. 157-167, citing William Sullivan, 1995:61.
[13] Hafford, ibid.
[14] Hufford, ibid.
p159, citing Foucault 1980:81. Cf. Asafa Jalata, “The Struggle for Knowledge:
The Case of Emergent Oromo Studies” in African
Studies Review, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Sep., 1996), pp. 95-123, p96, citing
William A. Shack, 1994:642.
[15] Ashenafi Belay
Adugna. “Exploring Environmental Discourses in Oral Literature: Ecocritical
Analysis of Oromo Proverbs,” in Journal
of Languages and Culture, vol 5(2), pp24-35, June 2014.
[16] Scott Slovic,
“Giving Expression to Nature: Voices of Environmental Literature,” Environment 41(2), see also in Ashanafi,
ibid. p27.
[17] Admasu Shunkuri,
“Irreecha Oromo Tradition in Thanksgiving: Its Assimilation in Ethiopia,” Ethiopian Review. 8. 4 (Oct 31, 1998): 42.
[18]
Edward Chamberlin.
If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your
Stories? Toronto: Alfred Knopf Canada, 2003.
[19] See Bruno Latour, “Politics of nature: East and West
Perspectives,” in Ethics & Global
Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011.
[20]J. Mowo et al.
2011. “The Importance of Local Traditional Institutions in the Management of
Natural Resources in the Highlands of Eastern Africa,” Working Paper No 134.
Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre. Available on http://dx.doi.org/10.5716/WP11085.PDF, p2.
[21]Terry Gifford,
“Towards a new Multi-dimensional Ecopoetics of Place,” Bath Spa University. [A draft
submitted for publication, 14 September 2012], p1.
[22] Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996, pp,
72, 73.
[23]Asafa Jalata, “Gadaa (Oromo
Democracy): An Example of Classical African Civilization,” Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.5, no.1, March 2012, p128. See
also Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz
Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, (New York: Plenum Press), (1985), p262.
[24]
Michael J.
Sheridan and Celia Nyamweru, eds. African Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics
& Social Change.
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), p7.
See Tsehai Berhane-Selassie “The Socio-politics of Sacred Groves,” pp103-116.
[25]
Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management,
(Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis, 1999).
[26]
“African
Songs, Chants, and Games,” available at http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/africasong.html
inyoka (een-yoh'-gkah) = a snake
ufudu (oo-foo'-doo) = a tortoise, /oo/ as in fool
indlovu (een-dloh'-voo) = an elephant
ikhozi (ee-koh'zee) = an eagle
ufudu (oo-foo'-doo) = a tortoise, /oo/ as in fool
indlovu (een-dloh'-voo) = an elephant
ikhozi (ee-koh'zee) = an eagle
[27]A. Fortress Isaiah, “The Political Economy of
Book Publishing: A Critical View of Eco-Poetics and National Consciousness.”
Covenant University, Ota. Available at
[28] Ibid.
[29] April 1995. A
message Ken Saro-Wiwa sent from prison upon winning the 1995 Goldman
Environmental prize and quoted in National
Geographic Magazine (April 1996).
[30] Peter Barry,
“Ecocriticism.” Beginning Theory: An
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1995.
[31] For
pre-colonial African TEK see Munyaradzi Mawere, “Traditional Environment
Conservation Strategies in Pre-Colonial Africa: Lessons from Zimbabwe,” Afro Asian Journal of Social Sciences
Volume 4, No. 4.1 Quarter I 2013.
[32]Oscar Labang “Toward a Postcolonial African Ecopoetics,” ibid, p14.
[33] Ibid., p14.
[34] Mitchell
Thomashow. Ecological Identity:
Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1996.
[35]Durning AT. 1992. Guardians
of the Land: Indigenous peoples and the health of the earth. Washington (DC): Worldwatch Institute. Worldwatch Paper 112.
[37]The poetics here is poetic practices about ecology and the local theory which
regulates it, i.e. environmental folklore
or folkloric ecopoetics. The politics is about environmental justice
and/or heritage protection movement. See Okpewho, “Introduction” viii, in Research in African Literatures 38.3 (2007):
vii-xxi.
[38]Jan Vancina, Oral Tradition as History. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1985), p12.
[39] Cf. Meklit Hadero’s TedTalk, “The unexpected
beauty of everyday sounds,” on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Gl4xw6S9Q
[40]
Cf. Informants, Gameessa
Gojee (age, 90), Gammada Tola (age, 92), Fieldnote #4, p96, Hidhabu Aboote,
2010.
[41] Interview, informant, Gurmu B.
Shararo, 2010.
[42] See Ashenafi Belay Adugna, ibid.
[43] Paul Alan Cox and Thomas
Elmqvist, “Ecocolonialism and Indigenous-Controlled Rainforest Preserves in
Samoa,” in Ambio, vol. 26, no. 2,
pp84-89, see p84.
[44] Gurmu Badhadha, Informant, 2010,
Salale.
[45] This is a widely chanted and
repeated song on Oromo Protests led by Qeerroo, the Oromo youth league.
[46]
Philipp
Paulitschke, Ethnography of Northeastern
Africa , 2 vols., Berlin
(1893-96); See the text of Oromo (post-) war ritual below in Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, (London and New York:
Routledge, 1950), pp43-44. The Oromo ritual of appeasing the spirit of war
victim includes dance accompanied by song:
“Be not angry”,
they say, “because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads
might now have been exposed in your village. We have offered
the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us in peace.
Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been better that we should remain
friends? Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head would not have
been cut off.”
Freud cites James Frazer quoting
Paulitschke (1893–6 [2, 50, 136]).
[47]Galaanaa
Gaaromsaa, 2016. “Amala Kee,” meaning, “Your Vibe.” Available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-1f80fncnw
[48] E.T. Shikur.
“Challenges and problems of urban forest development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,”
in Trees, People
and the Built Environment. Proceedings of the Urban Trees Research Conference,
Birmingham, UK, 13-14 April 2011, p131.
[49] The Human Rights Watch 2016 country report shows
that the ongoing protests in Oromia “began on November 12, 2015 in Ginchi, a
small town 80 kilometers southwest of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, which is
surrounded by Oromia region and home to most of Ethiopia’s estimated 35 million
Oromo, the country’s largest ethnic group. The decision of authorities in
Ginchi to clear a forest to lease for an investment project triggered protests
in at least 400 different locations across all the 17 zones in Oromia.” See Human Rights Watch, June 2016, “Such a
Brutal Crackdown:…,” p1. Available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/16/such-brutal-crackdown/killings-and-arrests-response-ethiopias-oromo-protests
[50] Hacaalu Hundessaa, “Maalin
Jira!” / “Distracted!” See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcOAp9gDERk.
[51]W.C. Harris, The Highlands of Ethiopia. in 3 volumes. London: Longman, Brown,
Green, and Longman, 1844.
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