Dubamo

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The Dubamo are an ethnic group that lives in the Danta highlands south of Hosa'ina in southwest Ethiopia and is therefore also called Danta . They originally spoke Kambaata , but have largely switched to hadiyya .

Before the 17th century, the Dubamo area belonged to the Ethiopian Empire. From this time elements of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity have been preserved, which flowed into a syncretistic religion of the Dubamo. The Dubamo had a small kingdom that was traced back to "King Solomon of Gonder ". They are divided into seven clans as well as immigrants from Bosha (Garo) and Hadiyya who joined them in the 18th and 19th centuries.

From the beginning of the 19th century, the Sooro, a subgroup of the Hadiyya , dominated the Dubamo area. The Dubamo therefore gave up their original language, a dialect of Kambaata, and switched to Hadiyya; a minority of them speak Kambaata as a second or third language. In the 1880s the area was conquered by Ethiopia. Many have since converted to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and, from the 1970s, to Protestantism, which is now the most common religion among the Dubamo people.

The Dubamo live mainly from the cultivation of ensete and barley and were previously known for breeding horses. Since the introduction of the new federal administrative structure of Ethiopia - with which they are assigned to the Hadiya zone within the region of the southern nations, nationalities and peoples - the Dubamo have become more aware of their own cultural identity. There are therefore efforts among the Dubamo to get their own administrative zone or woreda and to be registered as a separate group instead of as hadiyya.

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