Gumuz (people)

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Girls from the Gumuz ethnic group

The Gumuz (own name Bega ; German also Gumus. Other names Gumis, Gumz, Gombo, Bega-Tse, Sigumza, Mendeya, Debatsa, Debuga, Dehenda ) are an ethnic group that lives in the lowlands of the Benishangul-Gumuz region in Ethiopia and in Fazogli is based in Sudan . According to the 2007 census, around 159,000 Gumuz live in Ethiopia.

Language and culture

The language of the Gumuz, the Gumuz , belongs together with other languages ​​of the region to the Komuz languages , a subgroup of the Nilo-Saharan language family .

The Gumuz traditionally form a segmentary society without central political power. They include various subgroups with their own names. You are in matrilineal organized clans, with regard to establishment of a married couple, however, the true patrilocality . Men who can afford it are allowed to have multiple wives. Each clan appoints a so-called tesa , which mediates in disputes, conflicts between clans are now also fought in state courts. Clan membership determines access to land.

Both Ethiopian Orthodox and - more recently - evangelical Christianity and Islam are widespread among the Gumuz, besides they have their traditional religion with the belief in a creator god ( Reeba ). They worship nature, where God and the sun are synonymous. At ceremonial events, they wear umbrellas in deference .

The Gumuz live in the lowlands in western Ethiopia north of the Blue Nile , some have probably only lived south of the Blue Nile since the 19th century; there are also reports of an isolated group of Gumuz in a valley near Metemma . Your area is hot, malarial , and fertile. The Gumuz mainly practice shifting cultivation with hoes and grow cotton, coffee, peanuts, millet, oilseeds, beans and sorghum. They also operate beekeeping, panning for gold, raising livestock, as well as hunting, fishing and collecting. The Gumuz take part in regional trade and sell cotton and tobacco as cash crops as well as animal skins and gold on the local markets and in the neighboring Sudan.

history

Archaeologists have found sites in what is now Benishangul-Gumuz, dating back to the end of the 1st millennium BC. Or the beginning of the 1st millennium AD and assign them to the forerunners of today's Komuz-speaking ethnic groups.

According to their own traditions, the Gumuz lived in higher areas in the west of Gojjam province before they were displaced into the lowlands by the Amharen and Agau . Early European travelers like James Bruce , Henry Salt and Charles Tilstone Beke reported about Gumuz in these regions as early as the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Gumuz area was traditionally the borderland between the political centers of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Gumuz were victims of slave hunters who came from both the Ethiopian highlands and the Oromo, as well as from Sudan and the local Agaw. In 1898 the area was forcibly incorporated into Ethiopia, and until the 1930s the Gumuz provided gold and slaves as tribute. In the first half of the 20th century, Ethiopian and Sudanese elites used the area to hunt big game , especially elephants.

Until the 1980s, the derogatory term Shanqella - which also includes other dark-skinned ethnic groups in western Ethiopia - was used for the Gumuz. Most of the neighboring groups looked down on the gumuz.

In the 1980s, the Derg regime under Mengistu Haile Mariam relocated hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of the country to the western lowlands. This led to conflicts between the long-established ethnic groups such as the Gumuz and the newcomers. The government is currently granting land in the Gumuz area to investors.

literature

  • Wolde-Selassie Abbute: Identity, Encroachmeht and Ethnic Relations. The Gumuz and Their Neighbors in North-Western Ethiopia. In: Günther Schlee , Elizabeth Watson (Ed.): Changing Identifications and Alliances in Northeast Africa. Volume 1: Ethiopia and Kenya. ( Integration and conflict studies. 2). Berghahn, New York NY et al. 2009, ISBN 978-1-84545-603-0 , pp. 155-172.
  • Wolde-Selassie Abbute: Gumuz and Highland resettlers. Differing strategies of livelihood and ethnic relations in Metekel, Northwestern Ethiopia. (= Göttingen studies on ethnology. 12). Lit, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7819-8 . (Also: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2002)
  • Abdussamad H. Ahmad: The Gumuz of the Lowlands of Western Gojjam. The frontier in History 1900-1935. In: Africa. 50, 1, 1995, ISSN  0001-9747 , pp. 53-67.
  • Abdussamad H. Ahmad: Trading in Slaves in Bela-Shangul and Gumuz, Ethiopia. Border Enclaves in History, 1897-1938. In: Journal of African History. 40, 1999, ISSN  1548-1867 , pp. 433-446.
  • Vinigi L. Grottanelli: I Preniloti. Un'arcaica provincia culturale in Africa. In: Annali Lateranensi. 12, 1948, ZDB -ID 301707-2 , pp. 280-326.
  • Eike Haberland : About an unknown Gunza tribe in Wallegga. In: Rassegna di Studi Etiopici. 12, 1953, ZDB -ID 300675-x , pp. 139-148.
  • Wendy James: Sister exchange marriage. In: Scientific American. 233, 6, 1975, ISSN  0036-8733 , pp. 84-94.
  • Wendy James: From aboriginal to frontier society in western Ethiopia. In: DL Donham, Wendy James (Ed.): Working papers on society and history in Imperial Ethiopia. The southern periphery from 1880 to 1974. African Studies Center - Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, pp. 37-67.
  • Wendy James: Lifelines. Exchange marriage among the Gumuz. In: Donald Donham, Wendy James (Eds.): The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia. Essays in History and Social Anthropology. (= African studies series. 51). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1986, ISBN 0-521-32237-5 , pp. 119-147.
  • Friedrich Klausberger: Bashanga, the criminal law of the Baga-Gumuz. In: Ethnological Journal. 1, 1975, ISSN  0014-181X , pp. 109-126.
  • Richard Pankhurst: The history of the Bareya, Shanqella and other Ethiopian slaves from the borderlands of the Sudan. In: Sudan Notes and Records. 58, 1977, ISSN  0375-2984 , pp. 1-43.
  • Peter Wallmark: The Bega (Gumuz) of Wellega. Agriculture and subsistence. In: M. Lionel Bender (Ed.): Peoples and cultures of the Ethio-Sudan borderlands. Michigan State University - African Studies Center, East Lansing MI 1981, pp. 79-116. ( Committee on Northeast African Studies Monograph 10, ZDB -ID 2207606-2 )

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolde-Selassie Abbute: Identity, Encroachmeht and Ethnic Relations: The Gumuz and Their Neighbors in North-Western Ethiopia. In: Günther Schlee, Elizabeth Watson (Eds.): Changing Identifications and Alliances in Northeast Africa: Ethiopia and Kenya. 2009, ISBN 978-1-84545-603-0 , pp. 155-172.
  2. ↑ Central Statistics Agency : Summary and Statistical Report of the 2007 Population and Housing Census Results ( Memento of March 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.7 MB), p. 84.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Jon Abbink: Gumuz ethnography. In: Siegbert Uhlig (Ed.): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica . Volume 2, 2005, ISBN 3-447-05238-4 .
  4. ^ A b Alfredo González-Ruibal , Víctor M. Fernández Martínez: Exhibiting Cultures of Contact: A Museum for Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia. (PDF; 456 kB), In: Stanford Journal of Archeology. 5, 2007, pp. 61-90.
  5. ↑ Wolde-Selassie Abbute: Gumuz and Highland resettlers. Differing strategies of livelihood and ethnic relations in Metekel, Northwestern Ethiopia. (= Göttingen studies on ethnology. 12). 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7819-8 .
  6. ↑ Wendy James: Lifelines: exchange marriage among the Gumuz. In: Donald Lewis Donham, Wendy James (Eds.): The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia: Essays in History and Social Anthropology . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-32237-5 , pp. 119-147.
  7. ↑ LaVerle Berry: Mätäkkäl. In: Siegbert Uhlig (Ed.): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. Volume 3, 2008, ISBN 978-3-447-05607-6 .