Ik (ethnicity)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ik are a small hill tribe in northeast Uganda and Kenya . Their language is the Icetot , which belongs to the eastern Kuliak branch of the East Sudan languages . In Uganda there are 5800 Ik and in Kenya 1200.

These people were made famous in the 1980s through the study of the anthropologist Colin Turnbull , who spent two years with the Ik during a period of great famine in 1965–1966 . The famine was triggered by drought , the displacement of the Ik from the fertile Kidepo Valley for the purpose of creating the Kidepo Valley National Park and attacks by neighboring tribes. In his book The Mountain People (German: The people without love. The social decline of the Ik) Turnbull painted a bleak picture of the social changes that would have ensued. For example, he described that parents chased their children away when they were three years old and then refused to let them into the household, leaving the children on their own.

This picture has been criticized as one-sided, e.g. B. by Bernd Heine . Other sources also point to an alleged increase in the population from around 2000 to 7000.

Originally a hunter-gatherer people, the Ik were forced to settle down and farm after they were driven out of their hunting grounds in the Kidepo Valley.

The Ik are also known by the name Teuso , a name given to them by neighboring peoples.

literature

  • Barth, Fredrik . "On responsibility and humanity: calling a colleague to account." Current Anthropology March (1974): 99-102.
  • Heine, Bernd . "The Mountain People: some notes on the IK of north-eastern Uganda." Africa 55 (1) (1985): 3-16.
  • Tucker, AN "Notes on Ik." African Studies 31 (3) (1972): 183: 201.
  • Turnbull, Colin M. The Mountain People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972. (German edition: The people without love. The social decline of Ik, 1982)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernd Heine: The Mountain People: Some Notes on the Ik of North-Eastern Uganda . Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 55, 1985, pp. 3-16.
  2. ↑ The figure "approx. 2000" is based on an estimate by Turnbull. It is possible that there were well over 2000 Ik at that time.