Extractions: Global Advisor Newsletter Return to Newsletter Archives T he Languages and Writing Systems of Africa Country Language Script Algeria, Al Djazair, Algérie, (Democratic and Popular Republic of) Arabic, French and a Berber language. Arabic, Latin, Berber Angola, (Republic of) Portuguese is the official language, but a Bantu language is widely spoken. Latin, Bantu Benin, former kingdom, situated in present-day SW Nigeria French and Fon Latin, Fon Botswana, ( Republic of) English is the official language, but the population is mainly Tswana, who speak a Bantu language. Latin, Bantu Burkina Faso or Burkina, formerly Upper Volta French is the official language. Latin Burundi, Republic of Official languages are French and Kurundi (a Bantu language) Swahili is also spoken Latin, Bantu Cameroon (Cameroun) (Republic of) French and English are the official languages. Latin Central African Republic (Republique Centrafricaine) French is the official language, but Sango is the medium of communication among people who speak different languages. Latin Chad
CorpWatch.org - News - USA Against All Odds, Goldman Prize have filed Guyana's first ever indigenous land rights will grant the Akawaio andArekuna peoples the right His organization Yad fon (the Raindrop) helps them http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=2414
Brazil: Five Centuries Of Music (Roots Of Brazilian Music) of the Yanomami, Bororo, Kayapo, and other indigenous groups to The Sudanese groups(Yoruba, fon, Ewe, and Ashanti Yoruba, Ewe, and other peoples brought their http://www.thebraziliansound.com/roots.htm
Extractions: The Roots of Brazilian Music Brazil's rich musical tradition derives from the profound mingling of races that has been going on since April 1500, when the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral stepped onto the lush tropical coast of what would later be southern Bahia. Of course, Cabral was not the first human to arrive in Brazil, and long before his foot touched Bahian sand, a long musical tradition had been at play for thousands of years. The ancestors of today's Brazilian Indians migrated from Asia to the Western Hemisphere somewhere between twelve thousand and forty thousand years ago and eventually made their way down to South America. When Cabral first came to Brazil, the indigenous population probably exceeded two million. In their music, they sang songs solo and in chorus, accompanying themselves with flutes, whistles, and horns. They beat out rhythms with hand-clapping, feet-stamping, rattles, sticks, and drums.
Africans Art by native and nonnative peoples moved into began importing inexpensive iron ontothe shores of africa. By 1920 indigenous furnaces ceased to produce native http://www.webzinemaker.net/africans-art/index.php3?action=page&id_art=363
ROYAL HARTIGAN-BLOOD DRUM SPIRIT The kulintang ensemble is a manifestation of precolonial indigenous Philippine culture onthe Adzohu dance drumming of the fon and the Eve peoples of West http://www.royalhart.com/ensemble/linernotes.html
Extractions: African American jazz is an international music in its ability to encompass elements of other traditions. Blood Drum Spirit is an effort to adapt the deep structures of Asian, African, and Native American traditions into the African American sound, a life force creating a space for the gods to descend, a positive alternative for what we see as a corrupt and parasitic status quo on plantation earth. Over the past centuries there have been political and cultural struggles which have impacted the world's peoples, and our music is a non-verbal manifesto for cultural and political self-determination, in opposition to the enslaving uses of armies, technologies, exploitive economics and 'religion', by the so called 'developed countries'. This album crystallizes my work over two decades in world music. I have researched, performed, and recorded with master artists from China, Philippines, India, Indonesia, the Caribbean, West Africa, African America, Ireland, and Native America; most importantly, I have lived these musical traditions and through their wisdom, come a little closer to what lies behind the music.
Resources And Links an international network of NGOs, indigenous peoples and nations Food and Trees forAfrica (FTFA) their mission fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/forestry/fon/fonP/cfu http://www.forestsandcommunities.org/links.htm
Africana.com: Gateway To The Black World.Screen Name Service Among the fon of Benin and the Yoruba, the god Oduduwa, who conquers or displacesthe indigenous population who Among the Kongo and related peoples of Central http://www.africana.com/Articles/tt_349.htm
African Timelines Part III Timeline of african history, 15th through early 19th centuries, from Central Oregon Community College.Category Society History By Region africa Slavery 1720s, Rise of Kingdom of Dahomey of fon (or Aja Nevertheless africas indigenouspersonality has managed to remain West africa, in 1839 its peoples and states http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline3.htm
Extractions: 1830-the end: http://innercity.org/holt/chron_1830_end.html late 15 th c. Kingdom of Kongo flourished on the Congo River (modern Zaire, now Republic of Congo), a confederation of provinces under the manikongo (the king; "mani" means blacksmith, denoting the early importance and spiritual power of iron working)
Seminar 3 which forbade the enslavement of the indigenous Indians (although of the Yorubaand the fon tribes. the influence of other African peoples persisted, on http://www.cocc.edu/poneill/classes/worldhistory/WH105/Seminars/seminar_3Brazil.
Extractions: Read the excerpt from the article about Brazils African legacy. It will be the foundation for the four questions you will answer, both for the seminar discussion and for the seminar paper assignment. For the seminar discussion, you should answer any two of the questions below and respond to one other persons posting. Participation in the discussion will be the basis for your grade for the seminar discussion activity. In addition, you will be required to write a two page seminar response paper which answers all four of the questions listed below. This should be based on your own reading of the article, but it can include information gained from the seminar discussion as well. The seminar paper should be done in a formal, academically appropriate writing style, which has been run through your computers spell check and grammar check features. The paper must be typed/computed; if it is not, I will not accept it. The seminar response paper is due the class period after the on-line seminar discussion is held - i.e., the following Tuesday. The syllabus describes this in detail. If you have any questions or concerns about the seminar activity or any component of it, please talk to me.
INDIGENOUS AFRICAN RELIGION > THE AFRICAN'S CONCEPT OF GOD pointing to different religious concepts in indigenous African societies AME_AXO)among the lay Ewe/fon of Togo hands and thus made of them peoples of ambivalent http://www.hypertextile.bizland.com/BLAKHUD/ind-reli/ind01.htm
Extractions: INDIGENOUS AFRICAN RELIGION CHAPTER ONE THE AFRICAN'S CONCEPT OF GOD To the one and only Supreme Being, various African societies have common attributes in different names. The Yoruba of Nigeria call him OLORUN; the Mendes of Sierra Leone, NGEWO; the Bambara of Sudan, FARO; the Ibo of Nigeria, CHUKWU; the Akan of Ghana, NYAME; and the West Camerounians, NIAMBE, to mention only a few. In essence one cannot actually differentiate JOK of the Central African people from SORO of the Nupe. To illustrate the point of differences further, one could use the example of a specific religious practice, which can be found in a number of African societies. This example is IFA, a popular divinatory science in West Africa. The name IFA is Yoruba. It is AFA in Ewe. And when the Yoruba, in the practice of giving spiritual explanations, call some of the secret codes ODI, IRETE, OGUNDA, IWORI and OSA, the Ewe are referring to the same codes when they say DI, LETE, GUDA, WOLI and SA. Even if the latter are copying a practice of the former, such differences will occur. On the other hand, similarities could be striking. For example the Lotuko of Central Africa perform rainmaking rituals. A rite of black goat offering is made to the sacred stones and these stones are washed with water from a sacred stream. Similar rites are performed to the rain-stones (TSINA) of the Ewe. In the same way both the Ewe and Jaba of Nigeria believe a witch could eat the 'egg' in a pregnant woman's womb. Therefore the Ewe and Jaba forbid children and pregnant women to eat eggs. It is even believed that a woman used to eating chicken eggs may be tempted to eat her own 'eggs'
AmericArtes: Expresiones Latinas Mexicois a melting pot of indigenous groups and historical and cultural legaciesof African peoples in New them among the Mande, Akan, fon, Yoruba, Ejagham http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/americartes/expresiones_latinas/artsedge.html
Extractions: Latin Americacomprised of South America, Central America and Mexicois a melting pot of indigenous groups and people of Iberian and African descent. As a result, it is a region of great ethnic, cultural, and artistic diversity. Among those Latin Americans with African origins, there are still further divisions in ethnicity. Afro-Cubans, Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Colombians, and Haitian cultures have each made significant impacts on the cultural, historical, and everyday life of Latin America. The following articles provide good background information on the Afro-Latino traditions, culture, history, and modes of expression that are associated with the region known as the Black Atlantic. People and Places The African Diaspora The survival and transformation of African culture in the Americas has been one of the "New World's" major historical themes and an issue under debate in academic, artistic and public circles for years. To understand the important role that African peoples have played in resisting the racially and economically exploitative institutions of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonial enterprise for over four hundred years, we must explore the rich historical and cultural legacies of African peoples in New World areas. more...
IK Monitor 2(3) Publications and the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples.' (Mike Warren BelloImam, IB,SA Aziegbe, AT Okoosie, fon Roberts (1993), 'indigenous selection of http://www.nuffic.nl/ciran/ikdm/2-3/communications/publications.html
Extractions: George C. Kajembe 1994 Indigenous management systems as a basis for community forestry in Tanzania: a case study of Dodoma urban and Lushoto Districts pp 194. ISSN 0926-9495. Wageningen Agricultural University, Tropical Resource Management Papers, No 6. Wageningen Agricultural University, Department of Forestry P.O. Box 342, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands. Tel: +31-8370-84426. Fax: +31-8370-83542. This book aims both 'to demonstrate empirically the gap between indigenous and professional forest management systems' in Tanzania and 'to suggest ways of bridging the gap'. Recently there has been an increasing amount of literature dealing with indigenous forest management practices in various parts of the world. There has also been some literature arguing that community forestry projects ought to be built upon such practices, or should, at least, take them into account in project implementation. Unfortunately much of the literature has been anecdotal and rather simplistic. A very pleasing aspect of this book is the way in which Kajembe has taken definitions and models of indigenous forest management systems outside Tanzania (particularly from Nepal) and used these as a basis for analysis. An improved understanding of indigenous systems generally is likely to follow from such comparative analysis. According to Kajembe, indigenous forest management in the areas he has studied tend to be mostly concerned with agroforestry on essentially 'private' land (at the household level) rather than on 'common' land at the supra-household level. (This seems, ironically, to be at least partly a result of the government's enforced villagization programme in the past.) Kajembe acknowledges the importance of indigenous knowledge of forests, but concentrates on forest management practices rather than on IK.
Extractions: Reunification discourse has generated controversy in Cameroon since the 1990s and hinges on the issue of the degree of commitment of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians to its realization. This essay provides a chronological, comprehensive, and critical survey of the reunification question. Often only part of the history is presented, either inadvertently or deliberately. It is argued in this essay that reunification was a minority ideology conned largely to the Cameroon people of the Southwestern quadrant. That notwithstanding, its chief proponents were Francophones who conceived it, propagated it, and sustained it until the United Nations recognized it in the 1960s. The 1961 reunification of the British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroons was an extraordinary event, as peoples of different colonial backgrounds decided to form a single state. It presented a countercurrent in postcolonial Africa to the prevailing trend of the balkanization of old political unions or blocs.
Research In African Literature--The Path Is Open of the oral literatures of the peoples they study termed strategic transformations of their indigenous literary resources We have no fon equivalents of Fagunwa http://iupjournals.org/ral/ral30-2.html
Extractions: An unresolved tragedy is inherent in the task of translation. The translator knows that translation is at once impossible and necessary. That tragedy attains heroic proportions with anthropologists insofar as they are translators of entire cultures. Thus, anthropologists, at least the most honest and perceptive among them, are tragic heroes. This proposition became crystallized in my mind as an aphorism as I read the last sentence of Melville and Frances Herskovits's lengthy and challenging introduction to their Dahomean Narrative : "As spoken forms, the stories should preferably be read aloud." It is not by chance that this sentence concludes 122 pages of substantial analytical discourse in cultural anthropology. I see it as an impassioned call upon readers to displace themselves, as an invitation to leave their own world and inhabit the Fon cultural world. We are invited to read aloud, in English, Fon texts of various genres that were supposed to have been performed orally, then translated into French by Dahomean interpreters, and finally translated into English by the anthropologist authors. Only a hero indeed could cross so many borders successfullybut we do know that no such heroes ever existed. The reason is not far to find.
SANCTUARY - Ogoni - Web Search - August 1997 The fate of indigenous peoples or tribes Ogoni in Nigeria THE peoples' SUMMIT TheOTHER Economic Summit, TOES '97 http//www.igc.apc.org/kind/fon-stlouis-mosop http://stephen.richards.net/Ogoni_Pages/Ogoni_links_0897.htm
Extractions: Little has been heard about the Abacha dictatorship in Nigeria since the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting earlier this year. Yet General Abacha continues with the vilest abuses of human rights. Since 1994 over 200 pro-democracy campaigners have been shot dead in Lagos, almost 100 students, market traders and peasants have been raped and shot dead in Edo state and 2000 Ogoni people have been killed.
APFC Links http//www.fao.org/forestry/fon/fonP/cfu/ftpp/en/ftppe.stm. IAIP) is the worldwidenetwork of the organizations of indigenous and Tribal peoples living in http://www.apfcweb.org/Links/links.htm
Extractions: Links to APFC Member Countries: Australia Bangladesh Bhutan Cambodia ... Viet Nam International Links http://www.fao.org/forestry/FON/FONP/cfu/cfu-e.stm The Community Forestry Unit (CFU) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations promotes locally based, legally recognized sustainable management of forest resources. With an interdisciplinary staff that includes sociologists, anthropologists, foresters and communications experts, the Unit works to promote a balance between the socio-economic welfare of local communities and the sound management and use of natural resources. CFU provides leadership within FAO in addressing the interdisciplinary dimensions of forestry and peopleâs participation in forest management and use. It also provides technical backstopping of participatory forestry and natural resources projects and activities implemented by FAO. FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Forestry Technical Group) http://www.fao.or.th/Technical_Groups/Forestry/forestry.htm
West Africa it get a broad view of the peoples of West languages formed by the combination ofindigenous and Europeen yet, but they include Ashanti, Ewe, fon, Yoruba, Ibo http://home.bip.net/damaho/westafrica.html
Extractions: When the Anastasis was first commissioned by YWAM back in the early 80s there was uncertainty about exactly what the ship should do. Don Stephens and those who had the original vision for the Anastasis knew only that God wanted them to use the ship as a tool to help the poor and needy of the world, but exactly what that meant was not clear. The history of the early days of the Anastasis is documented in various books, including Is That Really You God? (Loren Cunningham), Mandate for Mercy (Don Stephens) and Confessions of a Seasick Doctor (Christine Aroney-Sine). It was not until the nineties that the Anastasis ministry settled into what it has now become - a ministry with a focus on medical and development work in West Africa. These have been done within the context of showing the character of God as Christians understand him - a God who cares for the poor and needy regardless of who they are, what they believe, where they live. For a brief outline of the ministry locations of Anastasis since it has made West Africa its focus click here Further down this page you will find some information on: The region of West Africa is usually thought of as consisting of 16 countries: these can be divided into four groups. First, across the top from west to east are Mauritania, Mali and Niger. Second, down the Atlantic coast from north to south are Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Third, along the southern coast from west to east are Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. And finally, in the middle is Burkino Faso and off the coast are the Cape Verde Islands.
Feature: Science In The "Eloquence Of Everyday Life" ie, scientists learning from indigenous peoples and farmers In the meantime, scienceand indigenous knowledge meet in Philippines IRRI CHIU YC, fon DS, CHEN LH http://www.searca.org/~bic/feature/science-castillo.htm
AfricAvenir - Research - Chronology Of African History 3 African states, but scholars argue that indigenous slavery was Asante (or Ashante)Empire of Akan peoples is unified Rise of Kingdom of Dahomey of fon (or Aja http://www.africavenir.org/research/research052.html
Extractions: AFRICAN EMPIRES ca. 300 (to 700) Rise of Axum or Aksum (Ethiopia) and conversion to Christianity. (By CE 1st century, Rome had conquered Egypt, Carthage, and other North African areas; which became the granaries of the Roman Empire, and the majority of the population converted to Christianity). Axum spent its religious zeal carving out churches from rocks, and writing and interpreting religious texts. ca. 600 (to 1000) Bantu migration extends to southern Africa; Bantu languages will predominate in central and southern Africa. Emergence of southeastern African societies, to become the stone city-states of Zimbabwe, Dhlo-Dhlo, Kilwa, and Sofala, which flourish through 1600. Beginning of Islam Khalif Omar conquers Egypt with Islamic troups Islam sweeps across North Africa; Islamic faith eventually extends into many areas of sub-Saharan African (to ca. 1500)
Solar Folklore These accounts represent their culture's worldview, a peoples' attempt to For moreIndigenous American starlore, see Starlore of Liza (fon people of West africa http://solar-center.stanford.edu/folklore.html
Extractions: For centuries, humans have attempted to explain the Sun in terms of their own worldviews. The Sun can be a god, a demon, a mischievous spirit, an omnipotent creator or a ruthless taker of life. Whatever role it plays, most cultures have recognized the significance of the Sun as prime controller of all life on Earth. As you read these, remember they were not stories created to entertain, nor were they written for children. These accounts represent their culture's worldview, a peoples' attempt to explain, understand, and come to grips with nature's phenomena. To the people who tell them, the accounts are as relevant and true, as deeply meaningful and spiritually important, as any scientific explanations. Indigenous American Australian Aborigine Mesopotamia Judeo-Christian ... Ancient Astronomers For more Indigenous American starlore, see
