The formation of ethnic identity in South Omo: the Dassenech

Abstract

The traditional history of the Dassenech is based almost entirely on oral sources. An amalgam of peoples who identify themselves as members of territorial sections, clans and sub-clans, the Dassenech came together as a people over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper reviews these various traditions and notes the particular role played by environmental and ecological disasters in causing individuals, families and larger groups of people at certain times to migrate and at other times to be absorbed as new immigrants by neighboring communities. Also considered are the mechanisms that facilitated these movements. More contemporary research makes clear that traditions, which recall such interethnic relationships, are still acknowledged and drawn upon in times of present-day violence and rapid change. However, as the last section of this paper notes, there is a serious lack of evidence from the period after 1925 as to the particular mechanisms that allow individuals, families, or larger groups of people to actually shift identity. Can the Dassenech still respond as they once did, and by extension the other peoples in the South Omo, to contemporary environmental and/or ecological crises such as are now posed by the dams of the Gilgel Gibe project on the Omo River?

Keywords:

• identity
• ethnicity
• oral tradition
• Ethiopia
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AHRC Project Workshop, Anthropology and History Along the Omo,” African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, September 2009. I wish to thank the organizers and the participants for their valuable comments; this final version is of course mine alone. The paper is drawn from a number of publications, the basis of which is principally my PhD thesis “Historical Traditions,” and inter alia Background History, “Fishermen Herders,” and “Feasts, Famines and Friends.”

Notes

1. See for example, Lamphear, Traditional History and Scattering Time; Waller, “Ecology”; Robinson, “Gabbra”; Fratkin, Surviving Drought; Schlee, Identities; and inter alia Spear and Waller, Being Maasai.

2. 228 interviews were conducted in northern Kenya and southwest Ethiopia during two extended periods of research from October 1975 to February 1979. Each interview is designated a “Historical Text” proceeded by the ethnic group of the interviewees and followed by the sequential number of the date it was recorded.

3. See, for example, Thomas Spear, Kenya's Past. This truncation between traditions of genesis and those that abruptly begin toward the end of eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries and then run consistently onwards to the present is found in the historical record across a wide spectrum of communities and have been recorded by the scholars from the mid-1960s. See for example the works of John Lamphear, John Berntsen, Richard Waller, and Paul Robinson.

4. Galaty, “East African Hunters and Pastoralists.”

5. Spear “Introduction,” 15.

6. More recent studies that make this same point include Abbink, “Fate of the Suri,” 37–8, Amborn, “Burji,” 93–4, and Kellner, “Significance of Oral Tradition,” 103.

7. Current research on ethnic and identity formation is focused largely on contemporary political maneuverings against a background of violence and rapid change, and how relations with others are negotiated and contracted. See for example, Watson, “Hardening of Lines”; Schlee, “Brothers”, 417–35, and “Space and Time”; Schlee and Watson, Changing Identification, 15–31. The emphasis is on the macro-level, i.e. between ethnic groups, whereas what is distinct about the oral tradition focus in this paper is its emphasis on the micro-level not only in times of hostility, but more so in times of co-operation and the strength and quality of relationships formed through inter-marriage, trading partnerships and bond friends.

8. Dassenech Historical Text (hereafter DHT) 3.

9. As with other ethnic communities in the region, there are Dassenech traditions that seem to preserve a sequential order said to record the “appearance” of each clan within a section. However, within at least one of these sections, the Inkoria, different clan sequences are recognized at two of the most significant ritual occasions, the dimi ceremony and circumcision. In general, though, Dassenech clan traditions are more widely diffuse and mythical. Cf ., Kellner, “Significance,” 103, Watson and Schlee, “Introduction,” 1.

10. Boran Historical Text (hereafter, BHT) 3. Sobania, “Historical Traditions,” 52.

11. Rendille Historical Text (hereafter RHT) 4. Sobania, “Historical Traditions,” 52–3.

12. Also see Schlee, Identities.

13. Wallerstein, “Two Modes,” 168–9.

14. Sobania, “Historical Traditions,” 35.

15. DHT 1, including DHT 7, 8, 13, 31, and 35.

16. See, for example, Turkana Historical Text 6, 10, and Lamphear THT 3.

17. DHT 7.

18. DHT 3, 7, 21.

19. DHT 5.

20. Almagor, Pastoral Partners.

21. DHT 18.

22. DHT 21.

23. DHT 5.

24. DHT 3.

25. DHT 18.

26. DHT 5. “Boran” is an inclusive term for the Borana, Gabbra, Sakuye and perhaps others. Seldom did the Dassenech distinguish and then only in reference to more recent events.

27. DHT 3 and 8.

28. DHT 17.

29. DHT 18.

30. DHT 17.

31. DHT 5.

32. DHT 9.

33. This diversity of origins is readily recognized in the narrative traditions of the peoples from across this region. See for example the work of Lamphear and Robinson.

34. DHT 2.

35. DHT 5.

36. Waller and Sobania, “Pastoralism,” 61.

37. For a contemporary example of how modern-day environmental factors can set off a change in identity see Schlee, “Brothers.”

38. See for example, DHT 20.

39. See for example, DHT 6.

40. See especially Sobania, “Feast, Famines and Friends”; Sobania, “Historical Traditions,” 97–131. Cf., Almagor, Pastoral Partners.

41. Samburu Historical Text 33, SHT 28, DHT 31.

42. Rendille Historical Text 4.

43. SHT 5.

44. RHT 1.

45. RHT 2.

46. DHT 5.

47. SHT 37.

48. RHT 7; see also SHT 33.

49. This era of imperial expansion and “exploration,” included one of Menelik's generals planting an Ethiopian flag at Fashoda ahead of the French and British colonizers, who were also advancing into the region to claim their spheres of influence.

50. The Boran called them “Tigre” and the Acholi and Jie knew them as “Habachi”.

51. DHT 1.

52. DHT 21, also 2, 36, 38, 39.

53. DHT 44.

54. Punitive expeditions were carried out again the Turkana in 1914–15 and 1918, see Lamphear, Scattering Time.

55. Greste, “The Dam.”

56. Waller and Sobania, “Pastoralism,” 62.

57. Watson, “Hardening of Lines”; Schlee, “Brothers.”

58. Schlee, “Brothers,” 431.