ETHNOGRAPHY of RESISTANCE POETICS Power and Authority in Salale Oromo Folklore and Resistance Culture, Ethiopia, Northeast Africa
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ETHNOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE POETICS POWER AND AUTHORITY IN SALALE OROMO FOLKLORE AND RESISTANCE CULTURE Ethiopia, Northeast Africa Assefa Tefera Dibaba Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology Indiana University June 2015 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee: _____________________________________ John McDowell, Ph.D, Chair _____________________________________ Gregory Schrempp, Ph.D _____________________________________ Beverly Stoeltje, Ph.D _____________________________________ Marvin Sterling, Ph.D Dissertation Defense: May 6, 2015 ii Copyright © 2015 Assefa Tefera Dibaba iii Yaa Badhoo kiyya maal katamaa maashoon boba’u? Yaa Badhoo kiyya! ajjeeftanii nurra hin deeminaa, damiin carqii miti hin moofa’uu! * * * Oh, Badhoo, what is up in the town, lamp is lit? your dream that I knit! Let them never step over our dead, not worn out; it clots—our blood that they shed! iv For My father, the late Tefera Dibaba Jini, and My mother, Aragash Sambata Tokkon who sparked my future in their narratives of perseverance and aptness: Gadaa dabre hin fiigan, biiftuu jirtu sussukan, meaning, Time was, time never is. v Acknowledgments I owe gratitude to many people and institutions who encouraged me to be where I am and who contributed a great deal into the completion of this study. First, I am most grateful to my father, the late Tefera Dibaba, and my mother, Aragash Sambata, who kindled my future in their words of perseverance and diligence and shouldered the unbearable burden of educating me from the time I was a herd-boy. Their narratives mediated on the passage of time and the futility of memory, on the idea of the past and future only a heartbeat away, and on the need to work in the present against just this rush of life, which can be so daunting without thoughtful guidance. My heartfelt thanks go to my dissertation Chair, John McDowell, who constantly supplied the intellectual encounters and provided moral support that sustained my development as a graduate student. Throughout the course of my studies and while working on my dissertation, I have benefited a great deal from his brainstorming ideas and encouragements. Over the years, as my mentor, advisor, and professor, he has been patient enough to provide me with insightful suggestions and opportunities. My warmest indebtedness also goes to my research committee: Beverly Stoeltje, Gregory Schrempp, Marvin Sterling, and Gracia Clark, who read my dissertation in its initial draft and whose comments have been constructive. I have had the good fortune to work with my research committee and this dissertation has been shaped by our consistent discussions. They share no responsibility for any errors I have made. I am deeply grateful to Marvin Sterling for his dedication to read thoroughly the preliminary drafts and revisions and for his thoughtful suggestions. I am fortunate enough also to have had the guidance of Gregory Schrempp for taking an interest in my topic and for his constructive comments which shaped the present dissertation significantly. I would like to thank Gracia Clark who kindly vi provided me with valuable resources and for her teaching me the “Life History” method. I am also grateful to Indiana University Graduate School for the generous funding for my dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Dean Yolanda Trivino for her encouragement and considerate support. This dissertation took its present form through a multitude of discussions and inquiries with scholars of various backgrounds both in the field and in academic settings. I am grateful to Daniel Reed and Christy True who generously offered me moral supports. I am also indebted to Moira Lorraine Marsh for her time and kind suggestions. Outside of the Indiana University other scholars who generously contributed their knowledge and time include Kyle, Ellie Macfarlane, Katharine Stewart, Dan Ben-Amos, Asafa Jalata, Mohammad Hassan, Tewodros Magarsa Gammada and the Oromo Community of Minnesota. I thank the ECC community in Bloomington, IN, for their commitment to stand constantly by my side during hard times: I should like to record my special thanks to Kyle for his tireless help and enthusiasm and Ellie for her time, interest, and patience to read my dissertation meticulously. I am also sincerely thankful to Katharine Stewart for her personal insights and for the liberty I cherished to correspond. I thank Dan Ben-Amos for his kind moral support. I have benefited a special learning experience from our personal discussions and email correspondence with Dan Ben-Amos since 2010. I am indebted to Asafa Jalata and Mohammad Hassan for their profound works, critique and wisdom have been invaluable in Oromo studies. I am grateful to Tedy Magarsa Gammada and the Oromo Community of Minnesota for their unfailing financial and moral support. vii I am deeply indebted to the IIE/SRF that rescued me from repeated persecutions and imprisonment in Ethiopia after I was awarded the 2009/2010 Scholars Fellowship. I also remain ever grateful to the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) for the Doctoral Scholars Program, which allowed me to attend three annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring conferences as a SREB Scholar. I extend my sincere appreciation and gratitude once again to my Salale informants who are my lifetime informal teachers and who greatly contributed their deep knowledge into the present study. For my academic life and future scholarly growth, I owe much to the Salale community. My immense gratefulness also goes to Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, for sponsoring the data collection for the present study which took place in September 2009 to July 2010. Last but not least, I owe a special debt of thanks to my family here in the US and in Oromia, Ethiopia. I thank Daniel, my youngest brother, also a PhD student in the School of Public Health, IUB, my children Ebba, Doti, Hene, and Hella, and Emanuel, Hanna and Emana and their family, and Urge Fufa and Daimo, Samuel, Talile, Jije, Subi, Ayantu, and Abdanne Tefera Dibaba, all for their abiding love, constant moral support and thoughts. viii Preface This study is an attempt to provide folklorists, Africanists, and other scholars interested in resistance studies with some idea of grassroots resistance practices in Africa using case examples and ethnographic data obtained from Northeast Africa among the Salale Oromo in Ethiopia. Given the explosion of uneven development of capitalism and its effects, the rapid flow of information and capital, exploitative labor, and destructive technology, which exacerbate conflicts in the region centered on unequal distribution of resources, knowledge, and power, there is a need for critical study of grassroots resistance poetics. The imbalance between uneven development and unequal historical relationships in the region has been marked not only by progression and regression, as well as transgression, resistance, and collaboration but has also been characterized by integration and disintegration/dissociation of communities in the region. Today, any attempt to engage in so interdisciplinary a field as folklore is bound to be engaged, serious, and at the same time cautious about cultural representations of this instability, political irrationality, the divergent trends of the private and individual interest differing from public concern and the lack of common purpose and substantive ends or kaawo, and moral rules. The present project came to my attention seven years back when I was teaching folklore in Addis Ababa University after which I was awarded the 2009/2010 IIE/SRF Scholars Fellowship and relocated to the US in July 2010. While I was teaching I came to be aware that sufficient attention was not paid to important areas of Oromo resistance against domination, and that folklore was overlooked as a vast terrain for this academic endeavour. As time went on I got to know a good many young and adult Salale Oromo who later became part of my present study ix and to whom I owe much. The question that resonated with me the most was this one: under what circumstance could the Salale maintain their language, culture, and identity in spite of their long-time interaction with and influence of Abyssinian cultural and political domination? I began to inquire into the Salale historical tradition, religious practices, and folklore practices, and how these were passed down from one generation to another. I discovered that most of these young people, adults, and old men and women value most the places around them, the names and significance of ritual sites, sacred groves, ancestral graveyards, farms, caves, mountains, and rivers and sacred trees. Those names and meanings are marked with unique commemorative purposes in songs, narratives, and ritual performances as part of their “local knowledge,” which constitutes what I refer to as Salale ecopoetic practices and resistance poetics. The initial motivation was to provide a critical analysis of this resistance poetics and the meaning of place to the Salale. To do so, my strategy in structuring the study has been to let the people speak for themselves, expressing their own meaning of resistance culture, bandit and banditry, sense of place in folkloric, cultural and historical context. Hence, the cultural and folkloric representations of transgression, social invisibility, and hidden injuries presented in this study are not mere rhetorical folkloric/literary depictions but actual political orientations of the Salale Oromo who story, sing and perform it out of their lived experience as part of textual strategy and discursive signification of their historical poetics. x Assefa Tefera Dibaba ETHNOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE POETICS Power and Authority in Salale Oromo Folklore and Resistance Culture, Ethiopia, Northeast Africa This dissertation is an interdisciplinary folkloristic search for resistance poetics in tradition- oriented folklore of the Salale Oromo in central Ethiopia using both a diachronic and a synchronic approach.