Propagation Under Pressure Exploring the Growth of the Iraqw People in Colonial and Post-Colonial Times by Julia Daniel Parks and Peoples: Dilemmas of Protected Area Conservation in East Africa P r o f e s s o r Bill Durham and Susan Charnley Sophomore College 2014 2 A Brief History of the Iraqw People and Land The Iraqw people are agropastoralists living on the Mbulu Plateau above the Great Rift escarpment in northern Tanzania (Bartul 1969: 18). Unlike the surrounding Bantu and Nilotic peoples, the Iraqw are a Cushitic-speaking people with a unique culture and history. Their relationship to the land also differs profoundly from neighboring groups’, due to both traditional Iraqw cultural values and the unusual historical interactions between the native Iraqw and European colonizers and missionaries. The Iraqw are a southern Cushitic group, tracing their roots back two millennia to Yemen, Jordan, and Ethiopia (Langay 2014). As Cushites, their lighter skin, facial structure, and language set them apart from their Bantu and Nilotic neighbors. According to local oral tradition, the Iraqw people came south via Kenya and arrived in the Serengeti, in northwestern Tanzania. They were pushed east, however, first by the pastoralist Sukuma of the Serengeti to the Ngorongoro highlands, and then by the Ngorongoro Datoga (also spelled Datooga) to the Mbulu area (Langay 2014). During this time, the Iraqw people established themselves at sites such as Engaruka, a once-thriving agricultural settlement with complex irrigation and intercropping systems whose stone ruins Figure 1: Mbulu Highlands and Iraqw settlement areas 3 remain today. There is evidence that the Iraqw settled in the Kainam area, southeast of the modern town of Mbulu, by the beginning of the 18th century (Lawi 1999a: 2). The Iraqw call this area Iraqw’ar Da/aw, meaning the ‘Iraqw land of the east’, and they consider this 180-km2 area their modern homeland (Widgren 2004: 94). The Iraqw had a religious tradition strongly tied to their land use practices. The spirit world, made up of the earth-based male deity neetlaang’w, the sun-based female deity looa, and human ancestral spirits called gi’i, had an important role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. Ritually offensive events such as miscarriages or lightning strikes could anger these deities and cause water shortages and forest shrinkage, indicating the close coupling of culture with the well-being of the local environment (Lawi 1999a: 5). Furthermore, ritual and land use intersected in the Iraqw method of peaceful geographic expansion, wherein ‘magical’ herbal rites were performed at new or existing boundaries to claim and protect the area. While the Iraqw rarely resorted to violence except in cases of self- Figure 2: Traditional Iraqw homes defense, their methods of expansion were quite effective because their ‘witchcraft’ was in fact widely feared among neighboring ethnic groups (Anderson 1999: 131). At the turn of the 20th century, the Iraqw practiced intensive subsistence agropastoralism in this area; they lived in permanent settlements where they relied 4 both on livestock and on intercropped subsistence cultivation. In addition, they depended on forests for firewood, building material, honey, surplus grazing area, and more. As both cattle-herding pastoralists and permanently settled agriculturalists in a subsistence economy, the Iraqw measured wealth in terms of children and land area ownership (Anderson 1999: 126). Since at least the mid- nineteenth century, population growth has been a challenge within Iraqw’ar Da/aw, as it has caused increasing agricultural intensification and placed pressure on herding areas outside of the core homeland (Lawi 1999a: 13). By the turn of the century, the Iraqw had begun to settle slightly beyond the traditional borders of Iraqw’ar Da/aw (Anderson 1999: 127). The first European presence arrived in Mbulu at this time, when German colonialists gained control of the region in 1906. Christian missionaries came shortly thereafter, and the British replaced the Germans as district rulers in 1916 (Lawi 1999b: 284). Until the 1930s, the Europeans showed little interest in the daily lives of the local people, but by the mid-1930s and particularly following World War II the colonial administration began to pursue campaigns aiming to modernize natural resource management and use. These campaigns were founded on the colonial officials’ ideas about environment and development and regularly opposed traditional Iraqw views. Conflicts between local and colonial interests and between European and Iraqw culture were thus inevitable (Lawi 1999a: 11). The modernization campaigns initially focused on forest management and conservation. The British quickly declared the Nou forest, the largest and most economically important forest bordering Iraqw’ar Da/aw, a forest reserve in 1921 5 (Lawi 1999a: 12). The forest was very important as a home for threatened tree species and unique avifauna, and erosion and grazing due to human use led to silting and stream bank erosion, threatening the Nou forest’s status as an essential water source for local people (FARM Africa 2014: 3). More importantly to the British, however, the Nou was attractive for its potential for timber and for its status as a water source for emerging European settlements such as Kiru (Lawi 1999b: 298). Beginning in the 1920s, the Iraqw were thus barred from entering the forest; while this policy was incompletely enforced, its harmful effects on local livelihoods were real. By the 1950s, an Indian private sawing company possessed permits to operate in the Nou forest, but no locals were employed there and only a tiny fraction of the timber was sold locally for Iraqw use (Lawi 1999a: 14). Sources: Widgren Iraqw Tanzanian Iraqw Tanzanian 2004, NBS 2014 population population increase increase 1900 18,000 4 million 1948 107,600 7.5 million +498% +87% 1957 133,494 9.1 million +24% +21% 2000 0.6 million 35 million +349% +285% Net change +3429% +775% The British colonial period witnessed both a dramatic increase in Iraqw population and a large expansion in Iraqw land holdings beyond Iraqw’ar Da/aw. At the same time, however, the neighboring Datoga and Maasai, reeling from the effects of rinderpest and European control, struggled to maintain access to their pre- colonial land holdings (Widgren 2004: 101). Given that the Iraqw traditionally measure wealth in population and land holdings, it would seem that they have, by their own measures, been relatively successful during colonial times and beyond. 6 This paper aims to evaluate this expansion and determine why it occurred and whether it truly represents Iraqw prosperity under pressure, or simply propagation. Explanations for Iraqw Expansion As discussed above, the Iraqw have expanded in population and land holdings over the past century to a much greater degree than neighboring ethnic groups or Tanzania’s average. There are many possible explanations for this unusual growth pattern in the presence of outside colonial and postcolonial forces. The simplest explanation would be that the Iraqw simply followed their natural growth trajectory as a population, and their expansion was unrelated to the advent of colonialism in the Mbulu area. This explanation is also one of the simplest to reject, however; population estimates for 1900 estimate the Iraqw population at around 18,000, and land holdings at this time followed roughly the original outline of Iraqw’ar Da/aw (Windgren 2004: 95). By the 1930s, however, out-migration had begun in earnest from Iraqw’ar Da/aw, such that the population within the homeland area remained constant while the Iraqw population as a whole exploded; by 1948 the Iraqw population had grown roughly 500% - clearly rates which far exceeded pre-colonial growth (Windgren 2004: 97). Figure 3: Expansion of intensive agriculture in Iraqw'ar Da/aw By the 1960s, the Iraqw had dispersed at least 60 miles from Kainam in the northern direction (Bartul 1969: 21). 7 There are three main hypotheses which could explain the proliferation of the Iraqw people since European arrival. The first, the Direct Benefit Hypothesis, states that European activities in the Mbulu area directly benefitted the Iraqw people, allowing them to expand in population and land holdings due to their own newfound wealth and success. The second, the Cultural Resilience Hypothesis, suggests that the Iraqw did not directly benefit from European actions, but that their religious, cultural, and agropastoralist traditions afforded them certain advantages which neighboring ethnic groups lacked, and thus the Iraqw were able to expand their territory and population at the expense of neighboring ethnic groups simply because they were better-suited to manage external challenges. Finally, the Forced Expansion Hypothesis states that Iraqw expansion does not indicate success at all; instead, it is a symptom of conditions within the Iraqw homeland becoming unlivable due to colonial actions. These hypotheses, presented in order of decreasing favor toward colonial rule, may each have some aspects of truth about them; it is thus entirely possible that an accurate explanation of the Iraqw experience will combine them in some way. The Direct Benefit Hypothesis As previously discussed, the Iraqw traditional measures of wealth reflect their blended agropastoralist culture. In settled agrarian communities, where land is livelihood, larger holdings and larger families to tend to them indicate larger wealth. Similarly, pastoralist communities such as the Maasai measure wealth through herd size (Meikuaya 2012: 32). For the Iraqw, population, land holdings, and herd size all 8 factor into wealth, and the simplest interpretation of their expansion over the past century is simply that colonialism directly benefitted them, and thus they became vastly wealthier by their own measurements. The case of the Nou forest is a pertinent illustration to the contrary. The Iraqw economy and livelihood relied on many products and services from the forest, including timber, game meat, honey, thatch grass, and pasture for animals.