Baka people (Cameroon and Gabon): Difference between revisions
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The Baka people are hunter-gatherers located in the [[Central African]] [[rain forest]]. They are present in south-eastern [[Cameroon]], northern [[Gabon]] and in the northern part of the [[Democratic Republic of Congo]]. In [[Congo]], the Baka people are otherwise known as the Bayaka.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Baka Forest People|url=http://www.baka.co.uk/baka/|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Some are also found in the Southwestern African Republic.<ref name="IC Magazine">{{cite web|title=IC Magazine: Supporting the Indigenous Peoples Movement|url=http://intercontinentalcry.org/peoples/baka/|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Although, the Baka people are located throughout the [[Central African]] [[rain forest]], they are mainly concentrated in [[Cameroon]] as the Baka community of [[Cameroon]] represents roughly 30 000 individuals. <ref>{{cite web|last=Paulin|first=Pascale|title=LES PYGMEES BAKA DU GABON : APPROCHE SOCIOLINGUISTIQUE|url=http://www.gitpa.org/Peuple%20GITPA%20500/GITPA500-6ACTUTEXTREFSOCIOLING.pdf|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> |
The Baka people are hunter-gatherers located in the [[Central African]] [[rain forest]] [[[[File:Gabon-26730.jpg|thumb|The tropical rain forest in Gabon, Central Africa where some of the Baka reside]]. They are present in south-eastern [[Cameroon]], northern [[Gabon]] and in the northern part of the [[Democratic Republic of Congo]]. In [[Congo]], the Baka people are otherwise known as the Bayaka.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Baka Forest People|url=http://www.baka.co.uk/baka/|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Some are also found in the Southwestern African Republic.<ref name="IC Magazine">{{cite web|title=IC Magazine: Supporting the Indigenous Peoples Movement|url=http://intercontinentalcry.org/peoples/baka/|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Although, the Baka people are located throughout the [[Central African]] [[rain forest]], they are mainly concentrated in [[Cameroon]] as the Baka community of [[Cameroon]] represents roughly 30 000 individuals. <ref>{{cite web|last=Paulin|first=Pascale|title=LES PYGMEES BAKA DU GABON : APPROCHE SOCIOLINGUISTIQUE|url=http://www.gitpa.org/Peuple%20GITPA%20500/GITPA500-6ACTUTEXTREFSOCIOLING.pdf|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> |
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The Baka are a [[semi-nomadic]] people, like other [[hunter-gatherers]] such as the Bagyeli and the Twa. However, they are slowly becoming a more sedentary people due to the intensive [[deforestation]] of the Central African Rainforest. <ref name="Baka Pygmies">{{cite web|last=Devin|first=Luis|title=Baka Pygmies|url=http://www.pygmies.org/baka/introduction.asp|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Pressures from their taller and more dominant neighbors, the [[Bantu]], have also slowed the Baka people’s mobility. |
The Baka are a [[semi-nomadic]] people, like other [[hunter-gatherers]] such as the Bagyeli and the Twa. However, they are slowly becoming a more sedentary people due to the intensive [[deforestation]] of the Central African Rainforest. <ref name="Baka Pygmies">{{cite web|last=Devin|first=Luis|title=Baka Pygmies|url=http://www.pygmies.org/baka/introduction.asp|accessdate=21 October 2013}}</ref> Pressures from their taller and more dominant neighbors, the [[Bantu]], have also slowed the Baka people’s mobility. |
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Revision as of 07:16, 22 October 2013
 Baka dancers in the East Province of Cameroon | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Central Africa, Cameroon, and Gabon | |
| Languages | |
| Baka, Ganzi, Gundi (Ngondi) | |
| Religion | |
| Animism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Aka, Gyele, Kola |
The Baka, known in the Congo as Bayaka (Bebayaka, Bebayaga, Bibaya),[1] are an ethnic group inhabiting the southeastern rainforests of Cameroon, northern Republic of Congo, northern Gabon, and southwestern Central African Republic. They are sometimes called a subgroup of the Twa, but the two peoples are not closely related. Likewise, the name "Baka" is sometimes mistakenly applied to other area peoples who, like the Baka and Twa, have been historically called pygmies (the term is no longer considered respectful).
Identity
Population
The Baka people are hunter-gatherers located in the Central African rain forest [[
. They are present in south-eastern Cameroon, northern Gabon and in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Congo, the Baka people are otherwise known as the Bayaka.[2] Some are also found in the Southwestern African Republic.[3] Although, the Baka people are located throughout the Central African rain forest, they are mainly concentrated in Cameroon as the Baka community of Cameroon represents roughly 30 000 individuals. [4]
The Baka are a semi-nomadic people, like other hunter-gatherers such as the Bagyeli and the Twa. However, they are slowly becoming a more sedentary people due to the intensive deforestation of the Central African Rainforest. [5] Pressures from their taller and more dominant neighbors, the Bantu, have also slowed the Baka people’s mobility.
The Baka have successfully maintained their language, also called Baka. Unlike their neighbors’ languages (Koozime, Bakoum and Bangandou) which have Bantu roots, Baka comes from a different language famiy, Ubangian.[3]
Subsistence
The Baka are a hunter-gatherer people. Groups establish temporary camps of huts constructed of bowed branches covered in large leaves (though today more and more homes are constructed following Bantu methods). The men hunt and trap in the surrounding forest, using poisoned arrows and spears to great effect. They sometimes obtain honey from beehives in the forest canopy. The men also fish using chemicals obtained from crushed plant material. Using fast-moving river water, they disperse the chemical downstream. This non-toxic chemical deprives fish of oxygen, making them float to the surface and easily collected by Baka men. Another method of fishing, performed only by women, is dam fishing, in which water is removed from a dammed area and fish are taken from the exposed ground. Women also gather wild fruits and nuts or practice beekeeping while tending to the children. The group remains in one area until it is hunted out then abandon the camp for a different portion of the forest. The group is communal and makes decisions by consensus.
Medicine
The Baka people are skilled in using various plants in which they may wash out chemicals to use or mash it into a pulp etc. to treat illness and infertility. Children's health is of a particular concern, as they are particularly susceptible to disease, often resulting in death. Their skills in this traditional medicine are such that even non-Baka often seek out their healers for treatment.[6]
History
The oldest reference to “pygmies” dates back to 2276 B.C when Pharaoh Pepi 2nd described seeing a "dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits” [7], in a letter to a Slave Trade Expedition leader. [8] In the Illiad, Homer described the “pygmies” as dark sinned men in warfare with cranes. They were as tall as a “pygme” which meant that they measured the length of an elbow to a knuckle, or one and a half feet long.[9] About three centuries later (500 B.C), the Greek Herodotus reported that an explorer had seen, while travelling along the West African Coast, “dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm tree". [8]
In 1995, Joan Mark wrote The King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies, an interpretive biography of Patrick Tracy Lowell Putnam, the anthropologist who spent 25 years living among the Bambuti “pygmies” in Zaire. Mark writes that Aristotle, in 340 B.C, was the first to relate, in his Historia Animalium, the small men Homer accounted for in the Illiad, to those seen previously on the African coast. He goes on to explain that, due to the chasm that existed between Europe and Africa after the collapse of the Roman Empire, most Europeans living in the 18th century believed “pygmies” to be mythical creatures.[8]
In 1890, the Welsh journalist Henry Stanley gave, according to anthropologist Paul Raffaele, the first modern account of the existence of “pygmies” in his book, In Darkest Africa, after he described meeting a “pygmy” couple. Stanley writes of them: "In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam; in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve".[8]
In 1906, a Congolese “pygmy” Ota Benga, was exhibited, among apes, at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. According to the New York Times, Ota was 4 feet and 11 inches. This episode is still extremely controversial today as an article was written about Ota more than a 100 years later, in a 2006 issue of the New York Times. According to the Times, black clergyman and superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, Reverend James H. Gordon, deemed the exhibit to be racist and demeaning. “Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes,” Mr. Gordon said. “We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.”[10]
Culture
Hunting and Gathering
Performing Arts
Religion and Belief Systems
The Baka people worship Komba and believe him to be god above all. [11] They also worship the forest spirit called Jengi (also known as Djengui or Ejengi)[3] . The spirit plays the role of the mediator between the supreme being, Komba, and the Baka people.[11] They thus also compare Jengui to a protecting father or guardian.[3] They strongly believe and revere Jengi as they believe that he is the only way to Komba. The Baka people believe Jengi to be omnipresent within the forest allowing him to punish transgressors within the confines of the forest.
After hunting successfully, the Baka worship Jengi with songs of thanksgiving and dancing in a ritual called Luma.[3] These rituals are necessary for Jengi to appear before the Baka, as they believe that he only shows himself when harmony reigns among the villagers. [11] Jengi also appears during the important ceremony, Jengi, where a young man goes from being a boy to a man.[3] During these ceremonies, young Baka men volunteer to be initiated by Jengi. Once they are initiated, they have the right to live and walk freely within the sacred forest.[11] This secret ceremony was studied by anthropologist, Mauro Campagnoli, who claims having been able to partake.[3] Journalist, Paul Raffaele, describes his experience with Jengi:
"Emerging from the shadows were half a dozen Pygmy men accompanying a creature swathed from top to bottom in strips of russet-hued raffia. It had no features, no limbs, no face. "It's Ejengi," said Wasse, his voice trembling. At first I was sure it was a Pygmy camouflaged in foliage, but as Ejengi glided across the darkened clearing, the drums beat louder and faster, and as the Pygmies' chanting grew more frenzied, I began to doubt my own eyes." [8]
Death is considered to be a misfortune for the Baka. They deem the death of one of their own to be a representation of spiritual discord. Each tribe, having witnessed the death of one of their own, is required to pray to Jengi and dance around the corpse, which they covered with debris, for an entire night. The dance performed during the death rituals is called the Mbouamboua. They then depart from where they were stationed, leaving the corpse behind, and set out to move somewhere else in order to flee the curse.[11]
The Baka are animists. They thus believe in the power of bark and metamorphosis. They also worship nature as it is Komba, not Jengi, that resides in it.[3]
See also
Other Pygmy groups include Aka, Twa, and Mbuti.
Researchers who studied Pygmy culture include Colin Turnbull and Mauro Campagnoli.
Other: Demographics of Cameroon, Pygmy music, Baka Beyond
References
- ^ Or, along with the other Mbenga peoples, the derogatory Babinga, and in some areas Ngombe (Bangombe)
- ^ "The Baka Forest People". Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "IC Magazine: Supporting the Indigenous Peoples Movement". Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ Paulin, Pascale. "LES PYGMEES BAKA DU GABON : APPROCHE SOCIOLINGUISTIQUE" (PDF). Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ Devin, Luis. "Baka Pygmies". Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ National Geographic: Baka - People of the Forest (1989) Film by Phil Agland
- ^ Bianchi, Robert S. (2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood. p. 49. ISBN 978-0313325014.
- ^ a b c d e Raffaele, Paul (2008). "The Pygmies Plight". Smithsonian. 39 (9): 70–77. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ "Pygmaioi". Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ Keller, Mitch. "The Scandal at the Zoo". Retrieved 21 October 2013.
- ^ a b c d e Azombo, Franklin. "Le Synode du Diocese Du Batouri". Regard sur la culture et la religion des Bakas. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
- Fanso, V.G. (1989) Cameroon History for Secondary Schools and Colleges, Vol. 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Nineteenth Century. Hong Kong: Macmillan Education Ltd.
- Neba, Aaron, Ph.D. (1999) Modern Geography of the Republic of Cameroon, 3rd ed. Bamenda: Neba Publishers.
- National Geographic: Baka - People of the Forest (1988)
External links
- Baka Pygmies culture, music and rites with photos and soundscapes
- The Baka Forest People emphasis on their music with photos, videos and sound clips
- Baka Pygmies of Cameroon with photos and ethnographic notes
- Mauro Campagnoli - Fieldworks Anthropological researches among Baka Pygmies