What Do the Oromo Want? Looking Back and Looking Forward on Oromo Studies
Keynote Remarks, Oromo Studies Association Annual Meeting
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
July 14-15, 2012
By: Bonnie K. Holcomb
Added here October 14/2012
Our Journey Together – Looking Back on Oromo Studies & OSA
My friends, we have been down a long road together, starting in 1986 when the first call went out from the Committee to Organize an Oromo Conference to participate in a daylong event. That was twenty-six years ago. I speak to you as one of the founders and members of OSA, as a long-time friend and student of the Oromo. I also speak to you as an “engaged anthropologist” who believes in praxis as a merger of theory, scholarship and social action. When I emerged from graduate school, not many took that position, but now engaged scholarship commands a sizable proportion of the conferences and yearend reviews, especially in the social sciences. Scholars don’t need to be afraid of risking our reputations by getting involved. In fact scholars who neglect to get involved enough are coming under criticism because their detachment has led to huge failures of knowledge.
Let us think about the engagement of scholarship in struggle. The objective in creating OSA was to call together persons capable of respectable scholarship to promote and foster significant studies in all fields pertaining to the Oromo for a number of purposes to expand knowledge about the Oromo, to bring self-understanding, to make known to the world what had been hidden in plain sight, to develop information as a tool for liberation. A number of means are specified in the OSA constitution for doing that. Here is the relevant portion:
ARTICLE II: OBJECTIVES
2.1 The Oromo Studies Association is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary organization established to promote and foster scholarly studies in all fields pertaining to the Oromo people.
2.2. To realize its objectives the Oromo Studies Association guides, develops and promotes scholarship on the history, economy, culture, health, education, politics and laws of the Oromo, in addition to biological and bio-medical sciences, physical sciences, social welfare and other disciplines as they pertain to the Oromo by:
2.2.1 Providing a forum for well-informed intellectual exchange.
2.2.2 Expanding Oromo studies by inviting non-Oromo scholars to engage in the development of
research related to the Oromo.
2.2.3 Organizing programs that encourage, nurture and aid the development of scholars whose goals are
to contribute knowledge and data related to Oromo studies.
2.2.4.Seeking and coordinating financial and other support and assistance from both public and private
sources for the advancement of Oromo studies.
2.2.5 Promoting interaction and mutual understanding between Oromo, their neighbors and people
globally who encounter common issues of concern.
2.2.6Promoting the culture of democracy, the rule of law and the study of indigenous forms of governance
such as the Oromo Gada system and its legacies.
2.2.7 Undertaking all reasonable means to implement its objectives.
When OSA was launched, the Oromo nation was conservatively estimated at 30 million people, constituting not just the largest ethnic group in the country but second largest on the continent, over half of the population of what was then Ethiopia. Oromo lands occupied well over half of the land area within the boundaries of the empire as it was then. The land mass was far larger than the boundaries of today’s shrunken entity now mapped and called “Oromia” inside what remains of Ethiopia -- itself shrunken now that Eritrea has its own separate boundaries. At that time the people were still widely referred to as “Galla.’ The Dergue was in power, had just formed the Worker’s Party of Ethiopia and was benefitting from a massive global response to the “discovery” of an “Ethiopian Famine” in October 1984. (The world did not yet know that the famine had been created by the Dergue’s own policies.) A huge transfer of funds from the first world into the Dergue’s coffers, given to care for the victims of that famine had just occurred. Oromo were calling for investigation into the causes of food shortages that selectively struck the areas resistant to the regime. A debate raged over the Dergue’s “socialist credentials.’ The Oromo wanted a voice. The Oromo wanted a public expose into the ruthless brutality of the Dergue. The Oromo were being displaced with resettlement programs that constituted politically-driven crimes to keep the regime in place. The Oromo wanted friends. The Oromo wanted careful investigation into the conditions of their dispossession.
The villagization of the Oromo was in full swing in the East at the time that this association was formed. The need for systematic research was great, the need for scholarship was great, the need for intellectuals to band together was great. Many of us thought, “How much worse could things get??
What has OSA Documented?
Regime change occurred from the rule of the Dergue to the rise of the current EPRDF government. We in Oromo studies have tracked every step of the machinations by which the current regime, dominated by a minority, maneuvered its way into assuming absolute control over state power and rendering ethnic federalism an empty phrase. We have witnessed and documented the burning of Oromo forests, the laying down of infrastructures of exploitation, the massive land grabs and displacement of populations that make resettlement of the 1980s look like child’s play. We have catalogued the violations of the human rights of hundreds of thousands of people whose only crime was self-expression. We have concluded the sad truth that even self expression by a majority population is regarded as a threat to a minority regime. We have grieved at the environmental pollution and destruction causing public health crises and the decimation of sacred lands that violate every tenet of Oromo values. We have watched while a generation of Oromo youth moved through the education system only to be denied employment in the public and private sectors. We have documented and discussed a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness in the population.
But in the 21st century, we also have witnessed a revolution in communication technology. The world has changed around us and is more interconnected every day. Polarities are everywhere. The Oromo are not the only ones who suffer in the great inequities created by global capitalism. The Arab Spring proved that.
For quite some time observers of Oromo have assumed that there will be some kind a major uprising staged to resist egregious conditions of daily living. But it did not happen in Oromia. Instead an uprising occurred in Tunisia and then in Egypt and across the Arab world, just north of where the Oromo suffer in place. How did this happen? Let us take a look at these events for a moment:
Implications of the Arab Spring for the Oromo*
In December 17, 2010 a vegetable vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest. And people who shared his circumstances rallied behind his act. He never went to college. He had 6 brothers and sisters. His father was disabled and his mother could not earn. His experience occurred in a way that it captured two miserable dimensions of life that Oromo share.
1) Police lady demanded a bribe. When he did not give it, she took his scale. He was deprived of his ability to work and to satisfy his material needs.
2) When he went to the office of his government to report the incident, his intangible political rights were denied. Self-esteem, dignity and voice were denied him.
This combination of being deprived of material needs and political right forced him to a suicidal self-affirmation. His situation could be duplicated and worse in the daily life of many rural or urban Oromo.
Why was there such a mass response to this event in Tunisia? Because the vendor’s complaints were shared widely. Over 300,000,000 people shared his feelings, the Oromo among them.
These fundamental dimensions of these uprising need to be seen as efforts to improve dignity, freedom and rights. Nobody knows what specific grievances will prompt the actions. We do not know in the Oromo case when, under what exact circumstances, wide protest will happen, but when it does happen, Oromo must be prepared to reconfigure the arrangements of their institutions, just as those in the Arab Spring are starting to do now. True, they are trying to compress into months and years what took the American democratic experience decades to accomplish, but they are starting.
Today I wish to address what the Oromo can and should do to prepare for that day when Oromo demands force action – and the days that follow. I want to focus on OSA’s role. That day will come. In the case of the Arab Spring, it has been a surprise to almost everyone how quickly the old governments were overthrown. They appeared all powerful, but in reality, when pushed, they were brittle.The Ethiopian regime is also brittle, strong, but very brittle. This was Terry Lyons conclusion in a paper commissioned by AFRICOM last year.† I agree.
In the Arab case, the countries and governments they challenged had not expressed the will of the people. When the people began to speak out and find their voice, the world heard them loud and clear, and sympathized. The regimes cracked. It was a big step. Now the hard work has begun for them. The Oromo are at a different point, but the urgency is great.
Let’s ask, “What do the protestors in the Arab Spring want?”
1. Demand for citizenship, rights, manifested in democracy, pluralism, ability to act in their own interest, which could be called access to power.
2. They want the rule of laws which they participate in hammering out. They do not want promises from leaders. They want something that they have a connection with and an input into. They want to manage their own affairs through institutions that embody their values. Something in which the guarantees mean something and can be trusted.
3. Social justice. These are the most powerful driving forces. The feelings of ordinary people are to gain access to health care, schools, courts –ways to be treated fairly, by a government that they hold accountable.
4. Although they acted from deeply held religious values, they do not want religious regimes. They want secular democracy.
The Arab Spring has been called the last of the anti-colonial battles, but these scholars have not looked closely at Ethiopia. That distinction will fall to the Oromo. The Oromo condition rises from a legacy of colonialism that has been unrelieved for hundred years. We in OSA have established that genealogy quite well. So in the face of this, we ask,
What Do the Oromo Want?
The Oromo want dignity, self-expression, self-governance.
The Oromo want their voices to be heard.
The Oromo want sovereignty
They want to live together at peace with their neighbors, who themselves also live in freedom exercising their own sovereignty.
The Oromo want friends and allies across the world who will work with them to protect their forests from decimation, their water from pollution, their animals from starvation, their minerals from exploitation, their sons and daughters from capture.
The Oromo want to protection from dispossession of their ancient homelands.
The Oromo want control of their own story.
The Oromo want security.
The Oromo want healthy babies.
They want a clean water supply, and even plumbing.
They want to be free of AIDS, thyroid diseases, malaria and toxin-borne diseases introduced by unregulated industries.
The Oromo want to live in and govern their own land filled with their own trees, in which live the birds whose calls they know well.
They want freedom of communication
They want access to the Internet, a window on the world – which requires electricity, education, languages, spelling
Oromo want to be part of the global conversation.
They want to form their own associations.
The Oromo want experts and specialists to assist them on their terms rather than impose alien ways on them.
Oromo want cell phones,
Oromo want education.
Oromo want freedom to express their culture.
• They want to dance without fear
• Dress in ways that they find beautiful, comfortable and meaningful.
• To hear and respond to the cries and interpretations of their poets and their musicians without fear of
reprisal
• They want to drink their own coffee.
They want jobs.
Their list is the list of aspirations of those who suffer oppression and injustice worldwide.
How do they get it? Let’s talk about that in terms restricted to this association.
When the world hears the Oromo aspirations and grievances loud and clear, they will stand with the Oromo as they did with the protestors in the Arab Spring. The Oromo will know that they are not alone that others do stand behind them. But Oromos must also stand with others, make connections, establish two-way streets in the formation of alliances. How can this come to pass? What is the role of the association of Oromo Studies?
The natural allies of the Oromo are everywhere. Oromia is a case study in the major issues of the day, but her voice is not clearly heard. OSA is now strong enough to consider taking on initiatives which encourage and equip activists to join forces with others internationally who suffer and with those who work to bring justice and peace.
Looking back on what has OSA accomplished?
• OSA has held annual conferences continuously since formation, first held in conjunction with the annual meetings political organizations and then, through a very deliberate process, held in an independent, unaffiliated status.
• Crafted and posted letters in a variety of venues drawing attention to the Oromo condition
• A midyear conference was started in 2006
• The Journal of Oromo Studies has been published continuously since the early 1990s, creating a legacy of documents that address a range of issues, primarily brought forward by people who share their expertise.
Looking forward strategically on what OSA might accomplish
• I propose that OSA move in a new direction with the intention to put more of its resources and energies into promoting Oromo scholarship in areas that will equip activists at the local and international levels to pursue justice
• OSA has a role to play in designing hypotheses, calling for the kind of data that will provide a clear articulation of facts that empower the public, encouraging scholars and increasing productivity. These actions will improve the potential for productive alliances.
• In my view, OSA as an association needs actively to recruit scholars who work on topics that affect the Oromo, inviting them to consider research or analysis into the situation in Oromia when it parallels their own work.
The Role of Public Intellectuals
Engaged, public intellectuals can help shape the future of the Oromo people. And I suggest that this challenge will appeal to scholars for many reasons. Questions of human agency (initiative and creation of nodes of power), especially in light of severe structural constraints, are very much of interest to scholars around the globe. OSA’s mission is to promote scholarship. Let us do that. Let’s promote investigation into everything that affects the Oromo. This will open the door on creating connections and alliances at many levels in the pursuit of justice.
New scholars will push us to track down the information they need, to improve the accessibility of what exists and to move into new areas of scholarship. We all know that getting the facts is a challenge in itself when the government does not encourage investigation or research into its hinterlands where heinous forms of brutality and dispossession of the Oromo and others is now occurring. We all know this. We will need to be attentive to security issues for people coming to address Oromo issues. As I mentioned at the outset, for quite some time academics took a dim view of people who pursued “engaged scholarship.” It was suggested that they might be biased, or suspect. But over the years it has become clear “engaged” scholarship is just as valuable as so-called “detached” scholarship, especially when the detachment is possible only because the researcher is sitting securely with the powers that be, safeguarded by the institutions that they were not questioning. The issue is not what your leanings are, but how you handle data. The key is in the methodology, how hypotheses are framed and integrity (duplicability) of the data. Let OSA encourage and equip public intellectuals to pursue Oromo scholarship with integrity, with intensity and with urgency.
Let OSA call people to work with us. Let’s get help in putting out the call that a living people with a valuable legacy – one which has the potential to contribute mightily to the well-being of the planet – is being lost, undermined, disabled, crippled, damaged.
OSA Contribution to Building Alliances
Religious groups can be natural allies, especially in the fields of restorative justice. I attend, for example, a Christian (Presbyterian) church where I have shared dimensions of the Oromo experience in adult education classes and even in worship. This group has taken on support of Oromo girls’ education through the REAL (Resources for the Enrichment of African Lives) program. There are many justice issues on relevant to the
Oromo that are actively pursued by churches and synagogues internationally. At the heart of the Bible there is a moral and ethical call to resist unjust political powers. There is significant potential for alliances with religious groups if they are provided hard data. Restorative justice is not only a current focus of Judeo-Christian traditions, but Arab Muslims who participated in the Arab Spring uprisings were standing up for justice, democracy, sovereignty and dignity, acting out of their religious beliefs. Oromos affiliated with OSA are part of the conversation about African engagement in Islamist movements. These connections are opening doors with new sets of actors for understanding the Oromo plight and what the Oromo have to offer.
Waqeefanna Oromo have growing opportunities to establish a theological identity in an interfaith world, even as it is seriously endangered as an indigenous religion in Africa. Establishing a reputation for Oromo traditional thought on the global scene, as Dabassa Guyyo and others have done by allying with groups that celebrate indigenous religions of South American and Asia, may help preserve Oromo religion in Oromia. By providing the scholarship which supports these efforts, OSA contributes to establishing a place in the global relational network. It makes friends who appreciate the unique features of Oromo law, philosophy and religion. A philosophy professor at Howard University studying Egyptian philosophy indentified features of the ancient stories that were imports from elsewhere in Africa. Upon searching, he found that Oromo religion is the most likely ancient influence. Thanks to OSA he made the connections to knowledgeable scholars to confirm his theory. Also Gemetchu Megerssa and Aneesa Kassam’s seminal work highlighting the essential features of the Oromo paradigm contributes greatly to the stature of Oromo thought on the world scene.
At this conference we witnessed the beginnings of the kind of productive alliance I am talking about. Habtamu Dugo introduced a scholar of genocide who is quite interested in the virtually untapped field of genocide documentation. They had found references to Oromo genocide in the writings of Mekuria Bulcha and Asafa Jalata. This investigator is now proposing specific methods for expanding knowledge of genocide, creating documents, etc. Such alliances made possible through OSA strengthen the hand of the Oromo.
Oromo youth are excelling at the finest institutions that the first world has to offer. Many young Oromo who have been raised with Oromo values are connecting in their own way with friends from around the world, showing pride in their heritage and coming with innovative suggestions and practical solutions to the sufferings of the Oromo people, whether in law, human rights, ecology, women or business. OSA can support young
Oromos through mentoring, providing data and cooperating. One of them starting bringing papers to OSA at the time she was six years old. She graduated from college this past spring. Oromo youth are excelling in a multitude of ways across the continent. These young people have new connections, new approaches. Mark my words, they will make meaningful and unexpected contributions when the opportunities open up.
Scholarly alliances will pay off greatly. Those who make it to Oromia or otherwise encounter the Oromo experience will not forget the conditions they see in Oromia. In relative terms, the Oromo reality has not really been probed. In my experience, Oromo peasants, livestock herders and urban businesspeople reveal enormous wisdom and show how acutely they are aware of the forces that impinge upon them whenever they have a chance to respond to researchers’ questions. The truth just comes pouring out. They are their own best advocates. The challenge is to get the interviews to take place.
As I read to you all at the outset, the primary goal of OSA is to promote Oromo scholarship. I suggest that we find ways to take that work beyond our conferences and our excellent journal. There are numerous to enhance the goal of providing knowledge and creating alliances.
The Oromo are witnesses and victims of empire in all its forms. But they are not alone in facing the conditions they face. They share the experience of corporate global power, inequities in the world system, crises of health, environment, climate change, and the suppression of rights of the indigenous people. They have the opportunity to share in the responses that are building up around the world. These are global crisis experienced by vast majorities on the globe. And there is a vest global response underway which is bubbling up in every corner.
Oromo have in common the goals of people who work in a vast array of organizations seeking change related to an amazing numbers of areas: agriculture, biodiversity, seed conservation, animal husbandry and animal welfare including wild life, water rights and management, air quality, arts, music, literature, dance, drama, ecotourism, green banking, microfinance, natural capitalism, child and youth protection and welfare and education and empowerment and leadership and health and labor and rights, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, community development and sustainability, preservation of cultural heritage, democracy, ecological sustainability, education, energy and power, fisheries, food and nourishment, forestry, global climate change, globalization, fair trade, governance, greening of industry, recycling, health and emerging diseases, environmental toxicology and public health, human rights, social justice and civil liberties, prisoner’s rights and conditions, victims of torture, indigenous people and rights of land and culture, inland water ecosystems lake and rivers, law policy and property rights including crime, land use, tenure, and conservation, legal and prison reform, media development and access for internet, photography, radio,
video/film, journalism, safe and sustainable mining, peace, war and security dealing with militarism, arms trading, violence, land mines, underage soldiers forcibly recruited, peacemaking, plant protection, pollution prevention of toxins, hazardous chemical waste, population movements, refugee protection, poverty eradication, housing, displacement prevention, religious and ethical sustainability, seniors rights and needs, sustainable cities and urban design with equitable infrastructure, transport, buildings, communication, waste management, sustainable biological, social, rural development, appropriate information and communication technology, mixed forest, grassland, scrubland, desert and savannah ecology, freshwater, groundwater and watershed ecosystems of dams hydrology, energy, and water quality and rights, supply and conservation and development, women’s rights, gender equality, education, civic participation, safety from violence and trafficking, workers’ rights, worker’s conditions, worker’s centers, global labor programs, sweatshop prevocational training, employment practices, training – to name the broad categories‡. Through providing data and knowledge, OSA can help create and nourish connections with initiatives in any of these areas.
The Role of Oromo Studies Association Looking Forward
What can OSA do?
OSA has a specific role to play as a politically unaffiliated body whose members comprise persons with connections throughout the nation.
OSA can play a very important role in Oromo “becoming” or “emergence.” It can rally intellectual forces to attend to what the Oromo want. Members of OSA working together can
• Put together a progressive plan to promote Oromo scholarship.
• Design the hypotheses which will challenge and ultimately reward good scholars.
• Issue a loud and wide call to recruit scholars to the analysis of the crisis faced by this nation, and its
strengths in many dimensions.
• Demonstrate or assert the value of exploration and analysis in the area of Oromo studies.
• Equip every person, Oromo or otherwise, with knowledge required for empowerment
• Centralize and make accessible knowledge already collected that is relevant to understanding the Oromo.
• Recruit scholars to participate in assessing the planetary global economic shift.
• Protect those who go into Northeast Africa to investigate difficult issues
• Revisit the challenge of establishing an Oromo library, information center or repository of some kind with
an active website that would provide a clearing house for this collection.
OSA, as a non-affiliated association needs to take on the task of providing knowledge in any area of study that affects the Oromo. Many of us have invested a great deal of intellectual and social capital into achieving and maintaining OSA’s non-affiliated and independent status. One of its current strengths is that it boasts members who are affiliated with almost all of the political groups on the Oromo landscape right now. But
no political organization out there – or remnant of former political organization – can or should do this particular job at this time. The model OSA has developed is that scholars linked with any political groups identify systematically the need/topics for research.
The prospects for OSA’s future are hopeful, soulful and crucial.
• The call for engaged scholarship which contributes to understanding the Oromo experience and points to comparable experience worldwide is OSA’s biggest mission obligation. Such scholarship, research and study will make visible what is now still invisible. People become part of the earth’s immune system when they exercise their principles in any venue and engage with others who are on the same quest. In this line, let us remember Lois Swenson, our departed sister from Minnesota who befriended Oromo in her wide embrace of the principles of social justice causes and her work with groups needing empowerment and voice.
• If OSA embraces this path, welcoming scholars from all affiliations, requiring them to deal in the facts, the truth (dhugaa), the association will assume new consequence. It will play the role for which it was designed – to bring truth from new places, and put it into the hands of those who would be liberated by knowledge.
• Many, many Oromo express in the current period that they feel they are in a holding pattern, waiting for change and direction to come from the top. But that is not necessary. Nationalists don’t have to put everything on hold until they get marching orders. While the political leaders are working out their issues, there is a huge, huge task at hand – educating the Oromo and educating the world at large, piece by piece, bit by bit, association and alliance by association and alliance – is doable and responsible. A strong cord of understanding and solidarity will stand the Oromo in a good position to withstand the challenge when this government collapses.
When Oromo encourage communication and exchange data with all who work for justice, they will have friends and there will be many eyes – knowing eyes – on the Oromo in their home country. This can protect the Oromo in Oromia and prepare the Oromo out of the country by forging links, growing their own awareness.
I tell you honestly, as a friend of the Oromo (one more tenacious and stubborn than most I presume – since I am still here) and also as an anthropologist, that the Oromo heritage is not just a national treasure, it is a global treasure. I am only one of many friends that will feel and work -- as I do -- for the emergence of the Oromo people as a nation whose input is of enormous value on the global scene. What the Oromo have, the world is looking for, a spiritual wisdom that integrates human beings with the earth and other living beings. Studies are revealing that science is confirming the impact of spiritual wisdom in shaping practice and healing the world§.
I suggest that perhaps many in the world community are coming to appreciate the beauty and strength of the kind of horizontal ‘supra-local’ organization that the Oromo created for themselves long ago when they operated as an independent republic. (In my experience, the Oromo have not performed well within a hierarchical structure either of their own or another’s making.) As opposed to hierarchy, connectionalism has its own kind of strength – horizontal, multi-layered and complex. The world has changed since the Oromo models were short-sightedly dismissed as “simple,” because they had no king Current technologies, however, support many new kinds of horizontal correlation, making all sorts of new linkages possible.
When it does come time for the Oromo to sit together in a national assembly to hammer out a sovereign alternative for themselves – an alternative to the repressive state that they currently live under – Oromo may well be prepared if there are many and knowledgeable voices and a wide variety of interest in the conversation. If the Oromo eventually forge a way to get what they want by building a civic state (something I have written about starting in 2002), it will be through a national conversation. Everybody will need to be
engaged in order to fashion an institution that defends their individual and collective interests. This is a welcome prospect. Though the Oromo are not there yet, they don’t need to sit on their hands until that time comes.
The Ethiopian state is strong but probably even more brittle, as I mentioned, than those states brought down in the Arab Spring. When it fractures, the Oromos – and all the allies they are making in the meantime – will be ready to participate. And then, maybe Oromo will be prepared to act “akka Gadaatii”
There are many reasons for hope and many avenues for the use of knowledge to support empowerment. I encourage OSA to embrace them.
* Thanks to Rami Khouri of The Daily Star for continuing blog commentary and documentation of events of the Arab Spring.
† See “Ethiopia: Assessing the Risks to Stability” by Terrence Lyons, paper for CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), June 2011
‡ See Blessed Unrest: how the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it coming by Paul Hawken, Viking Press, 2007.
§ There is a cutting-edge forum on spiritual wisdom at Yale called the Forum for the Study of Religion and
Ecology (see http://fore.research.yale.edu/ ) . Many scholarly institutions that focus on the importance of global paradigms of creativity, connection and interdependence of human beings with the earth.
Oromo studies
Keynote Remarks, Oromo Studies Association Annual Meeting
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
July 14-15, 2012
By: Bonnie K. Holcomb
Added here October 14/2012
My friends, we have been down a long road together, starting in 1986 when the first call went out from the Committee to Organize an Oromo Conference to participate in a daylong event. That was twenty-six years ago. I speak to you as one of the founders and members of OSA, as a long-time friend and student of the Oromo. I also speak to you as an “engaged anthropologist” who believes in praxis as a merger of theory, scholarship and social action. When I emerged from graduate school, not many took that position, but now engaged scholarship commands a sizable proportion of the conferences and yearend reviews, especially in the social sciences. Scholars don’t need to be afraid of risking our reputations by getting involved. In fact scholars who neglect to get involved enough are coming under criticism because their detachment has led to huge failures of knowledge.
Let us think about the engagement of scholarship in struggle. The objective in creating OSA was to call together persons capable of respectable scholarship to promote and foster significant studies in all fields pertaining to the Oromo for a number of purposes to expand knowledge about the Oromo, to bring self-understanding, to make known to the world what had been hidden in plain sight, to develop information as a tool for liberation. A number of means are specified in the OSA constitution for doing that. Here is the relevant portion:
ARTICLE II: OBJECTIVES
2.1 The Oromo Studies Association is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary organization established to promote and foster scholarly studies in all fields pertaining to the Oromo people.
2.2. To realize its objectives the Oromo Studies Association guides, develops and promotes scholarship on the history, economy, culture, health, education, politics and laws of the Oromo, in addition to biological and bio-medical sciences, physical sciences, social welfare and other disciplines as they pertain to the Oromo by:
2.2.1 Providing a forum for well-informed intellectual exchange.
2.2.2 Expanding Oromo studies by inviting non-Oromo scholars to engage in the development of
research related to the Oromo.
2.2.3 Organizing programs that encourage, nurture and aid the development of scholars whose goals are
to contribute knowledge and data related to Oromo studies.
2.2.4.Seeking and coordinating financial and other support and assistance from both public and private
sources for the advancement of Oromo studies.
2.2.5 Promoting interaction and mutual understanding between Oromo, their neighbors and people
globally who encounter common issues of concern.
2.2.6Promoting the culture of democracy, the rule of law and the study of indigenous forms of governance
such as the Oromo Gada system and its legacies.
2.2.7 Undertaking all reasonable means to implement its objectives.
When OSA was launched, the Oromo nation was conservatively estimated at 30 million people, constituting not just the largest ethnic group in the country but second largest on the continent, over half of the population of what was then Ethiopia. Oromo lands occupied well over half of the land area within the boundaries of the empire as it was then. The land mass was far larger than the boundaries of today’s shrunken entity now mapped and called “Oromia” inside what remains of Ethiopia -- itself shrunken now that Eritrea has its own separate boundaries. At that time the people were still widely referred to as “Galla.’ The Dergue was in power, had just formed the Worker’s Party of Ethiopia and was benefitting from a massive global response to the “discovery” of an “Ethiopian Famine” in October 1984. (The world did not yet know that the famine had been created by the Dergue’s own policies.) A huge transfer of funds from the first world into the Dergue’s coffers, given to care for the victims of that famine had just occurred. Oromo were calling for investigation into the causes of food shortages that selectively struck the areas resistant to the regime. A debate raged over the Dergue’s “socialist credentials.’ The Oromo wanted a voice. The Oromo wanted a public expose into the ruthless brutality of the Dergue. The Oromo were being displaced with resettlement programs that constituted politically-driven crimes to keep the regime in place. The Oromo wanted friends. The Oromo wanted careful investigation into the conditions of their dispossession.
The villagization of the Oromo was in full swing in the East at the time that this association was formed. The need for systematic research was great, the need for scholarship was great, the need for intellectuals to band together was great. Many of us thought, “How much worse could things get??
What has OSA Documented?
Regime change occurred from the rule of the Dergue to the rise of the current EPRDF government. We in Oromo studies have tracked every step of the machinations by which the current regime, dominated by a minority, maneuvered its way into assuming absolute control over state power and rendering ethnic federalism an empty phrase. We have witnessed and documented the burning of Oromo forests, the laying down of infrastructures of exploitation, the massive land grabs and displacement of populations that make resettlement of the 1980s look like child’s play. We have catalogued the violations of the human rights of hundreds of thousands of people whose only crime was self-expression. We have concluded the sad truth that even self expression by a majority population is regarded as a threat to a minority regime. We have grieved at the environmental pollution and destruction causing public health crises and the decimation of sacred lands that violate every tenet of Oromo values. We have watched while a generation of Oromo youth moved through the education system only to be denied employment in the public and private sectors. We have documented and discussed a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness in the population.
But in the 21st century, we also have witnessed a revolution in communication technology. The world has changed around us and is more interconnected every day. Polarities are everywhere. The Oromo are not the only ones who suffer in the great inequities created by global capitalism. The Arab Spring proved that.
For quite some time observers of Oromo have assumed that there will be some kind a major uprising staged to resist egregious conditions of daily living. But it did not happen in Oromia. Instead an uprising occurred in Tunisia and then in Egypt and across the Arab world, just north of where the Oromo suffer in place. How did this happen? Let us take a look at these events for a moment:
Implications of the Arab Spring for the Oromo*
In December 17, 2010 a vegetable vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest. And people who shared his circumstances rallied behind his act. He never went to college. He had 6 brothers and sisters. His father was disabled and his mother could not earn. His experience occurred in a way that it captured two miserable dimensions of life that Oromo share.
1) Police lady demanded a bribe. When he did not give it, she took his scale. He was deprived of his ability to work and to satisfy his material needs.
2) When he went to the office of his government to report the incident, his intangible political rights were denied. Self-esteem, dignity and voice were denied him.
This combination of being deprived of material needs and political right forced him to a suicidal self-affirmation. His situation could be duplicated and worse in the daily life of many rural or urban Oromo.
Why was there such a mass response to this event in Tunisia? Because the vendor’s complaints were shared widely. Over 300,000,000 people shared his feelings, the Oromo among them.
These fundamental dimensions of these uprising need to be seen as efforts to improve dignity, freedom and rights. Nobody knows what specific grievances will prompt the actions. We do not know in the Oromo case when, under what exact circumstances, wide protest will happen, but when it does happen, Oromo must be prepared to reconfigure the arrangements of their institutions, just as those in the Arab Spring are starting to do now. True, they are trying to compress into months and years what took the American democratic experience decades to accomplish, but they are starting.
Today I wish to address what the Oromo can and should do to prepare for that day when Oromo demands force action – and the days that follow. I want to focus on OSA’s role. That day will come. In the case of the Arab Spring, it has been a surprise to almost everyone how quickly the old governments were overthrown. They appeared all powerful, but in reality, when pushed, they were brittle.The Ethiopian regime is also brittle, strong, but very brittle. This was Terry Lyons conclusion in a paper commissioned by AFRICOM last year.† I agree.
In the Arab case, the countries and governments they challenged had not expressed the will of the people. When the people began to speak out and find their voice, the world heard them loud and clear, and sympathized. The regimes cracked. It was a big step. Now the hard work has begun for them. The Oromo are at a different point, but the urgency is great.
Let’s ask, “What do the protestors in the Arab Spring want?”
1. Demand for citizenship, rights, manifested in democracy, pluralism, ability to act in their own interest, which could be called access to power.
2. They want the rule of laws which they participate in hammering out. They do not want promises from leaders. They want something that they have a connection with and an input into. They want to manage their own affairs through institutions that embody their values. Something in which the guarantees mean something and can be trusted.
3. Social justice. These are the most powerful driving forces. The feelings of ordinary people are to gain access to health care, schools, courts –ways to be treated fairly, by a government that they hold accountable.
4. Although they acted from deeply held religious values, they do not want religious regimes. They want secular democracy.
The Arab Spring has been called the last of the anti-colonial battles, but these scholars have not looked closely at Ethiopia. That distinction will fall to the Oromo. The Oromo condition rises from a legacy of colonialism that has been unrelieved for hundred years. We in OSA have established that genealogy quite well. So in the face of this, we ask,
What Do the Oromo Want?
The Oromo want dignity, self-expression, self-governance.
The Oromo want their voices to be heard.
The Oromo want sovereignty
They want to live together at peace with their neighbors, who themselves also live in freedom exercising their own sovereignty.
The Oromo want friends and allies across the world who will work with them to protect their forests from decimation, their water from pollution, their animals from starvation, their minerals from exploitation, their sons and daughters from capture.
The Oromo want to protection from dispossession of their ancient homelands.
The Oromo want control of their own story.
The Oromo want security.
The Oromo want healthy babies.
They want a clean water supply, and even plumbing.
They want to be free of AIDS, thyroid diseases, malaria and toxin-borne diseases introduced by unregulated industries.
The Oromo want to live in and govern their own land filled with their own trees, in which live the birds whose calls they know well.
They want freedom of communication
They want access to the Internet, a window on the world – which requires electricity, education, languages, spelling
Oromo want to be part of the global conversation.
They want to form their own associations.
The Oromo want experts and specialists to assist them on their terms rather than impose alien ways on them.
Oromo want cell phones,
Oromo want education.
Oromo want freedom to express their culture.
• They want to dance without fear
• Dress in ways that they find beautiful, comfortable and meaningful.
• To hear and respond to the cries and interpretations of their poets and their musicians without fear of
reprisal
• They want to drink their own coffee.
They want jobs.
Their list is the list of aspirations of those who suffer oppression and injustice worldwide.
How do they get it? Let’s talk about that in terms restricted to this association.
When the world hears the Oromo aspirations and grievances loud and clear, they will stand with the Oromo as they did with the protestors in the Arab Spring. The Oromo will know that they are not alone that others do stand behind them. But Oromos must also stand with others, make connections, establish two-way streets in the formation of alliances. How can this come to pass? What is the role of the association of Oromo Studies?
The natural allies of the Oromo are everywhere. Oromia is a case study in the major issues of the day, but her voice is not clearly heard. OSA is now strong enough to consider taking on initiatives which encourage and equip activists to join forces with others internationally who suffer and with those who work to bring justice and peace.
Looking back on what has OSA accomplished?
• OSA has held annual conferences continuously since formation, first held in conjunction with the annual meetings political organizations and then, through a very deliberate process, held in an independent, unaffiliated status.
• Crafted and posted letters in a variety of venues drawing attention to the Oromo condition
• A midyear conference was started in 2006
• The Journal of Oromo Studies has been published continuously since the early 1990s, creating a legacy of documents that address a range of issues, primarily brought forward by people who share their expertise.
Looking forward strategically on what OSA might accomplish
• I propose that OSA move in a new direction with the intention to put more of its resources and energies into promoting Oromo scholarship in areas that will equip activists at the local and international levels to pursue justice
• OSA has a role to play in designing hypotheses, calling for the kind of data that will provide a clear articulation of facts that empower the public, encouraging scholars and increasing productivity. These actions will improve the potential for productive alliances.
• In my view, OSA as an association needs actively to recruit scholars who work on topics that affect the Oromo, inviting them to consider research or analysis into the situation in Oromia when it parallels their own work.
The Role of Public Intellectuals
Engaged, public intellectuals can help shape the future of the Oromo people. And I suggest that this challenge will appeal to scholars for many reasons. Questions of human agency (initiative and creation of nodes of power), especially in light of severe structural constraints, are very much of interest to scholars around the globe. OSA’s mission is to promote scholarship. Let us do that. Let’s promote investigation into everything that affects the Oromo. This will open the door on creating connections and alliances at many levels in the pursuit of justice.
New scholars will push us to track down the information they need, to improve the accessibility of what exists and to move into new areas of scholarship. We all know that getting the facts is a challenge in itself when the government does not encourage investigation or research into its hinterlands where heinous forms of brutality and dispossession of the Oromo and others is now occurring. We all know this. We will need to be attentive to security issues for people coming to address Oromo issues. As I mentioned at the outset, for quite some time academics took a dim view of people who pursued “engaged scholarship.” It was suggested that they might be biased, or suspect. But over the years it has become clear “engaged” scholarship is just as valuable as so-called “detached” scholarship, especially when the detachment is possible only because the researcher is sitting securely with the powers that be, safeguarded by the institutions that they were not questioning. The issue is not what your leanings are, but how you handle data. The key is in the methodology, how hypotheses are framed and integrity (duplicability) of the data. Let OSA encourage and equip public intellectuals to pursue Oromo scholarship with integrity, with intensity and with urgency.
Let OSA call people to work with us. Let’s get help in putting out the call that a living people with a valuable legacy – one which has the potential to contribute mightily to the well-being of the planet – is being lost, undermined, disabled, crippled, damaged.
OSA Contribution to Building Alliances
Religious groups can be natural allies, especially in the fields of restorative justice. I attend, for example, a Christian (Presbyterian) church where I have shared dimensions of the Oromo experience in adult education classes and even in worship. This group has taken on support of Oromo girls’ education through the REAL (Resources for the Enrichment of African Lives) program. There are many justice issues on relevant to the
Oromo that are actively pursued by churches and synagogues internationally. At the heart of the Bible there is a moral and ethical call to resist unjust political powers. There is significant potential for alliances with religious groups if they are provided hard data. Restorative justice is not only a current focus of Judeo-Christian traditions, but Arab Muslims who participated in the Arab Spring uprisings were standing up for justice, democracy, sovereignty and dignity, acting out of their religious beliefs. Oromos affiliated with OSA are part of the conversation about African engagement in Islamist movements. These connections are opening doors with new sets of actors for understanding the Oromo plight and what the Oromo have to offer.
Waqeefanna Oromo have growing opportunities to establish a theological identity in an interfaith world, even as it is seriously endangered as an indigenous religion in Africa. Establishing a reputation for Oromo traditional thought on the global scene, as Dabassa Guyyo and others have done by allying with groups that celebrate indigenous religions of South American and Asia, may help preserve Oromo religion in Oromia. By providing the scholarship which supports these efforts, OSA contributes to establishing a place in the global relational network. It makes friends who appreciate the unique features of Oromo law, philosophy and religion. A philosophy professor at Howard University studying Egyptian philosophy indentified features of the ancient stories that were imports from elsewhere in Africa. Upon searching, he found that Oromo religion is the most likely ancient influence. Thanks to OSA he made the connections to knowledgeable scholars to confirm his theory. Also Gemetchu Megerssa and Aneesa Kassam’s seminal work highlighting the essential features of the Oromo paradigm contributes greatly to the stature of Oromo thought on the world scene.
At this conference we witnessed the beginnings of the kind of productive alliance I am talking about. Habtamu Dugo introduced a scholar of genocide who is quite interested in the virtually untapped field of genocide documentation. They had found references to Oromo genocide in the writings of Mekuria Bulcha and Asafa Jalata. This investigator is now proposing specific methods for expanding knowledge of genocide, creating documents, etc. Such alliances made possible through OSA strengthen the hand of the Oromo.
Oromo youth are excelling at the finest institutions that the first world has to offer. Many young Oromo who have been raised with Oromo values are connecting in their own way with friends from around the world, showing pride in their heritage and coming with innovative suggestions and practical solutions to the sufferings of the Oromo people, whether in law, human rights, ecology, women or business. OSA can support young
Oromos through mentoring, providing data and cooperating. One of them starting bringing papers to OSA at the time she was six years old. She graduated from college this past spring. Oromo youth are excelling in a multitude of ways across the continent. These young people have new connections, new approaches. Mark my words, they will make meaningful and unexpected contributions when the opportunities open up.
Scholarly alliances will pay off greatly. Those who make it to Oromia or otherwise encounter the Oromo experience will not forget the conditions they see in Oromia. In relative terms, the Oromo reality has not really been probed. In my experience, Oromo peasants, livestock herders and urban businesspeople reveal enormous wisdom and show how acutely they are aware of the forces that impinge upon them whenever they have a chance to respond to researchers’ questions. The truth just comes pouring out. They are their own best advocates. The challenge is to get the interviews to take place.
As I read to you all at the outset, the primary goal of OSA is to promote Oromo scholarship. I suggest that we find ways to take that work beyond our conferences and our excellent journal. There are numerous to enhance the goal of providing knowledge and creating alliances.
The Oromo are witnesses and victims of empire in all its forms. But they are not alone in facing the conditions they face. They share the experience of corporate global power, inequities in the world system, crises of health, environment, climate change, and the suppression of rights of the indigenous people. They have the opportunity to share in the responses that are building up around the world. These are global crisis experienced by vast majorities on the globe. And there is a vest global response underway which is bubbling up in every corner.
Oromo have in common the goals of people who work in a vast array of organizations seeking change related to an amazing numbers of areas: agriculture, biodiversity, seed conservation, animal husbandry and animal welfare including wild life, water rights and management, air quality, arts, music, literature, dance, drama, ecotourism, green banking, microfinance, natural capitalism, child and youth protection and welfare and education and empowerment and leadership and health and labor and rights, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, community development and sustainability, preservation of cultural heritage, democracy, ecological sustainability, education, energy and power, fisheries, food and nourishment, forestry, global climate change, globalization, fair trade, governance, greening of industry, recycling, health and emerging diseases, environmental toxicology and public health, human rights, social justice and civil liberties, prisoner’s rights and conditions, victims of torture, indigenous people and rights of land and culture, inland water ecosystems lake and rivers, law policy and property rights including crime, land use, tenure, and conservation, legal and prison reform, media development and access for internet, photography, radio,
video/film, journalism, safe and sustainable mining, peace, war and security dealing with militarism, arms trading, violence, land mines, underage soldiers forcibly recruited, peacemaking, plant protection, pollution prevention of toxins, hazardous chemical waste, population movements, refugee protection, poverty eradication, housing, displacement prevention, religious and ethical sustainability, seniors rights and needs, sustainable cities and urban design with equitable infrastructure, transport, buildings, communication, waste management, sustainable biological, social, rural development, appropriate information and communication technology, mixed forest, grassland, scrubland, desert and savannah ecology, freshwater, groundwater and watershed ecosystems of dams hydrology, energy, and water quality and rights, supply and conservation and development, women’s rights, gender equality, education, civic participation, safety from violence and trafficking, workers’ rights, worker’s conditions, worker’s centers, global labor programs, sweatshop prevocational training, employment practices, training – to name the broad categories‡. Through providing data and knowledge, OSA can help create and nourish connections with initiatives in any of these areas.
The Role of Oromo Studies Association Looking Forward
What can OSA do?
OSA has a specific role to play as a politically unaffiliated body whose members comprise persons with connections throughout the nation.
OSA can play a very important role in Oromo “becoming” or “emergence.” It can rally intellectual forces to attend to what the Oromo want. Members of OSA working together can
• Put together a progressive plan to promote Oromo scholarship.
• Design the hypotheses which will challenge and ultimately reward good scholars.
• Issue a loud and wide call to recruit scholars to the analysis of the crisis faced by this nation, and its
strengths in many dimensions.
• Demonstrate or assert the value of exploration and analysis in the area of Oromo studies.
• Equip every person, Oromo or otherwise, with knowledge required for empowerment
• Centralize and make accessible knowledge already collected that is relevant to understanding the Oromo.
• Recruit scholars to participate in assessing the planetary global economic shift.
• Protect those who go into Northeast Africa to investigate difficult issues
• Revisit the challenge of establishing an Oromo library, information center or repository of some kind with
an active website that would provide a clearing house for this collection.
OSA, as a non-affiliated association needs to take on the task of providing knowledge in any area of study that affects the Oromo. Many of us have invested a great deal of intellectual and social capital into achieving and maintaining OSA’s non-affiliated and independent status. One of its current strengths is that it boasts members who are affiliated with almost all of the political groups on the Oromo landscape right now. But
no political organization out there – or remnant of former political organization – can or should do this particular job at this time. The model OSA has developed is that scholars linked with any political groups identify systematically the need/topics for research.
The prospects for OSA’s future are hopeful, soulful and crucial.
• The call for engaged scholarship which contributes to understanding the Oromo experience and points to comparable experience worldwide is OSA’s biggest mission obligation. Such scholarship, research and study will make visible what is now still invisible. People become part of the earth’s immune system when they exercise their principles in any venue and engage with others who are on the same quest. In this line, let us remember Lois Swenson, our departed sister from Minnesota who befriended Oromo in her wide embrace of the principles of social justice causes and her work with groups needing empowerment and voice.
• If OSA embraces this path, welcoming scholars from all affiliations, requiring them to deal in the facts, the truth (dhugaa), the association will assume new consequence. It will play the role for which it was designed – to bring truth from new places, and put it into the hands of those who would be liberated by knowledge.
• Many, many Oromo express in the current period that they feel they are in a holding pattern, waiting for change and direction to come from the top. But that is not necessary. Nationalists don’t have to put everything on hold until they get marching orders. While the political leaders are working out their issues, there is a huge, huge task at hand – educating the Oromo and educating the world at large, piece by piece, bit by bit, association and alliance by association and alliance – is doable and responsible. A strong cord of understanding and solidarity will stand the Oromo in a good position to withstand the challenge when this government collapses.
When Oromo encourage communication and exchange data with all who work for justice, they will have friends and there will be many eyes – knowing eyes – on the Oromo in their home country. This can protect the Oromo in Oromia and prepare the Oromo out of the country by forging links, growing their own awareness.
I tell you honestly, as a friend of the Oromo (one more tenacious and stubborn than most I presume – since I am still here) and also as an anthropologist, that the Oromo heritage is not just a national treasure, it is a global treasure. I am only one of many friends that will feel and work -- as I do -- for the emergence of the Oromo people as a nation whose input is of enormous value on the global scene. What the Oromo have, the world is looking for, a spiritual wisdom that integrates human beings with the earth and other living beings. Studies are revealing that science is confirming the impact of spiritual wisdom in shaping practice and healing the world§.
I suggest that perhaps many in the world community are coming to appreciate the beauty and strength of the kind of horizontal ‘supra-local’ organization that the Oromo created for themselves long ago when they operated as an independent republic. (In my experience, the Oromo have not performed well within a hierarchical structure either of their own or another’s making.) As opposed to hierarchy, connectionalism has its own kind of strength – horizontal, multi-layered and complex. The world has changed since the Oromo models were short-sightedly dismissed as “simple,” because they had no king Current technologies, however, support many new kinds of horizontal correlation, making all sorts of new linkages possible.
When it does come time for the Oromo to sit together in a national assembly to hammer out a sovereign alternative for themselves – an alternative to the repressive state that they currently live under – Oromo may well be prepared if there are many and knowledgeable voices and a wide variety of interest in the conversation. If the Oromo eventually forge a way to get what they want by building a civic state (something I have written about starting in 2002), it will be through a national conversation. Everybody will need to be
engaged in order to fashion an institution that defends their individual and collective interests. This is a welcome prospect. Though the Oromo are not there yet, they don’t need to sit on their hands until that time comes.
The Ethiopian state is strong but probably even more brittle, as I mentioned, than those states brought down in the Arab Spring. When it fractures, the Oromos – and all the allies they are making in the meantime – will be ready to participate. And then, maybe Oromo will be prepared to act “akka Gadaatii”
There are many reasons for hope and many avenues for the use of knowledge to support empowerment. I encourage OSA to embrace them.
* Thanks to Rami Khouri of The Daily Star for continuing blog commentary and documentation of events of the Arab Spring.
† See “Ethiopia: Assessing the Risks to Stability” by Terrence Lyons, paper for CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), June 2011
‡ See Blessed Unrest: how the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it coming by Paul Hawken, Viking Press, 2007.
§ There is a cutting-edge forum on spiritual wisdom at Yale called the Forum for the Study of Religion and
Ecology (see http://fore.research.yale.edu/ ) . Many scholarly institutions that focus on the importance of global paradigms of creativity, connection and interdependence of human beings with the earth.
Oromo studies
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