Page 67 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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lived in a geographical place and in cultural milieus.
But Ethiopians who have a
colonial design on the space and who wish to impose an Ethiopian culture have tried
their best through political and intellectual discourses to deny this society a historical
homeland and historical and cultural space. For Habasha (Amhara-Tigray) politicians
and intellectuals and their Euro-American supporters, Oromos have been depicted in
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politically motivated writings as “newcomers” and “invaders” of “Ethiopia,” despite
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the fact that they were one of the original peoples who settled in this region. The
emergence of the Oromos as one of the dominant peoples in the Horn of Africa in
the sixteenth century has led many scholars to conclude that they came from another
continent and “invaded” nonexistent Ethiopia. Others have hypothesized that they
were expelled in the tenth century by the Somalis from their original homeland and
invaded “Ethiopia.”
The name Ethiopia was originally associated with the regions where Black peoples
lived in Asia and Africa.This name originated from the Greek word Aethiopes, which
meant burned face. This name came to be associated with Abyssinia through the
process of translating the Bible from Hebrew to Greek and from Greek to Geez (the
ancient Abyssinian language).Since Abyssinia has been mainly the homeland of Amha-
ras and Tigrayans, it was only small part of the Black world, which was called Ethiopia.
Recognizing the political significance of the name Ethiopia, Abyssinian leaders
claimed Ethiopian identity and named their country and the regions they colonized,
including Oromia,“Ethiopia” in the 1930s. Despite the fact that the historical mean-
ing of Ethiopia is applicable to all Black peoples, its current meaning applies mainly
to the Amharas and the Tigrayans. Recognizing this historical implication and reject-
ing Habasha racist claims, Oromo nationalists say,“We are Oromians, not Ethiopians.”
The Ethiopian elites and their Euro-American supporters believed that Oromos
should be regarded as primitive people and argued that Oromos could not contribute
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to human civilization. The Oromo people who have been condemned as people
without a homeland and history by some Ethiopian and Ethiopianist knowledge elites
are engaged in political and cultural reconstruction to determine their destiny. The
cultural resistance to colonialism can develop into political and armed struggles pro-
vided that there are other necessary conditions.The colonization of a human group
denies human dignity and suppresses the material and nonmaterial elements of cul-
ture that are necessary for survival and development. Hence, the national movement
is “the organized political expression of the culture of the people who are undertak-
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ing the struggle.” The understanding of the Oromo national struggle requires the
study of the conditions of the people before and after their colonization.
The Oromo institutional heritage has become the ideological foundation of the
Oromo nationalist discourse; therefore, it is essential to explore the character and sig-
nificance of these institutions.These institutions laid the foundations of Oromo polit-
ical, economic, cultural, and political structures. 28 Since Oromos have been an oral
society and since their culture and civilization have not yet been adequately studied,
we have only partial data on Oromo institutions.The Ethiopian political and knowl-
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edge elites have discouraged the thorough study of this society. However, with the
consolidation of the Oromo struggle since the 1970s, despite all these obstacles, a few
scholars have begun to study seriously some aspects of Oromo culture and institutions
and broadened our knowledge of Oromo society.
Ethiopian settler colonialists had essentially committed cultural genocide by elim-
inating Oromo cultural experts and replacing Oromo institutions with those of