His stated political aims are to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. [23] This resulted in resistance building up in the region and soon a host of rebel groups sprang up in the north. somewhat better off than others before the latter part of the nineteenth identity is rather disputed. Sons have traditionally learned about farming, hunting, herding, and lineage and chiefdom traditions from their fathers and other lineage males; girls learn farming and domestic duties from their mothers. We have a small favour to ask: if you appreciate our work, would you mind considering making a donation to support our work? reported that the Acholi chiefs generally accepted the position of Baker, as he had helped them Acholi have played a pivotal role in the turbulent post-independence era. the northern regions, this relationship changed. Conflict. In precolonial Acholi, lineage heads and elders were most responsible for social control, though one of the attractions that assisted the development of chiefdoms seems to have been the ability of rwodi to help settle disputes that involved more than one lineage. The available evidence suggests that conflict in Acholi before the end of the nineteenth century, both among Acholi chiefdoms and with neighboring peoples, was neither rare nor endemic. Identification. In Changing Uganda: The Dilemmas of Structural Adjustment and Revolutionary Change, edited by Holger B. Hansen and Michael Twaddle, 162-177. This article was most recently revised and updated by, Minority Rights Group International - World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Acholi. When not disrupted or dispossessed by the violence endemic since the mid-1980s, most Acholi remain primarily mixed farmers. Inheritance. At the peak of the conflict, 90% of the Acholi population moved into IDP camps designed as protected villages. encompasses the six closely related languages Acholi, Adhola, Alur, Kumam, Lango and Historian Mark Curtis says that after Amin instigated a coup, Britain, the United States, and Israel quietly backed Amin and his campaign against the socialist-leaning President Milton Obote in 1971. The republican constitution adopted in 1967 abolished the monarchies and assigned ultimate political power to an elected president. fight the Arab slave traders and his colonial administration was viewed as not very invasive As of September 2009, large numbers of Acholi people remain in camps as internally displaced persons. Aristotle wrote that politics stems . from sexual conduct, over blackmailing and stealing, to killing someone (Vincent, 2012, pp. Administrative divisions within Acholi, however, both during colonial rule and since independence, have often reflected preexisting sociopolitical units: lineages at the parish level; chiefdoms at the subcounty level; and larger zones of the most intensive (and peaceful) interpolity interactions at the county level. Each type of spirit had numerous ceremonies associated with it; many ceremonies included small offerings of food and drink. were able gain wealth by trading mainly in ivory. Due to a changing economy, after the 1950s, fewer Acholi was recruited to the armed forces but continued to be associated with them in popular mythology and stereotypes. coming from the territory of present-day South Sudan over a period spanning multiple centuries. became more frequent, more deadly, and more widely spread. As some of these languages show some form The third group of spirits were those of unknown persons and dangerous beasts; these were hostile, personified as ghosts, believed to cause sickness and other misfortunes, and dealt with by means of spirit possession. Atkinson, Ronald R. (1989). ETHNONYMS: Ebantfu ba kwa Ngwane (the people of Ngwane), emaSwati, emaSwazi, Swati organisation to survive, a common identity had to form to support this new social structure of They also kept goats, sheep and cattle. century, social stratification appears limited, owing primarily to both By the mid-nineteenth century, about 60 small chiefdoms existed in eastern Acholiland. We hope you find it interesting. majority peasant population. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. Much of that hierarchy continued The largest political unit was the tribal section, regarded as the geographical nation. Approximately 2.1 million Acholi were counted in the Uganda census of 2014, and 45,000 more were living in South Sudan in 2000.[4]. Encyclopedia.com. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. In the pre-colonial era, all the Acholi believed in the same superior being, YA Latwer. [26], In 2016, the multi award-winning film, A Brilliant Genocide was produced. From the Holy Spirit Movement, the notorious Lords Resistance Army (LRA), led by Acholi Joseph Kony, emerged. Political Organization. Dances and other activities surrounding spirit possession seem to have been originally introduced from Bunyoro in the early nineteenth century and then became more wide-spread during the tumultuous years of the latter part of that century. However, this number is most likely considerably Religious Practitioners. deaths. Individual antecedents of political behavior include political . [10], The Acholi are known to the outside world mainly because of the long insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony, an Acholi from Gulu. What attitudes towards and beliefs about language, linguistic competence and teaching languages do student teachers hold at the start of their teacher education.. How, It addresses the practices used for managing linguistic diversity in downstream relationships, particularly focusing on the role of language nodes at the, LINGUISTIC MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN AUTOMATIC UNDERSTANDING OF NATURAL LANGUAGE LINGUISTIC MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN AUTOMATIC UNDERSTANDING OF NATURAL LANGUAGE, Linguistic and Cognitive Measures in Arabic-Speaking English Linguistic and Cognitive Measures in Arabic-Speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) and monolingual children with and, Recently, Wang, Teng, and Chen (2015) conducted a study to examine students attitude toward the use of iPad in English Vocabulary Learning. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Comprising less than 5 percent of the country's population, during the early years of independence the Acholi constituted more than 15 percent of the police force and fully a third of the army. [29], Media related to Acholi people at Wikimedia Commons. It was filmed by Australian director Ebony Butler, Simon Hardwidge and Ugandan author Frey Onen. NAPE, along with sister organization the National Association for Women's Action in Development, has brought together more than 5,000 women from . With the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan in 2005, and the establishment of the ex-rebel government in newly independent South Sudan in territory in which the LRA once operated freely, those lines of support have been substantially weakened, if not severed altogether. Nevertheless, many remain in a state of displacement. While Bantu speaking groups had begun to occupy "Acholi-Arab Nubian Relations in the Nineteenth Century." According to the latest census, there are 1.47 million ethnic Acholi in Uganda, amounting to 4.4 per cent of the total population. Since 1996 this policy has expanded to encompass the entire rural Acholi population of four districts, one million people. Politics has been around for millennia. state, political organization of society, or the body politic, or, more narrowly, the institutions of government. The women have accomplished agriculturists, growing and processing a variety of food crops, including millet, simsim, groundnuts, peas, sorghum and vegetables. (Byrnes, 1990, p. 6), did the Acholi not arrive in their present-day area before the 15th century [28], In 2012 the American charity Invisible Children produced a documentary about the LRA. Ironworking, mainly but not entirely confined to certain lineages, appears to be almost as ancient as agriculture, going back perhaps to the first millennium b.c. Marriage has been typically patrilocal and patriarchal, with the husband and father as the undisputed head of the household. )[9], "Since independence in 1962, Uganda has been plagued by ethnically driven, politically manipulated violence referred to by some as a history of 'cycles of revenge and mistrust'. For example, among Acholi, husbands pay a bride price to their wives fathers, and this payment supports the traditional belief that women are the property of the husband, since a payment was made for her. All members of the household acknowledge the authority of its head, the husband; each wife or other adult female in the household has traditionally had her own fields, granaries, and kitchen or cooking hut. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customised ads. A rebellion The conflict", UGANDA: 1,000 displaced die every week in war-torn north - report | Uganda | Refugees/IDPs, UGANDA/DRC: OPERATION RUDIA II UPDATE 2009-06-29, "The Anguish of Northern Uganda - Section 1 - Uganda", Sample of written Acholi from the Language Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Acholi_people&oldid=1142669727, All articles with bare URLs for citations, Articles with bare URLs for citations from March 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, "Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation, Articles using infobox ethnic group with image parameters, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. During this time, people were separated from their land for long periods, and many people disappeared or were killed. The size and nature of this occasion depend on the age and status of the deceased, with the most lavish and festive celebrations taking place when the person who died was both aged and important. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. represents an income that averages several times that of a member of the them Shuuli, based on their language being similar to Shilluk from South Sudan. The system values peace over justice, and has retributive and restorative aspects. Kitgum, Pader and Gulu, the three districts of the Acholi sub-region, each established peace forums for continuing discussions. NRA in 1986. Museveni has held absolute power since, surviving unrest, civil war, and numerous attempts at coups. with the British and those who managed to obtain Western education. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The Song of Lawino, one of the most successful African literary works, was written by Okot p'Bitek, published in 1966 in Acholi, and later translated to English. "[21] In discussing the peace talks of 20052007, Latigo noted leaders who called for a revival of the traditional processes of the indigenous people by which they worked for accountability and justice, namely, mato oput. The Acholi sub-region is a part of the administrative region of Northern-Uganda. The essential lawlessness of the Idi Amin and second Milton Obote regimes, however, as well as of the various rebel groups, the Ugandan army, and Karamojong raiders (who have been active in Acholi since the mid-1980s) have led to a breakdown of any meaningful social control in the area. 1.84 million people, mostly Acholi, lived in 251 different Internal Displaced Person camps. Numbering more than one million at the turn of the 21st century, they speak a Western Nilotic language of the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family and are culturally and historically related to their traditional enemies, the neighbouring Lango. Lineage heads, assisted by lineage elders, organized both production (based on cooperative village-lineage labor) and reproduction (through the control of the material means and ideological rules of marriage). thesis, University of Nairobi. According to the reconstruction by Atkinson (2011 [1994]), the Acholi as a group emerged Corrections? Milton Obote, the independence leader, relied heavily on the support of his fellow Luo-speakers Acholi and Langi in government. The Acholi have small chiefdoms of one or more villages, each with several patrilineal clans.