The Role of Indigenous Rituals in Promoting Gender Equality among the Oromo People: The Case of Engicha Ritual

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge (IK) is the knowledge that indigenous peoples are leading their livelihood and also they learnt it from the actual practices during their day to day life. Among the different aspects of IK, one is Indigenous ritual; which is conducted by indigenous peoples for very different reasons at different periods and also across the culture. Traditionally the IK were considered as worthless and anybody have had criticizing it. But, currently the reality is promulgated by different scholars as the indigenous knowledge is very crucial in day to day life of indigenous peoples. The research methodology was mainly qualitative research method. The primary data were gathered through observation, FGDs, key informants’ interviews, and informal conversations. There was also a questionnaire distributed to and filled by dwellers of the district. Secondary sources were gathered from the district offices and internet. The Engicha ritual is the indigenous ritual that is celebrated by girls. It is an indigenous ritual that was designed culturally for girls and it is only celebrated by girls. It is celebrated at the first day of the New Year according to the traditional Oromo calendar. It is the ritual that is celebrated by girls holding the grass called Engicha, which was collected on the eve of the ritual from nearby rivers or marshy areas and then chained it.  On this day, the girls are rounding within the locals and distributing the chained Engicha as the gifts of the ritual and in return, they are given butter or money by each household as gift. The ritual has different purposes like commemorating the girls day, publicizing their right, facilitating a mate selection system, creating social relationships between girls, promoting the protections of having sexual intercourses before marriage, developing tourism for the district, etc. The political and religious (particularly) domination faced the people during the past regimes contributed a lot to the weakening of Engicha ritual.

The Engicha ritual is an indigenous ritual that is colorfully celebrated by girls and thus it is the girl’s ritual. Here, it is also possible to say that before the commencement of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the Oromo people have a culture that respects and give guarantee for human right in general and that of girl’s right in particular.

There are a number of changes that have been observed on this ritual in the study area. The basic and fundamental factors to these changes were resulted from political and religious subjugations. In addition, the weakening of the households in their economic capacities, the conversion of the ritual places in to farm land, modernity and etc. are also the factors that are playing their own role in the weakening of this ritual.