The Dogon is a community who lives along the swathe of land against the Bandiagara Cliffs in eastern Mali and some parts of southeastern Burkina Faso.
The Dogon has gone through centuries, surviving a number slave raiding from a successive revolution of empires of Ghana like the Sao, the Mossi, the Sonrai, and the Fulani, even from the Muslims who drifted southwards from the north. Until 1930’s, the community was still firmly isolated from the outside and opposed to external influence. The cliff gave them an edge in resisting the colonials, the Muslims and others who attempted to conquer them.
This made the Dogon to constantly preserve their cultural traditions despite the forces of changes directed to them. Among many African groups they are among the few who have stuck and continued to evolve their culture till today.
The Dogon has a well-defined structure of family groups with specific functions in the Dogon life. Their different societies have various ritual responsibilities such as the lab are the society who intermediate with the agricultural spirits, build alters out of dirt and clay, whereas Awa is the group responsible for most of the spiritual functions in the Dogon culture, more so concerned with death rituals and communicate with their ancestors.
In all their cultural practices, rituals are the most observed and respected. Their rites are based on promoting harmony between the surrounding animals, human spirit and the land. The examples of the rituals still practiced unfold below:
The dances performed under the Dogon masks are world famous to many art curators together with anthropologists. Dogon masks command a lot of honors within tribal art collections of the world with noticeable influences in the 20th centuries from Braque, Picasso also witnessed during Cubist movement.
They believe the masks binds people to the celestial and terrestrial worlds where they get food, life and shelter. In the dance, the sirige mask is worn by those skilled who swing the mask to tracing out the arc of the sun. The mask is designed with a straight line which associates the worlds of the earth and sun. The Dogon mask dances or rather, dama dance is done to honor the dead respected elders of the community, and lasts for three days.
This is one of the many intriguing and mysterious rituals conducted by the Dogon tribe who use it to forebode the future of Dogon villages and tribesmen. The ceremony is performed by the Dogon priest.
The ceremony kicks off just before sunset. The ‘diviner’ commences by drawing squares in the sand at foothills and interconnected while an intricate symbol is done with squares that is constituted to be God’s wishes, peace and harmony, life and death, and the light of the Dogon families and villages. Each shaping represents various attributes of the society, but all along the priest chants to appeal to coming of the fox to foretell. This ends just before darkness sets in.
The ceremony is complete the following day with a gathering that enables the priest to find out fox’s footprints which gives the forecast of the Dogon future years.
By Matengo Chwanya
Sources: Goddesschess/ Africaguide/ Wp/ Ng/
Africa Global News Publication
