Dinka

views updated

Dinka

ETHNONYM: Moinjaang

Orientation

Identification. "Dinka" is a term that has been used for centuries to refer to a people who speak of themselves as "Moinjaang," or "the people of the people." They live over a wide area in southern Sudan, amid the many streams and small rivers that feed into the main channel of the Nile River. The ecological year is defined by a dry season of no rain (from November to April) and the season of daily, sometimes intense rain (from May to October).

Demography. At the time of the last official census, in 1950, the Dinka were estimated to number slightly over 1 million individuals, making them the largest ethnic group in southern Sudan. Population densities vary considerably, however, in association with local ecological variation and with the seasonal movements of the Dinka with their herds of cattle.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Dinka language is most closely related to Nuer and Atuot; these languages comprise a subfamily within the larger classification of Nilotic.

History and Cultural Relations

Scholars continue to disagree about the origin of the Dinka, although there is a general consensus that they have inhabited their present country for at least 400 years, if not longer. Indeed, pictographs in temples of ancient Egypt depict cattle with striking resemblances to cattle today. Questions about the origin of the Dinka are best prefaced by questions about the origin of domesticated cattle in Africa south of the Sahara. Culturally, the Dinka are most like the neighboring Nuer and Atuot.

Settlements

Given the fact that Dinka-speaking peoples live in communities that cover considerably different ecological niches, generalizations about the "typical" Dinka settlement are difficult to make. Prior to British colonial rule, there were no "villages" per se. Instead, homesteads were clustered in nomadic territories in a pattern that allowed year-round access to drinking water and to grasslands for feeding their cattle herds. Some settlement clusters consisted of only two or three homesteads, whereas others were comprised of more than a hundred distinctive family settlements. Traditional homesteads were made of mud walls, with thatched roofs, and they lasted some twenty years. In a circular pattern around her hut, a woman cultivated her cooking gardens. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the British admiralty administration sought to cement its presence in southern Sudan by establishing a number of administrative centers. Since then, these small towns have grown considerably, establishing a mode of residence that was previously unknown to the Dinka.

Economy

The Dinka practice a mode of horticulture that complements and balances their cultural devotion to pastoralism, and it is hard to imagine a mode of livelihood that is better suited to their habitat. Millet provides the staple crop; normally there are two plantings per homestead each year. Maize, sesame, pumpkins, okra, and cassava are also cultivated. Although men engaged in the heavy work of clearing secondary forest for gardening sites, women perform the far greater part of the horticultural labor. Men in their twenties and thirties manage and tend the large herds of Dinka cattle. As the rainy season abates and the rivers and streams become more shallow, Dinka also catch many species of fish and, occasionally, hippopotamuses. Game is hunted intermittently. Few items of traditional Dinka material culture lasted longer than the people who manufactured them.

Division of Labor. The cultivation of primary food crops is largely a feminine domain, as is cooking and collecting water from bore wells or rivers. Young boys are introduced to the responsibilities of adulthood by tending small flocks of sheep and goats. Stock rearing, breeding, and tending is an adult-male responsibility. Men manufacture spears, fishing hooks, and cattle ropes from local materials, and women create cooking utensils, baskets, and sleeping mats.

Land Tenure. Access to cultivation and grazing areas is defined by membership in named patrilineal descent groups. Membership, by birth, allocates these rights to all individuals who attain adult status. Traditionally, land and cattle were owned collectively. Neither cattle nor land could be "sold" or otherwise alienated from members of patrilineal birth groups.

Kinship

Kin groups are defined in association with named, totemic descent groups and are extended bilaterally through marriage. At marriage, women leave their natal birth groups to become members of their husbands' agnatic lineages. Like those of the other Nilotic peoples of the southern Sudan and eastern Africa, Dinka relationship terminology is of the classificatory type.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Although a small number of Dinka have "converted" to Catholicism, polygamy is the cultural ideal of Dinka men, owing primarily to economic and productive factors. Many men contract only a single marriage in their lifetime, but a significant proportion of domestic unions involve the marriage of one man to a number of women. In some chiefly families, men have anywhere from 50 to 100 wives. Due to their classification relationship terminology and also to clan exogamy, Dinka marriage customs tend to create affinal links across wide political and geographic spaces. Marriage is legally defined through the exchange of bride-wealth in the form of cattle. The ideal number of cattle with which to pay bride-wealth varies in different regions of Dinka country, but a number between thirty and forty cattle is common. In addition to the marriage of a woman to a man, the Dinka also practice some of the other forms of marriage that have been reported from other Nilotic communities, such as ghost marriage and levirate. Nearly every adult Dinka woman or man is married at least once in a lifetime.

Domestic Unit. Commensality is one of the primary bases of Dinka domesticity. Co-wives often share the responsibilities of preparing meals on a rotating basis, although a woman always sees to the needs of her own children first. Because they never learn to cook in their youth, the men are dependent upon women to prepare food for them throughout their lives. This factor of dependency is manifest in other aspects of Dinka life as well.

Socialization. A child matures in the loving and attentive company of the family's other children and step-children and a wide circle of kin. Following their initiations, young girls and boys begin to travel quite separate roads, as each interacts more intensely with members of the same sex. Boys begin to master the difficult onus of stock rearing, and girls learn the equally demanding tasks of the women's world.

Sociopolitical Organization

In all areas of Dinka settlements live beng, or "chiefs of the fishing spear," and trace their common agnatic heredity to the first spear master, who figures prominently in Dinka origin myths. Spear masters have a spiritual and mystical ability to provide life and assure the health of humans, plants, and animals. Traditionally, spear masters provided the sacred sanction for the regulation of political life, although the Dinka also recognized political loyalties in reference to the shared economic interests that were created through marriage. With the advent of colonial rule in the southern Sudan, British officials imposed a political order of secular chiefs that was entirely foreign to Dinka custom. The creation of a secular legal system, coupled with formal education, has all but eradicated the traditional role and status of spear masters.

Religion

Dinka religious thought posits the existence of a distant but ubiquitous divinity called Nhialac. All life emanates from and ultimately reverts to Nhialac, whereas a different stratum of spiritual agents provides the Dinka with the means of communicating with the supreme divinity. The Dinka also recognize a large number of spiritual agents that are directly susceptible to human control, through the ritual actions of diviners and healers. Traditionally, the Dinka did not imagine that another world awaited them after death, but much concern was expressed about the abilities of the "ghosts" of the recently deceased to affect the well-being of the living.