Identity, Rice, and Oral Traditions: Reflections from Fieldwork among Nalu, Baga Fore, and Baga Pukur-Speakers

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Periodical article

Title:	Identity, Rice, and Oral Traditions: Reflections from Fieldwork among Nalu, Baga Fore, and Baga Pukur-Speakers
Author:	Fields, Edda L.
Year:	1999
Periodical:	Mande Studies
Volume:	1
Pages:	87-107
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Guinea
Subjects:	Baga oral traditions Education and Oral Traditions Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/44078779
Abstract:	Core vocabularies of coastal West Atlantic speech communities in Guinea show that the Nalu-Baga Fore-Baga Pukur speech communities and the Temne-Landuma-Baga Sitemu subgroup are only distant linguistic relatives. However, a critical analysis of oral traditions, collected between December 1997 and December 1998, suggests that these groups share a coastal cultural identity, regardless of their linguistic differences. Contemporary elders of these groups identify themselves and their ancestors as rice eaters, rice growers, exploiters of wet environments, and as the original inhabitants of Fuuta Jaloo. These multiple identities together are seen as a coastal 'Baga' identity. Rather than recounting group origins and group migration, the oral traditions collected represent Nalu, Baga Fore and Baga Pukur relationships with their difficult and changing environment and with a powerful precolonial Muslim State. This article draws on these traditions to illustrate the interaction of multiple identities and the layers of the past they represent in collective memory. Bibliogr., notes, ref.