Dogons

The Dogons are people of the Mali, in West Africa. Their population is estimated at 300.000 people. They occupy the area which goes from the Falaise of Bandiagara to the south-west of the loop of the Niger. Some Dogons are installed in the north of the Burkina Faso. Dogons are above all the farmers (primarily millet) and blacksmiths. They are famous for their Cosmogonie and their sculptures.

The spoken language by Dogons is the Dogon which gathers several dialects. There exists also a secret language, the Sigi so , language reserved for the company of the masks. Dogons are dependant with the Ethnie Bozos by the Parenté on joke. Dogons and Bozos make fun reciprocally but in parallel owe assistance.

History

Dogons would have come from the Mandé, area located at the south-west of the Mali at the 14th century to avoid the Islam isation. They would have settled with Kani Bonzon before dispersing on three sites which are the Falaise of Bandiagara (site put in 2003 on the world list of the inheritance of UNESCO), the plate (area of Sangha) and the plain. This cliff was then inhabited by the Tellem.

Religion

Originally, they are Animiste S. Although having fled to avoid Islamization (the warriors Peul S called them the “Habés” - pagan), the majority of Dogons are today Moslem even if the practices animists are still quite present. A minority is Christian.

Marcel Griaule, Ethnologue studied Dogons. In 1946, it had discussions with Ogotemmêli, an old hunter become blind following an accident and having made profitable the inactivity due to its handicap to look further into its traditional knowledge. Starting from these talks, it published several books, whose " celebrates it; God of eau" (Beech), on cosmogony dogon.

Dogons believe in a single god, Amma . It created the ground and made of it its wife who gave him a son, Yurugu or the “ pale Renard ”. It was an imperfect being which knew only the first word, the secret language sigi so. The ground then gave to Amma a couple of child twins called Nommo. Those were at the same time male and female. Masters of the word, they taught it with the first eight ancestors of the men, 4 couples of twins, born from a couple worked in clay by Amma.

Dogons consider that the origin of the world comes from a named star Digitaria , close to Sirius (called Sigui tolo ). It would be smallest and heaviest of stars and would contain the germ of any thing. This star would be Sirius B, a white Naine, indeed a very dense star and very door but this one were discovered only in 1844 by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel and Alvan Clark which calculated that its revolution around Sirius was of approximately 50 years. 60 years is the duration between two ceremonies of the Sigui , the principal ceremony of Dogons.

Moreover, according to cosmogony dogon, Sirius would have a satellite second , or rather a star companion, but 1995 had to be awaited so that Jean-Louis Duvent and Daniel Benest, astronomers at the observatory of Nice, guided by apparent irregularities of the movement of Sirius, suspect the existence of dwarf a hypothetical red. To date, the existence of possible a Sirius C was not confirmed.

Culture

Religious company and rites

The shônan commonly called " togouna" (or puts with palaver), is a construction present in each village, under which the men of the village, and more particularly the old ones, meet to speak about the businesses of the village. Its low size obliges the men to sit down and prohibits transport (while rising abruptly, one knocks cranium). It consists of eight pillars out of wooden on which rest to eight layers of Chaume. Number 8 refers to the number of the first ancestors dogons. Symbols let us dogons are carved on the pillars.

The funerary rite is held in three times:

At the time of the death, a burial is organized. The body of late is washed before being deposited with the free air in the faults of the cliffs which are used as cemetery. Its heart remains in the village.
A few months later, are organized funeral which allows the family and the close relations of paying a homage to the late one. Its heart leaves the continuous family home then but to wander in the neighborhoods.
the third time is the rammed . This ceremony is collective and concerns all the people died during the previous years (the rammed is organized all the 3 to 5 years). The hearts have to join the ancestors. During the ceremony which lasts three days, different the Masque S left and ravels and dances in the village. This ceremony marks the end of mourning.

The ceremonies of the '' Sigui '' take place, at Dogons, every sixty years. They are held over seven years. The next ones will take place in 2027). It is about an important ritual of regeneration. They commemorate the revelation of the oral word to the men, as well as the death and the funeral of the first ancestor. Jean Rouch carried out several films at the time of the last festivals between 1967 and 1974.

The “company of the masks” called Awa directs the masked dances organized at the time of the various ceremonies. The company includes/understands all the men. The boys enter there after the Circoncision. The women are not allowed in this company, except those born the year of the sigui.

The hogon is the religious leader of the village dogon. He is the priest of the worship of the lébé ( Lébé Seru is the first Dogon ancestor which, buried with the country of the Mandé, ressuscita in the form of snake). It is the oldest man of the village which becomes hogon . Some prohibited are prescribed to him. He does not have any more the right to have a physical contact with nobody, he must leave his house any more…

The company dogon is patrilineal , but the maternal family overrides the children. Indeed, all dogon of return to the country must obligatorily pass in its maternal family before returning visit to his/her paternal parents. The descendants of a common ancestor belong to a ginna which gathers all the male adults, their wives and their children. The ginna also includes the houses of family and the fields their pertaining. The chief, the ginna bana , is the oldest man.

Structure

Architecture dogon is specific. The majority of the villages are established in cliff, and accessible only by escarpés ways which borrow the faults of the plate.

The traditional box is organized around a court, each woman having her attic to which the husband does not have access. The attic of the husband is used to preserve the millet, the attic of the women is useful, him, to preserve the condiments and various objects. The attics are clearly identifiable by their roof in seko (straw), that of the husband being in general, most important.

There exist various kinds of attics (called gôh ) of specific architecture, and having an attribution and a particular symbolic system:

the gôh Karï, divided into three parts, is obligatorily the property of a man.
the gôh nân, larger, which can belong to a man or a woman, is built on two stages, and is divided into four compartments per stage. It is used for the conservation of the cereals (millet, sorghum, fonio). It is also used as strong trunk and contains invaluable objects then.
the gôh Annan which is largest and fact of only one block, is under the responsibility of the chief of chalk-lining. It contains harvests of the collective fields ( Annan meaning village). It is loosened only at the time of drynesses, or for the ceremony of the Dama .
the gôh Pôron, a castrated attic, is under the responsibility of the chief of chalk-lining. It presents a small central low wall.

Music

The Dogon music various and is varied. It is closely associated with the various rites: marriages, funeral etc… The young singer Malian Déné Issébéré is the emblem of this musical culture Dogon as well in Mali as apart from the borders Malians .

Dances

Very codified, the dances let us dogons express the formation of the world, the organization of the solar system, the worship of the divinities or the mysteries of death. Most spectacular on stilts called " is carried out; touterelles".

The table of the fox

The " Table" is used as instrument of Divination. The person who has problems, will find the " Soothsayer " so that he predicts the future to him or gives him some councils. With the variation of the village in end of the afternoon, the soothsayer, following the explanations of the customer, traces a large rectangle divided into several boxes, of which each one receives various signs and small sticks planted in the ground. Then the soothsayer asks the customer to launch on this " table" a handle of cacahuettes, then both leave the places until the next morning. During the night a fox (or Fennec), comes to eat the cacahuettes by trampling the " table". The morning, the soothsayer returns with his customer, and interprets the traces left by the fox, and according to those and of the reversed sticks the future predicts to him.

Lifestyle

Dogons are above all the farmers, of small millet, Sorgho and Riz, as well as Oignon S and of some others not very demanding Légume S out of water. The millet, that they store in attics, is the base of their food, but the culture of the onion (which represents nearly a third of cultivable surfaces of cliff) is essential with their economy since they are exported in the neighborhood cities and are used as currency of exchange with the other ethnos groups (for example for the purchase of fish to the Bozos). They raise also smaller live-stock, especially sheep and chickens. Traditionally let us dogons them are also famous blacksmiths. A recent study highlighted the production of iron and wrought iron tools of the time of Tellems at the 6th century, production become quasi industrial of the 14th century at the 19th century at the time Dogon. It appears that various techniques of recovery of iron, starting from the ore found in various places of cliff of Bandiagara, were developed in various villages sometimes separated from a few tens of kilometers

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