Documentation, development, and ideology in the ... - Roger Blench

Documentation, development, and ideology in the northwestern Kainji languages 113
4.1.2 Becoming Hausa
With the formation of the British Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1901
slave-raiding seems to have ceased fairly quickly (Blench 2011). Nevertheless
Kainji peoples experienced discrimination from the British, who
understandably identified more with the more complex political structures of
the Islamic Fulani and Hausa than with the small animist farming and fishing
communities of the Middle Belt. Thus despite the positive aspects of the ‘Pax
Britannica’, the power of the Fulani/Hausa élite was further consolidated by
the British (Blench et al. 2006; Salamone 2010 chapter 4; Isichei 1983: 392-
393). Since independence in 1960 the government attitude towards the Kainji
peoples has been one of neglect, although two important developments have
affected the (formerly) riverine Reshe, Lopa and Laru peoples in particular –
state-sponsored conversion to Islam, and the wholesale resettlement of these
peoples at the creation of Lake Kainji (from which the Kainji language group
takes its name, incidentally) in 1968. In 1975 the anthropologist Frank
Salamone described the effects of the resettlement as follows (see also
Salamone 1975a on ‘Becoming Hausa’):
Until the completion of Kainji Dam in the late 1960s forced their
resettlement, the Gungawa (island-dwellers) [i.e. the Reshe] were a
riverine people who practised exploitative alternation of resources,
shifting from onions to millet, guinea corn and rice as the season
and occasion warranted. Fishing supplemented their income and
complex and friendly arrangements with the Serkawa (professional
fishermen) preserved fishing boundaries. Today the Gungawa find
themselves on extremely poor farm land, land especially ill-suited
for onion and rice cultivation. In addition, their movement from
riverine positions and the other ecological changes consequent on
the building of Kainji Dam have abrogated their agreements with
the Serkawa, and the Serkawa have taken over the dried fish export
trade once dominated by the Gungawa. Faced with no real
alternatives, Gungawa increasingly used a long-established pattern
of ethnic identity change and became Hausa [italics ours]. The
procedure for doing so is well-known in Yauri. They became
Muslims, spoke only Hausa in public, swore off the consumption
of indigenous alcoholic beverages, dressed in a Hausa manner and
called themselves Hausa (Salamone 1975b: 203).
The other former riverine peoples, the Laru and Lopa, have had similar
experiences – see Section 5.1 for the phenomenon in Cicipu. Nevertheless,
despite (or perhaps because of) these misfortunes, the western Kainji
languages are, in general, remarkably vital today, certainly in comparison with
the eastern Kainji languages spoken on the Jos Plateau.