Sam 🦍🖤🇳🇬

My last post was supposed to come after this one, but I'm glad it came first. What exactly is a "tribe"? For the sake of this conversation, let’s use the Yoruba as an example. The Yoruba language does not have a one-for-one equivalent for the English word "tribe." I know some will immediately suggest "ẹ̀yà," but hold that thought — we will circle back to it. "Tribe" is an English word. But what did it actually mean to the people who labeled us with it? In 1877, Lewis Henry Morgan published a pseudoscientific framework that standardized the European worldview of Africa. He mapped the evolution of human societies on a rigid scale: Savagery → Barbarism (tribe)→ Civilization. Savagery sat at the bottom. Civilization sat at the top, defined by writing and the "state" — the only structures Europe recognized as real government. The middle stage was Barbarism, and the political organizational form assigned to Barbarism was the "tribe." To Europe, being tribal meant being barbaric. It was a label reserved for societies they deemed inferior to the civilization they claimed to have mastered. They used this word for the peoples they decimated across the globe. They called Native Americans "tribes" and exterminated them. They called Australian Aborigines "tribes" and destroyed them. But when they came here, and called us "tribes," we celebrated it. Today, we guard this shameful colonial appellation with racist viciousness. If we truly understood the glory of our old kingdoms, we would see how absurd it is to call them tribes. At its imperial peak in the late 17th and 18th centuries, the Old Oyo Empire covered roughly 150,000 square kilometers — about one-sixth of modern Nigeria’s landmass. Its sophisticated administrative hierarchy and immense military might cannot honestly be dismissed as a "tribe." The same applies to the Benin Empire. If you had walked up to their citizens and called them an "ẹ̀yà," they would have rightly asked, "Ẹ̀yà of what?" Why did Europe name other historical powers "ancient civilizations" but reserve "tribe" for us? More importantly, why has this become our most prized self-designation? Let’s look at the actual meaning of "ẹ̀yà." In Yoruba, ẹ̀yà means a fraction, a branch, or a component part. We use it in "ẹ̀yà ara" (part of the body) or "ẹ̀yà ọ̀rọ̀" (part of speech). By definition, a part cannot exist without a whole. A fragment cannot exist in a vacuum. So I ask you: if the Yoruba identity is an ẹ̀yà, what is the larger body we belong to? Where is the rest of the organism that we "yà" (branched away) from? To be continued...