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Concept
Gurma people
Summary
Gurma (also called Gourma or Gourmantché) is an ethnic group living mainly in northeastern Ghana, Burkina Faso, around Fada N'Gourma, and also in northern areas of Togo and Benin, as well as southwestern Niger. They number approximately 1,750,000.
They might include the Bassaries who live in northern Togo and the Northern Volta of Kingdom of Dagbon, Ghana.
Gurma is also the name of a language spoken by the Gurma (or bigourmantcheba - as they call themselves) people, which is part of the Gur language family. See Gurmanchema language and Oti-Volta languages for related languages spoken by the Gurma.
In 1985, Dr. Richard Alan Swanson wrote a book about the Gourmantché, Gourmantché Ethnoanthropology: A Theory of Human Being. The book presents Gourmantché perception of 'human being' from the perspective of the people themselves, using their own language texts to illustrate concepts. Concepts of God (Otienu), destiny (licabili), the body (gbannandi), life (limiali), death (mikuuma), and all known terms for human body parts are also discussed.
In 2006, in Burkina Faso, Salif Titamba Lankoande published a book on the History and Ethnography of the Gourmantché (“Les Gourmantche”, Presses Africaines du Burkina, Ouagadougou, 2006, 211 p.).
In 2012, the Portuguese Dr. João Pedro Galhano Alves, published in Paris a book on the Gourmantché people and culture, and on the Ethnobiology of the coexistence among humans, lions and biodiversity in the region of the W of Niger, in Niger ("Anthropologie et écosystèmes au Niger. Humains, lions et esprits de la forêt dans la culture gourmantché ", Editions l’Harmattan, Paris, 2012, 448 p.). Since 2005, he also published other books and several articles about this subject and about Gourmantché people. This publications are the result of research fieldwork made by the author in the W of Niger (Niger), between 2002 and 2010.
Official source
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