Danta people

The Danta people, historically and commonly known as Dubamo are an ethnic group in Ethiopia. The homeland of the Danta is in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), specifically the Hadiya Zone, and less so in the Kembata Tembaro Zone (KT).

The Danta, historically and commonly known as Dubamo are a small ethnic group in Ethiopia. Their symbolic center of settlement is the highland area of Danta, after which they are sometimes named. The Danta originally spoke the Kizinya dialect of Kambaata. However, the Danta have made a significant linguistic transition since the Hadiya migrated into their homeland at the beginning of the 19th century. A sizable number of Danta living in their original home have so far resisted assimilation by the Hadiya and still speak their original Kizinya dialect.

Historically, Danta is thought to be a "state formed in Kambata about 1550-1570", and the "Dubamo people were known to have slave trade with Jimma even after the anti-slavery proclamation of 1923". The Danta "were organized in a small kingship whose rulers claim descent from 'King Solomon' of Gondar, i.e. from Amharic nobility". The Danta still maintain "a tradition that they came from Gondar about 15 generations ago" and "conserved an outstanding consciousness as an upper stratum tracing their origin to the North Ethiopian Christian area, a stratum which had at one time superimposed itself upon a Kushitic" substratum of the indigenous people.

To date, it is a common practice for an average Danta to name his or her paternal genealogy going back to more than 20 generations. Braukämper, in one of his other articles on the Danta, suggests that their allusion of their origin to King Solomon and the Amharic nobility may be an astute strategy to legitimization of status and power rather than evidence of an actual hereditary relationship with the north. However, a layman’s analysis of their genealogy (e.g. tribe names and distant ancestral names of individuals) occasionally yields, albeit weakly, names that connote northern connection.

Hawzula is a supra-natural deity worshiped by all Danta in the past and still by some to date. The Hawzula spirit 'speaks' and 'works' through the Hawzulmancho, a hereditary Dubamo man on whom the Hawzula spirit descends and dwells on. Hawzula was the arbitrator, councilor and judge on all matters not only for Danta but also for the neighboring peoples such as the Hadiya, Donga, Kambaata and Timbaro. Many Danta confessed Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity after Menelik II’s conquest in the 1880s but evangelical Christianity has become the dominant religion since the 1970s.

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Wikipedia