Vili people

The Vili people are Central African ethnic group, established in southwestern Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's a subgroup of Bantu and Kongo peoples. The Vili culture is rich in a secular history, a society that is certainly misogynistic but in which the Matriarchy is the foundation. of a Vili language full of nuances where proverbs have a prominent place. of an original measurement system, of a spirituality whose Nkisi, Nkisi Konde or nail fetishes are the famous physical representation.

With the Yombe, the Lumbu, the Vungu, the Punu and the Kugni, they lived harmoniously within the former Kingdom of Loango. They have even developed with the Kugni, the Bundiku, a good neighborly relationship in order to avoid conflicts.

The Vili have very early maintained relations of equal to equal with the Westerners, especially in trade. But this contact with the West will soon turn into his disfavor. Triangular trade had certainly enriched a tiny minority of indigenous brokers, but it had above all unbalanced the societal structure of the Vili country. The epidemics of trypanosomiasis, smallpox, the carriage on the back of men had drastically decreased the population of this people.

But it is mainly French colonization that will accelerate its acculturation, especially when some Vili will want to mime the colonizer and take themselves for whites.

Not having family griots, ignorant of the conquest, the distant past and the stories that accompany it, the Vili culture is doomed to disappear if nothing is done to save what can still be.

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Wikipedia