The Journal of Oromo Studies: An Intellectual Platform for Developing Oromo Liberation Knowledge

Introduction

The Oromo Studies Association (OSA) started publishing the Journal of Oromo Studies (JOS) in 1993 as a refereed, multidisciplinary, and international journal in the diaspora to produce and disseminate Oromo liberation knowledge by challenging knowledge for domination, exploitation, and dehumanization. Specifically, OSA and JOS have engaged in dismantling the foundation of racist Habasha (Amhara-Tigray) scholarship, which has tried to legitimize Ethiopian settler colonialism and gross human rights violations against the Oromo and the other colonized peoples in imperial Ethiopia. Habasha elites and some Euro-American scholars who have studied Ethiopian society promoted the interests of the Ethiopian colonial ruling class and its state at the cost of the Oromo and others. Thomas W. Heaney notes, “With the writing of history, knowledge became power, or rather an expression of power and a tool of maintaining it. History and, later, science were frequently used not merely to understand, but to legitimize historically shaped political relationships and institutions.”^[1] Understanding this reality, William A. Shack asserts that Ethiopian scholars are as much at fault as their European [and American] counterparts for having written Ethiopian history from the perspective of the Christian Amhara and Tigrinya peoples."^[2]

In the early 1970s, a few Oromos came to the United States as students and tourists but decided to remain there for political or personal reasons. Some of these Oromos started organizing diaspora organizations and associations to expand the support base for the Oromo struggle for national liberation.^[3] Their ideas came to fruition in 1974 when eleven Oromos formed the Union of Oromos in North America (UONA).^[4] More Oromos joined UONA during its second congress in the following year. Living outside of the control of the Ethiopian colonial state, the new Oromo diaspora community started to engage in building organizations that reflect Oromummaa (Oromo national culture, identity, and nationalism) and promote the Oromo national struggle for self-determination, self-expression, and self-development abroad. The Oromo diaspora community has openly and freely raised the voice of the Oromo people in the West by collaborating with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). Over time, OLF-affiliated organizations such as the UONA, the Union of Oromo Students in Europe (UOSE), and other Oromo organizations such as OSA, the Oromo Relief Association (ORA), Oromo community organizations, Oromo support groups, and Oromo Christian and Muslim communities sprang up in the West and other parts of the world to promote the Oromo national movement and advocate for national Oromummaa.^[5]

The formation and development of OSA and JOS was a lengthy process. OSA grew out of UONA in the late 1980s, and the union’s mouthpiece was Waldhaansso: Journal of the Union of Oromos in North America, which emerged in 1977 and continued until 1992. The union formed a committee to establish OSA in the late 1980s while organizing seminars, workshops, and conferences to defend the Oromo national interest. These events helped cultivate Oromo liberation knowledge by introducing the Oromo nation to the global community while dismantling the obscurity and falsehoods that the Ethiopian colonial state and its academic and religious institutions have manufactured about the Oromo. With the formation of OSA and JOS, these pillars of knowledge production focused on equipping Oromo youth with liberation knowledge to develop their Oromummaa and organize themselves to liberate their minds, society, and country from Ethiopian settler colonialism and its institutions and racist ideology.

This article will address four interrelated themes. First, it will provide background information about the Oromo people and their colonization and national movement. Second, it will explain the essence of Ethiopian studies and colonial/racist knowledge and the reasons for the formation of OSA and JOS. Third, it will demonstrate the nature of Oromo liberation knowledge, which JOS has produced and disseminated to Oromo society and the world. Finally, it will describe the significant contributions of the journal and the challenges it has faced, as well as provide some concrete steps OSA and JOS can take to expand their intellectual frontiers and achieve the overall objectives of the Oromo liberation struggle.

Background

The Oromo people are known for their egalitarian and democratic social system known as Gadaa and its military organization that enabled them to emerge as one of the strongest nations in the Horn of Africa between the 12th and mid-19th centuries.^[6] Gadaa was a form of constitutional government and a social system. The rule of law was the central guiding principle of the Oromo government. Oromo women had a parallel institution known as Siqqee. Theoretically, this institution promoted the principles of gender equality in Oromo society. Under the administration of the Gadaa/Siqqee system, the Oromo people were sovereign and free, and no other society could impose their authority over them.^[7]The Oromo people freely produced and disseminated their indigenous knowledge under these institutions. All Gadaa officials were elected for eight years by universal adult male suffrage; the main criteria for election to office included historical and cultural knowledge, honesty, demonstrated ability, and courage.

The Gadaa government worked at the local, regional, and central levels. The political philosophy of the Gadaa system has three main principles of checks and balances created to promote democracy and avoid subordination and exploitation; these three principles are a periodic succession of eight years, balanced opposition between different sectors, and power sharing between higher and lower political organs.^[8] The Gadaa government practiced popular democracy and equal representation for adult males. This government had independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches to balance and check the power of political leaders to avoid corruption and the misuse of power. Gadaa, as a socio-political institution, prevented exploitation and ensured relative peace, stability, self-reliance, and sustainable wealth. When W. C. Plowden visited the Guduru region of western Oromia, he commented about Gadaa. He said this system “is, perhaps, a specimen of nearly as pure a republic as can exist.”^[9] Explaining how Abyssinian colonialism dismantled the Gadaa system, Alexander Bulatovich asserted that Oromo’s “peaceful life, which could have become the ideal for philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century, if they had known it, was completely changed. Their peaceful way of life [was] broken; freedom [was] lost, and the independent freedom-loving [people] find themselves under the severe authority of the Abyssinian conquerors.”^[10]

The Gadaa system was the totality of Oromo civilization and the pillar of Oromo culture that helped Oromo develop democratic political, economic, social, and religious institutions for centuries. This political system and its military organization enabled Oromos to defend themselves against enemies and compete with them for land, water, and power for many centuries. Without critically understanding the Oromo democratic foundation, which provided a politico-cultural base for forming Oromo national history, culture, and identity, the sources of Oromo knowledge cannot be adequately explained. Emphasizing the significance of such knowledge, John Gaventa explains that “practical, vital, and empowering knowledge which has allowed them [the masses] to survive, interpret, create, produce, and work over centuries has its own rationality and causality structure.”^[11]

During the last decades of the 19^th century, the Ethiopian colonial system destroyed this system. The colonization of the Oromo people has denied them the freedom and right to have independent institutions to produce and disseminate all forms of knowledge freely. Since the last decades of the 19th century, the Oromo nation has lost its independent institutions and agency. Consequently, they have been underdeveloped on individual and societal levels^[12] and are characterized by illiteracy, ignorance, fatalism, recurrent famines, powerlessness, and poverty.

At the personal level, Oromo individuals still do not have freedom of choice, education, adequate skills and capacity, freedom of knowledge production and creativity, improved material well-being, cultural development, and social, political, and economic liberties. Similarly, on a societal level, the Oromo people have lost freedom and the right of self-expression, self-definition, and self-determination to determine their destiny because the Ethiopian settler colonial state has imposed on them total control, which I characterize as an authoritarian terrorist system.^[13] As a result, the Oromo people have lost the capacity to build their institutions to produce knowledge and the technological capacity to fight against their enemies or competitors. These factors have caused poverty and economic underdevelopment. Without educational, technological, and economic development, the Oromo could not develop their knowledge, technology, science, and organizational skills; these factors have stagnated technological progress, financial innovation, and productivity.

Today, the Oromo are facing recurrent famines, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, powerlessness, and enormous socio-economic and political crises. However, as mentioned above, Ethiopian elites and their global counterparts have blamed the Oromo for the underdevelopment of Ethiopia. Bogumil Jewsiewicki notes that such interpretation “results neither from myopia nor from the deafness of the intellectuals but from the unwillingness to see and analyze the social conditions of the production of knowledge and the political conditions of its consumption.”^[14]

Even though the Ethiopian colonial state has been successful to a certain degree in producing some educationally, religiously, and culturally assimilated Oromos by implementing its colonial policies, the Ethiopian colonial system has denied education to most of the Oromo people.^[15] The Ethiopian colonial government intentionally limited the access of Oromo masses and other colonized peoples to education and positions of authority in government, knowledge production, and business.^[16] For instance, in the late 1960s, the Oromo and the other colonized peoples comprised less than 10 percent of the students at Haile Selassie University (today known as Addis Ababa University). In comparison, the number of Habasha students at the university was more than 80 percent.^[17]

Until the 1960s, most of the children of colonial settlers attended schools in Oromia and the other colonized areas. M. A. Rahman asserts that “domination of masses by elites is rooted not only in the polarization of control over the means of material production but also over the means of knowledge production, including control over social power to determine what is useful knowledge.”^[18] Critical Oromo scholars in Oromia cannot freely study their society because of Ethiopian political repression and gross human rights violations. Even though Oromo scholars and others interested in Oromo studies have been discouraged or prohibited by the Ethiopian state from studying Oromo culture and history, Oromo studies have gradually emerged in Europe and North America. As will be explored further in this article, the processes of producing and disseminating Oromo liberation knowledge were initiated in the diaspora by Oromo organic intellectuals who wanted to resist the restrictions of the Ethiopian colonial system.

Nevertheless, Paul Baxter argued in 1986, “If Oromo studies are to develop, they must depend on research carried out in Oromo lands among Oromo people and, increasingly, by Oromo scholars. [If] scholars find it difficult, or impossible, to work in Ethiopia, except on very specialized and non-controversial topics such as the minutiae of grammar, then the future must be lean however fat the present may seem.”^[19] In the 1960s and 1970s, a few Oromo elites started to fight against the Ethiopian colonial system, and following the birth of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in the early 1970s, a paradigm shift emerged in the Oromo national movement in the intellectual, academic, political, military, and art arenas.

A few core nationalist Oromo intellectuals produced articles and magazines, such as The Oromos: Voice Against Tyranny in 1971, the OLF political program in 1976, and other publications, such as Warraqaa, Bakkalcha Oromiyyaa, Oromiyaa, and Guca Dargaagoo in the 1970s. Other publications include Sagalee Oromoo: Journal of the Union of Oromo Students in Europe, Waldhaansso: Journal of the Union of Oromos in North America, and Oromia Speaks: A Publication of the Oromo Liberation Front from the OLF Foreign Relations Office. In addition, Gadaa Melbaa (a pseudonym for Dr. Taddassa Eeba), a scientist and prominent OLF leader, published Oromia: An Introduction in 1980. Starting in 1990, a few Oromo critical scholars also began to publish books and refereed articles in national, regional, and international journals. These publications have produced original Oromo liberation knowledge. Then, in 1993, OSA started to publish JOS.

Ethiopian Studies and Racist and False Knowledge: Reasons for the Formation of OSA and JOS

Ethiopian studies has focused on producing and disseminating racist and false knowledge to dominate, exploit, and dehumanize the Oromo and the other colonized peoples. Habasha elites and their Euro-American counterparts have manifested a racist worldview or ideology and have espoused perspectives that stigmatize Oromos and others along racial lines. These elites have established a racialized and stratified hierarchy in which they placed the Oromo and the others between themselves and the peoples they wrongly called Shankillas—people they considered Negroid.^[20] Menelik and his followers racialized and sold some members of the colonized population groups regardless of the variations of their black skin color. The Habashas have considered themselves Semitic by relating themselves to the Middle East, Europe, and North America.^[21]

In Ethiopian discourses, racial distinctions have been invented, reinvented, and manipulated to perpetuate the political objective of Habasha domination and privileges. “The fact that racial distinctions are easily manipulated and reversed indicates,” Sorenson notes, “the absurdity of any claims that they have an objective basis and locates these distinctions where they occur, in political power.”^[22] During the rule of Haile Selassie, particularly between WWII and the early 1970s, the US government placed Habashas in “an intermediate position between whites and blacks” and considered them closer to “the European race” or members of “the great Caucasian family.”^[23] Furthermore, there were Europeans who considered Habashas as knowledgeable people because of their racial affinity with the so-called Caucasian race.^[24] Some saw Habashas as “dark-skinned white people” and “racial and cultural middlemen” between black Africa on one side and Europe and the Middle East on the other.^[25] One German scholar admired the intelligence of Habashas and noted that he never saw such mental capability among Negroes, Arabs, Egyptians, and Nubians.^[26]

Such racist discourses and false knowledge go unchallenged in Ethiopian studies because they help reproduce racist and colonial state power. US foreign policy elites, diplomats, and other officials recognized and defended such “racial pretension of Ethiopia’s ruling class.”^[27] Certain racist Euro-American scholars, politicians, and diplomats have used racist discourses by racializing ethnicity and cultural differences. While glorifying the culture and civilization of Habashas, certain racist European scholars such as Edward Ullendorff characterized the Oromo as a barbaric people who did not possess “significant material or intellectual culture” and failed to “contribute to the Semitized civilization of Ethiopia.”^[28] He also claimed that “the Abyssinian is brilliant, mentally agile, and extraordinarily eager to learn.”^[29] To demonstrate the superiority of the civilization and culture of Amharas and Tigrayans, racist scholars downplayed “the African-ness of ancient [Abyssinia] . . . to emphasize its similarities to European societies.”^[30] As Sorenson expounds, “Along with the emphasis on a Great Tradition in Ethiopian history came a specific configuration of racial identity. As in other discourses of race, this configuration merged power with [racial claims] to devalue the Oromo and other groups as both ‘more African’ and ‘more primitive’ than the Amhara [and Tigray]. The Oromo were presented as warlike, essentially 'people without history and any relationship to the land.”^[31]

Habasha elites’ erasure of Oromo history and culture is an invisible racialization intended to destroy and replace them with their own that they claim is superior. For example, Habtamu Tegegne characterizes the Oromo democratic system of Gadaa as “a genocidal organization.”^[32] Habasha elites such as Asma Giyorgis and Alaka Tayye falsely assert that the Oromo are not indigenous to Ethiopia since they originated from Asia and later invaded Ethiopia."^[33] Yet the Ethiopian Empire was created during the last decades of the 19th century by the alliance of Abyssinia proper – the homeland of the Amhara and Tigray – with European colonial powers and the colonization of the Oromo country. Although the Oromo are one of the indigenous peoples of the Horn of Africa, they have been considered newcomers to their homeland, Oromia, by Ethiopian elites and their Euro-American supporters. Because the Oromo are considered the “invaders” of Ethiopia, Ethiopian elites argue that they do not deserve national self-determination and that the land that they call Oromia does not belong to them.^[34] This assertion implicitly assumes that the Oromo must accept their subjugation and second-class citizenship, or they must leave the Ethiopian Empire before they are annihilated for continuing to demand national self-determination, statehood, and democracy.

The Oromo relationship with their land is denied for two reasons. The first reason is to promote the idea that the Oromo are “invaders” and Oromia, the Oromo country, does not belong to them. The second is to justify the dispossession of Oromo land by Ethiopian colonial settlers in Oromia. The Oromo have been depicted as “crueler scourges” and “barbarian hordes who brought darkness and ignorance in the train” to Ethiopia.^[35] In addition, they have been seen as “a decadent race” that is “less advanced” because of their racial and cultural inferiority.^[36] Therefore, their colonization and enslavement have been seen as a civilizing mission. Because of racist and modernist thinking, historical development is seen as linear, and society develops from a primitive or backward stage to a civilized or advanced one. The Oromo, who have been seen as a primitive people, are also considered as part of a collection of “tribes” or a single “tribe” or a “cluster” of diverse groups that cannot develop any nationalist political consciousness except “tribalism.”^[37] Racist scholars have also denied the existence of a unified Oromo identity and argued that the Oromo cannot achieve self-determination and statehood because they are geographically scattered and lack cultural substance.^[38] Both Ethiopian elites and their Euro-American supporters have constructed Ethiopianism^[39] as a racial ideology at the cost of indigenous Africans such as the Oromo, Sidama, Somali, Afar, Agao, Qimant, Konso, and others.

Ethiopianism hides the true nature of Ethiopian racism and colonialism. As Sorenson writes, “Western discourse . . . duplicated many of the assumptions and ideologies that had been put in place by the ruling elites of Ethiopia, constructing the latter as the carriers of a Great Tradition which was engaged in its own Civilizing Mission concerning what it regarded as other uncivilized Groups in Ethiopia.”^[40] Certain popular and academic discourses on the Oromo and others promote these racist prejudices and stereotypes. When Habasha elites have wanted to make a point of the alleged inferiority of the Oromo and others on the racial hierarchy or deny them their humanity, they have asked the debasing question, “sawu nawu Galla?” (Are they a human being or a Galla?) This query shows that certain Habashas consider the Oromo and others as inferior to human beings. Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity has also been used to promote racism in Ethiopia. For instance, an Ethiopian Orthodox Church publication denounced sexual relations between Habashas and Oromo and others by saying that Jesus would punish those who would have sexual relationships with “the cursed, the dumb, the Moslems, the Galla, the Shankilla, the Falasha [Jews], the horse, the donkey, the camel and all those who committed sodomy.”^[41]

This religious tract was written in Geez (an old Abyssinian language) and translated into Amharic in 1968. While its original date of writing and authorship is unknown, the piece has been popular and widely recited by some literate Habashas. The Oromo, Ethiopian Jews or Falashas, Muslims, and various peoples have been categorized along with animals such as horses, donkeys, and camels. Also, Habasha’s racist stereotypes depict the Oromo as a dirty people; the expression “Galla na sagara eyadare yigamal” compares the Oromo to feces and claims that the Oromo continue to stink like human waste with passing days. This expression warns that the closer you get to the Oromo, the more you find out how they are dirty.

Furthermore, Afawarq Gabra-Iyyasu notes that Ethiopians treated the Oromo as dogs: “A Galla is hassled like a dog that has trespassed into a church.”^[42] Comparing the Oromo to dogs is a form of nonvisible racialization and dehumanization. Margery Perham asserted that the Galla were regarded as “heathens and enemies fit only for massacre or enslavement.”^[43] This reflects the negation of Oromo “humanity and their exclusion from the moral concerns of the conquerors”^[44] to justify their mistreatment. Another expression depicts the Oromo as a rotten people (“timbi” or “bisbis Galla”). Yet another expression explains that the Oromo cannot be clean even if they wash themselves again and again; it says, “Galla na Shinfila ayisadam,” which means, “Even if you wash them, stomach lining and a Galla will never become clean.” Another Habesha expression that says, “Galla sisaltin bacharaqa jantila yizo yizoral” means that even if they are civilized, the Oromo do not know the true essence of civilization. This saying translates to, “When an Oromo is civilized, he stretches his umbrella in the moonlight and walks around so that others can see him [or she].”

The Habasha expression “Ye Galla chawa, ye gomen choma yelewum” depicts the Oromo as a society without respected and notable individuals. The literal translation of this expression reads, “As there is no fat in vegetables or greens, there is no gentlemen in the Galla community.” This and other expressions characterize the Oromo as a useless people who do not deserve respect. When Oromo individuals excel in their profession, they are Amharized and disconnected from their Oromoness. Their Oromo identity is buried while their Ethiopianness is glorified. For instance, Abebe Biqila was an Oromo marathon champion who won the 1960 Summer Olympics gold medal in Rome while running barefoot and the second gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics on behalf of Ethiopia. His Oromoness was suppressed in this situation, and his identification with Ethiopia was glorified.^[45]

The Oromo have been insulted for even trying to assimilate into Ethiopian/Amhara culture by speaking the Ethiopian official language, Amharic. Habasha racists have expressed their anger towards Oromos, who have mispronounced Amharic words by saying, “Afun yalfata Galla; tabitaba Galla” which means an Oromo who cannot express themself clearly. To psychologically demoralize the Oromo, the Habasha discourse has also depicted the Oromo as a cowardly people who cannot resist subordination; the saying “and Amhara matto Galla yinadal” shows the essence of this discourse. It translates as “One Amhara can force one hundred Oromos into submission or subordination.” However, historical evidence indicates that until they allied with European colonial powers and obtained modern expertise and weapons, Habashas saw Oromo fighters as their nightmare.^[46] There are also expressions by poor Habeshas or lepers to claim superiority to Oromos with the Amharic expressions that translate into, “Even if I am poor, I am not a Galla,” and “Even if I am a leper, I am not a Galla.”

Habasha elites have “looked upon and treated the indigenous people as backward, heathen, filthy, deceitful, lazy, and even stupid, stereotypes that European colonialists commonly ascribed their African subjects.”^[47] Furthermore, Habasha social institutions, such as family, school, media, government, and religion, have produced and perpetuated these racist prejudices and stereotypes within Ethiopian society. Explaining how racial insults wound people, Richard Delgado says, “The racial insult remains one of the most pervasive channels through which discriminatory attitudes are imparted. Such language injures the dignity and self-regard of the person to whom it is addressed, communicating the message that distinctions of race are distinctions of merit, dignity, status, and personhood. Not only does the listener learn and internalize the messages contained in racial insults, [such] messages color our society’s institutions and are transmitted to succeeding generations.”^[48] Racist prejudices and stereotypes, consciously or unconsciously, have influenced Ethiopian society. Ethiopians who have been affected by these assumptions have never respected Oromo culture, history, and identity and have opposed the Oromo struggle for social justice, democracy, statehood, and human rights under different pretexts.

Some Ethiopianists, such as Margery Perham and Christopher Clapham,^[49] confidently declared that no Oromo consciousness would unite the Oromo for political action against Ethiopian/Habasha domination. In his work, Clapham defends “central Ethiopian nationalism” and Amhara nationalism and claims that the Oromo cannot achieve national self-determination and statehood because they are geographically scattered.^[50] He argues that the Oromo do not have an Oromo national identity. Similarly, some Ethiopian scholars say that the Oromo lack the cultural elements necessary to develop nationalism. For instance, Aleme Abbay comments that “the Oromo do not have an Axumite history to glorify: they do not have ‘heroes’ like Yohannes and Alula to look up to; nor do they have a major insurrectionary history … in their memory pool.”^[51] In other words, he argues that since the Oromo do not have heroes or heroines and a civilization similar to that of the Tigrayans, they cannot develop a nationalist identity. In the collective memory of the Amhara and Tigray societies, according to Teshale Tibebu, “the barbarian infidel” is pictured as a two-headed hydra: “one ‘Galla,’ and another Muslim.”^[52] Although a large portion of the Oromo are Christian, they are made invisible to depict the Oromo only as Muslims and non-believers. The Oromo are religious people like other societies, and they adhere to three monotheistic religions, namely Waaqeffannaa (original Oromo religion), Christianity, and Islam. There are still some Oromos who believe in the indigenous Oromo religion known as Waaqeffannaa, which connects religious and philosophical worldviews and organizes spiritual, physical, and human worldviews; such Oromo believe that Waaqa (God) creates and regulates the human and physical world in balanced ways.

Some Euro-Americans who have studied Ethiopia have promoted the interests of the Ethiopian colonial ruling class at the cost of the Oromo and the other colonized and racialized peoples. Some African historiographies have been dominated by scholars who have the ideologies of racism, false cultural universalism, and a top-down approach that completely ignore or distort the social and cultural history of enslaved, colonized, and subjugated peoples. For example, a Habasha scholar, Abba Bahrey, in the 16th century rationalized that he wrote the history of the evil Oromo people to express “their readiness to kill people, and brutality of their manners.”^[53] B. Telles saw Oromos as “the scourge that God had made use against Abyssinians.”^[54]

Furthermore, Edward Ullendorf writes, “The [Oromo] had nothing to contribute to the civilization of Ethiopia, they possessed no material culture, and their social organization was at a far lower stage of development than the population among whom they settled.”^[55] So, Ethiopian and most Ethiopianist scholars have expanded Ethiopian historical falsehoods and mythologies and have distorted or ignored Oromo knowledge, history, culture, and civilization. Oromos have been seen as a people without history or meaningful culture, and these scholars have used this false narrative to justify Ethiopian colonial domination and exploitation of the Oromo. Even today, in media, journals, and popular magazines, some Amhara scholars and political activists insult Oromos and propagate the idea that the Oromo do not have a country since the land in Oromia (the Oromo country) belongs to the Amhara. They further declare that the Oromo will be expelled from Oromia unless they stop their national struggle. Mohammed Hassen notes that the Habesha elite, “which especially [has] perceived the danger of the larger Oromo population to its empire, sought not only to destroy the Oromo people’s pride in their achievements, but also needed to keep them chained with no faith in themselves, their history, and national identity.”^[56] Collectively, these racist insults and mischaracterizations of the Oromo are intended to demoralize and introduce an inferiority complex to continue disempowering them so that they cannot have self-confidence to fight for their national liberation.

The Habasha ruling class and its state have succeeded to some degree in dividing and maintaining their power and privilege in Oromo society. Because of the uneven development of Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism in Oromo society, the Oromo national struggle has not yet uprooted Ethiopian settler colonialism from Oromia and beyond. Understanding these complex political and knowledge production challenges, OSA and JOS have worked hard to develop Oromo liberation knowledge and increase Oromo political consciousness to organize the Oromo and dismantle Habasha racism and all colonial institutions to enable Oromo society to liberate itself. Under the Ethiopian colonial system, it has been impossible to freely research, write, and publish on the issues of Oromo society because of political repression and censorship. Understanding this reality, a few organic Oromo scholars in the diaspora started producing critical Oromo scholarship to address Oromo society’s political, economic, cultural, and social problems. The intensification of the Oromo national struggle in the 1970s intensified Ethiopian state terrorism and gross human rights violations against Oromos. These conditions forced thousands of Oromos to seek asylum and protection in the West and to join the African diaspora groups that came before them. Today, thousands of Oromos are in Europe, North America, and Australia, most of whom immigrated to the United States and Canada as political refugees. A few politically conscious Oromo political refugees joined OSA over decades of ongoing scholarly work and contributed to the Oromo national movement abroad and in Oromia through knowledge production.

The Importance of Oromo Liberation Knowledge and Freedom

Colonized, enslaved, and subjugated people do not have the freedom to produce and disseminate their knowledge for liberation. Boaventura de Sousa Santos notes the necessity of democratizing knowledge and calls this kind of knowledge emancipatory or decolonizing knowledge.^[57]The absence of emancipatory knowledge causes political ignorance, fatalism, and unfreedom. Freedom is central to a society’s survival, continuation, and meaningful social development. It allows people to assess their condition and increase their effectiveness as free agents.^[58] Emancipatory knowledge and freedom allow individuals and people to determine their destiny and “to live long and well.”^[59] Since the Oromo live impoverished lives under the Ethiopian colonial state, they do not live long and well, and they suffer from recurrent famines, undernutrition, lack of access to health care, clean water or sanitary facilities, morbidity, premature mortality, and lack of education.. Since many Oromo people have been prevented from receiving quality education and from free political participation, they lack the political consciousness needed to fight for their rights.

Oromos lack political freedom, which Amartya Sen calls “the basic building blocks” of society.^[60] He also argues that freedom is necessary to expand the capabilities of individuals to live a better life. The Ethiopian colonial system has stagnated or limited Oromo capabilities, and their economic and labor resources are used in their oppression and dehumanization. Without liberation knowledge, the Oromo cannot achieve freedom; without freedom, they cannot acquire fundamental political and civil rights. Sen lists four basic political and civil rights as essential to attaining and expanding human freedoms. The political and civil rights include (1) the right to determine who should govern and on what principles, (2) the right to scrutinize and criticize authorities, (3) the right to political expression and an uncensored press, and (4) the freedom to choose between different political parties, etc. First, these rights expand human capabilities, including political and social participation, to live a better life. Second, they enhance the people’s hearing from authorities, including their economic needs. Third, these rights assist people in defining their social and economic needs by actively increasing their agency. Fourth and fifth, they increase their human creativity and potential to solve their problems individually and collectively to overcome their ignorance, fatalism, and powerlessness by critically understanding the role of social and political systems. The Ethiopian colonial system has denied the Oromo these rights and the right to produce their liberation knowledge so that they participate in their oppression and dehumanization.

Colonized and underdeveloped people have serious challenges in developing liberation knowledge and protecting their freedom. If a nation is denied national self-determination, its universal human rights and freedom cannot be protected. The principle of national self-determination is based on the four pillars of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: (1) the right to life, liberty, and security, (2) civil liberty and property rights, (3) political and social rights, and (4) economic, social, and cultural rights.^[61] If implemented and practiced, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights expands human freedoms. Based on the spirit of human rights, Amartya Sen suggests five types of instrumental freedoms: 1) political freedom, 2) economic freedom, 3) social opportunities, 4) transparency guarantees, and 5) protective security.^[62] Economic freedoms and rights entail (1) freely participating in markets and generating wealth and public resources, (2) the availability and access to finance, (3) utilizing economic resources for consumption, production, or exchange, and (4) basic economic security and entitlement.

Social opportunities involve (1) social arrangements such as education and health care; (2) the services that influence the individual’s substantive freedom to live healthy, better, and longer; and (3) the increasing of more effective participation in socio-economic and political activities. Similarly, transparency guarantees consist of (1) the freedom to be open and deal with one another, (2) the right to disclose corruption and financial irresponsibility and prevent underhand dealings, and (3) increasing accountability of institutions, governments, and corporations and building institutions of unemployment benefits and income supplements, famine relief or emergency, and public employment. The denial of national self-determination denies the colonized nation, such as the Oromo, all these rights and the development of human freedoms and capabilities.

Martha Nussbaum writes about the principle of the capability approach, which enables all individuals in society to develop their abilities.^[63] She lists ten points to promote human rights for developing human capabilities: (1) Life – preventing premature death; (2) Bodily health and integrity – having good health; being adequately nourished; having necessities; (3) Bodily integrity – having personal safety and security; enjoying life without any restriction; (4) Senses, imagination, and thought – imagining, thinking, reasoning, and expressing ideas without any restrictions; these capabilities must be developed through an adequate education, scientific reasoning; (5) Emotions – having rights to develop attachment to persons and things; caring and loving those who care and love you; (6) Practical reason – engaging in critical reflection about one’s own life; (7) Affiliation – showing empathy and concern for others; having capability for friendship and justice; having the right to be respected not to be humiliated; not to be discriminated by others; (8) Other Species – living with and protecting animals, plants, and nature; (9) Play – being able to laugh, play, and enjoy recreational activities; and (10) Control over one’s environment: (a) political - having the right to associate, organize and make political choices; having the rights of political participation and free speech; and (b) material – having the right to own property; having the right to have jobs and livable wages. The Ethiopian colonial state has denied the Oromo people all political, economic, cultural, and social rights that the U.N., Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum describe above.

Understanding the complexity of the Oromo’s problems, Oromo nationalists initiated the production and dissemination of liberation knowledge to empower the Oromo nation. Ethiopian colonialism has imposed on Oromo society underdevelopment and unfreedoms; hence, it suffers from ignorance, fatalism, poverty, powerlessness, social deprivation, dictatorship, repression, violence, terrorism, and tight social control. In addition to owning and controlling the Oromo’s economic resources, such as land and labor, the Ethiopian colonial government banned learning, writing, and publishing in the Oromo language until 1991.^[64] The Oromo were denied the right to produce and disseminate knowledge through Afaan Oromoo (the Oromo language) until a few decades ago. The Ethiopian state, religious and knowledge elites, and their global supporters have treated the Oromo as ignorant and historical objects because of their powerlessness.

The Oromo name, history, and culture were repressed or erased from history. Their name was replaced by the derogatory term Galla, which means ignorant, savage, cruel, orderless, destructive, enslaved person, inferior, and uncultured. With their colonization and incorporation into Ethiopia, the Oromo could not develop independent institutions and, therefore, could not produce and disseminate their knowledge freely. However, as mentioned above, a few Oromo intellectuals have overcome this shortcoming in the diaspora by creating OSA and JOS and developing emergent Oromo studies since the late 1980s.

Racist and harmful views about the Oromo have prevented Ethiopian and most Ethiopianist scholars from understanding Oromo historical and cultural knowledge; records on the Oromo reflect some elements of racist ideology and have a tremendous influence on some of the scholars of modern Ethiopian history. Critical Oromo scholars have realized the necessity of a plurality of knowledge production and dissemination. These innovative scholars have recognized the importance of looking at a society from different cultural centers and have developed emergent Oromo studies. Oromo studies illustrates that the Oromo are transforming their historical defeat to victory through intellectual and political struggle (in addition to the ongoing armed struggle) because of the emergence of an Oromo-educated class that started to develop an Oromo national consciousness.

However, Oromo scholars and others interested in Oromo studies have been discouraged by the Ethiopian state from studying Oromo culture and history in Oromia. Consequently, Oromo studies has been developing more in Europe and North America than in Oromia. Some of the Oromo and others in the diaspora have committed themselves to serious scholarship; their works are becoming stepping-stones in writing the social and cultural history of the Oromo people to produce and disseminate social scientific knowledge. Contemporary publications on Oromo cultural and social history and indigenous knowledge challenge a top-down paradigm of historiography and require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor. In the racist capitalist world system, indigenous peoples who do not have states cannot fully develop their institutions, including educational institutions, and promote social justice for their societies. Therefore, to promote their human rights that are enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, colonized peoples like the Oromo must intensify their national struggle to achieve national self-determination, statehood, and multinational democracy or national sovereignty.

The Significant Contributions of OSA and JOS and their Challenges

The main objective of OSA and JOS has been to empower the Oromo people by equipping them with emancipatory knowledge in all human endeavors through critical self-definition and self-discovery. People who have acquired liberation knowledge and achieved mental liberation can freely define themselves and determine their destiny. According to Stokely Carmichael, “The first need of a free people is to define their terms.”^[65] The Oromo liberation struggle started by restoring their collective name by rejecting the derogatory name Galla. As explained above, Habasha elites and their Euro-American counterparts have called the Oromo people Galla, which means primitive, destructive, and violent invaders, and people without a country, history, culture, or civilization. Malcolm X argued that “just as a tree deprived of its roots withers and dies, a person without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead person.”^[66] The racist assertion that the Oromo are a people without history was intended to dehumanize them and to introduce an inferiority complex so that the Oromo would accept subordination and exploitation without resistance. While resisting and challenging such racist terms and ideologies, JOS has expanded the intellectual frontiers of Oromo society through its publications to increase understanding of Oromo society’s complex problems and recommend solutions.

Oromo scholars and other scholars who have published in JOS and those who published books have taken the Oromo as historical actors and identified some deficiencies of “Ethiopian studies” that primarily focus on the Amhara and Tigray ethnonational groups and their rulers and distort or ignore the history and culture of the Oromo people. These scholars have published in the journal on issues such as Ethiopian colonialism and its institutions, Oromo history and culture, the Oromo language (Afaan Oromoo) and alphabet called Qubee, indigenous institutions and organizations, including Gadaa and Siiqqee, literature, human rights, religion, Oromo in the world community, Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism), etc. JOS’s publications and books published by OSA members and others in Oromo studies have become an integral part of the writing of the social and cultural history of the Oromo people. A new generation of Oromo scholars is now using the works of these scholars to enrich and develop Oromo studies further.

Oromo historical and cultural studies that explain large-scale and long-term social changes in Oromo society began only recently. Before the 1980s and 1990s, scholars interested in Oromo society for political reasons or narrow specialization in their intellectual professions focused mainly on small geographical areas or specific aspects of the society without looking at macro-level issues.^[67] With the emergence of the Oromo national movement, OSA and JOS, a few Oromo scholars and others started to publish books and articles on more significant issues addressed in this article. As explained above, the Ethiopian colonizing structure has destroyed, repressed, and distorted the Oromo system of thought, knowledge, and worldview by eliminating Oromo cultural experts such as the raagas (Oromo prophets), the ayaantus (time reckoners), and oral historians. OSA and JOS have played an essential role in the effort to restore and record Oromo knowledge and history.

Emergent Oromo historical and cultural studies are profoundly impacting the future of Oromo and Ethiopian studies. Scholars interested in Oromo studies have demonstrated their commitment to serious scholarship and respect for the Oromo people, even if the Oromo do not yet have political power. Using JOS, critical Oromia scholars and others have courageously challenged the mainstream Ethiopianist paradigm and supported young Oromo scholars to build a new paradigm of Oromo social and cultural history. We can also say that JOS has been an intellectual platform for building democracy of knowledge.

Since OSA and JOS do not function in Oromia and Ethiopia because of the political restrictions of the Ethiopian state, one may ask to what extent have they achieved their goals? And to what extent have they influenced the education and development of Oromo diaspora communities? Without scientific research, it is difficult to answer these questions. However, we can observe that certain ideological and political positions that some have taken to conflate Ethiopianism and Oromummmaa or localism and Oromo nationalism demonstrate that mental liberation in Oromia and the diaspora has not yet been adequately achieved.^[68] One symptom of this challenge is that more Oromos are organized in Afoshas (local self-help associations) than in national political and civil organizations.^[69] OSA and JOS need to realize the importance of developing emancipatory knowledge to raise political consciousness and develop different forms of Oromummaa, including Oromo nationalism and the building of national civic and political organizations based on Oromo culture and institutions.

Without using the tool of liberation knowledge to build political consciousness and restore their usurped biographies and history, the Oromo cannot confront and defeat the oppressor within. The Oromo national movement still suffers from the oppressor within and a lack of effective leadership. Since the Oromo masses are not effectively organized and educated in the politics and psychology of liberation, they have remained primarily passive participants in the Oromo national movement. They have been waiting to receive their liberation as a gift from Oromo political organizations. This is a grave mistake. Oromo liberation can only be achieved by the active participation of an adequate portion of Oromo elites and the masses. As Gilly Adolfo states, “Liberation does not come as a gift from anybody; the masses seize it with their own hands. And by seizing it, they are transformed; confidence in their strength soars, and they turn their energy and experience to the tasks of building, governing, and deciding their own lives for themselves.”^[70] Developing Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism among the Oromo elites and the masses is required to increase Oromo’s self-discovery and self-acceptance through liberation education.

Without overcoming inadequate political consciousness and passivity among all sectors of Oromo society, the Oromo national movement continues to face multi-faceted problems. The Oromo can challenge and overcome multiple levels of domination and dehumanization through numerous approaches and actions. As Patricia Hill Collins puts, “People experience and resist oppression on three levels: the level of personal biography; the group or community level of the cultural context … and the systematic level of social institutions.”^[71] Developing individual political consciousness through liberation knowledge generates social change. This is essential to creating a sphere of freedom by increasing the power of self-definition, which is necessary to liberate the mind. We cannot resist oppression on multiple levels without the liberated and free mind. The dominant groups are against mental liberation, and they use institutions such as schools, churches or mosques, the media, and other formal organizations to teach their oppressive worldviews. Collins states that “domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing … members of subordinated groups to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant group’s specialized thought. As a result … ‘the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situation which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.’ Or …‘revolution begins with the self, in the self.’”^[72]

The Oromo have been objectified and exploited for one and a half centuries. OSA and JOS, through conferences and publications, have recognized the complex problems of Oromo society and the importance of the concept of self-definition as central to the Oromo national movement to promote “the revolution of mind” and culture; a mental and cultural revolution will enable the Oromo to define themselves without any limitation. The Oromo people can develop a collective consciousness and pride and empower themselves to struggle for their freedom and power through self-definition, self-discovery, and self-legitimation. JOS publications have tried to educate Oromo nationalists to challenge Habasha’s cultural hegemony through Oromo self-actualization by recognizing and accepting Oromummaa as a healthy psychosocial consciousness and being proud of one’s identity, culture, and history. Oromummaa, as an ideology, national culture, and history, has rejected Habasha racism by developing principles, ideologies, and values that have guided Oromo’s life.^[73]

OSA and JOS have also tried to educate Oromos and others globally through mid-year and annual conferences and publications. As Oromo students and intellectuals observed in the 1980s, American libraries carried almost nothing on Oromo peoplehood and history. However, a few libraries from the United States and other countries have subscribed to JOS since the early 1990s. In the 1970s and 1980s, libraries in the Ethiopian Empire and other parts of the world, mainly the West, carried a few books and articles on the Oromo under the derogatory name Galla. Today, because of OSA and its journal and a few organic Oromo intellectuals, there are reasonable numbers of books and articles on the Oromo in various libraries worldwide. If some libraries do not carry materials on Oromo studies, it is not because of the absence of books and articles on the Oromo. Therefore, we can proudly assert that OSA, its journal, a few committed Oromo nationalist scholars, and others have challenged the Ethiopian state’s intellectual ban and the colonial institutions imposed on Oromo society. JOS publications on Oromo history, culture, economy, Oromummaa (nationalism), and Afaan Oromoo have been impactful. Amhara-Tigray elites have tried to attack this progress and have undermined the development of Qubbee, arguing that the Oromo should use the Geez alphabet.

Starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the development of Oromo studies and liberation knowledge has dramatically expanded. Because of technological innovations in communication, anybody interested in Oromo issues can access Oromo scholarly resources. But in Ethiopia, libraries and higher educational institutions are still controlled by the state and their Oromo collaborators who dislike and oppose Oromo studies and Oromo liberation knowledge. Therefore, Oromos in Oromia do not have full access to books and articles on Oromo studies. In July 2019, when OSA organized its annual conference in Finfinnee for the first time, institutions influenced or controlled by the Ethiopian government tried to block OSA from renting a conference space. Fortunately, Dinqu Dayas, the owner of Rift Valley University, freely provided a conference hall at Rift Valley University and lunch for attendees for the three-day conference.

The challenges of OSA and its journal are multiple and complex. Only a few committed Oromos and friends of the Oromo in the diaspora maintain membership in OSA. With OSA’s financial source being mainly based on minimal membership fees, this has created constraints on the association. Another challenge is that not enough Oromo scholars in the diaspora have expressed interest and commitment to Oromo studies and supporting OSA and JOS. And since OSA and its journal predominately use English to communicate with the global community, the articles published in JOS are not as accessible to the Oromo masses in Oromia who do not speak or communicate in English. OSA and JOS lack the financial resources to translate their conference papers and articles to Afaan Oromoo and distribute them to libraries and the Oromo masses in the diaspora and Oromia. In addition, the Ethiopian government has been hostile to OSA and JOS. Therefore, Oromos in Oromia who have the means to financially support OSA and JOS in fulfilling their objectives in Oromia and beyond are afraid to assist. Finally, another challenge is that OSA and JOS do not have strong connections with various Oromo civil and political institutions, possibly because these institutions do not entirely understand the importance of OSA and JOS. Also, OSA and JOS leaders have not effectively established strong connections with Oromo national civic and political organizations in Oromia and the diaspora. Furthermore, young Oromos and Oromo women are greatly absent from OSA’s membership, and we have yet to see a healthy level of their participation. However, recently, it has been encouraging to see a few young Oromos becoming OSA members and filling leadership positions.

Conclusion

With their colonization and incorporation into Ethiopia, the Oromo could not develop independent institutions to produce and disseminate their authentic historical and cultural knowledge freely. Ethiopian knowledge elites and their global supporters have treated the Oromo as historical objects because of their powerlessness. These elites, with the support of the Ethiopian state, have produced false knowledge of the Oromo and other colonized peoples. However, JOS publications and the works of a few organic Oromo intellectuals have robustly challenged racist discourses on the Oromo. JOS has helped develop and amplify Oromo liberation knowledge to expand Oromo’s political consciousness and capabilities by replacing Ethiopian colonial history with a liberation history and refuting historical myths that justify Ethiopian colonialism. Developing political consciousness and building capabilities in Oromo society are prerequisites for achieving Oromo freedom and liberation. Achieving the Oromo’s intellectual and political objectives requires mobilizing more Oromo intellectuals to join OSA and produce more knowledge and scholarship. Above all, OSA and JOS must recruit more Oromo youth and women to make itself a stronger and more influential institution that can fully fulfill their objectives.