Origins

The Oromos in Canada come from the multinational country of Ethiopia. Numbering between 15 and 23 million people, they are the single largest ethno-linguistic group in Ethiopia. There is debate concerning their origins: some Ethiopian accounts argue that they are migrants from elsewhere in Africa, while Oromo oral traditions and anthropological evidence indicate that they are the indigenous population of southern Ethiopia. Despite their heavy concentration in the south, the Oromos today also inhabit all parts of Ethiopia except the northernmost region.

The Oromos are linguistically and culturally related to the Somalis and other peoples of the northeastern Horn of Africa. Their language, Oromiffa (also known as Afaan Oromoo), is one of the most widely spoken languages of eastern Africa. Because Oromiffa was outlawed for public use by Ethiopian authorities, it is only recently that linguists have been able to develop a literary language. Some publications have appeared using the Roman alphabet, but neither it nor the Arabic script represent adequately Oromiffa phonological characteristics.

In the past, the Oromos were known as the Galla, a term introduced by the Amhara people of the central highlands who conquered them. Until recently, Western historians also used the term Galla and shared with Ethiopian writers a negative assessment of Oromo culture as primitive. The Oromos themselves reject the term Galla, which they consider derogatory.

Contemporary studies recognize the unique cultural system of the Oromos. By the eighteenth century, political structures had evolved in the five agriculturally based Oromo kingdoms of the Gibe region: Limmu, Buuma, Bomma, Geera, and Jimma. During the nineteenth century, however, this development was undermined by internal conflict among the kingdoms as well as military invasions by the central government of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). In contrast to Ethiopian accounts, which stress the territorial integrity and historical unity of Abyssinia, Oromo historians argue that independent Oromo regions were conquered by King (later Emperor) Menelik II during the last decade of the nineteenth century with the aid of European weapons and of some high-ranking Oromo collaborators.

The process of Ethiopian state integration began in the mid-nineteenth century, when Oromo land was confiscated and given to settlers from the north. The Oromos had to provide services to the newcomers and taxes to the central government. Garrison towns were established, the Oromos were enslaved, and their culture was denigrated. Scattered Oromo resistance continued against the Ethiopian authorities, but no concerted action was taken until the second half of the twentieth century. In 1965 the Mecha-Tulama Self Help Association was founded and it formed the basis of later more developed nationalist aspirations.

In 1974 Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed by a military regime known as the Derg. The Derg espoused Marxist-Leninist ideology and, under Mengistu Haile Mariam, implemented a land-reform program that was initially welcomed by the impoverished peasantry, including many Oromos. The Derg favoured the maintenance of a unified Ethiopian state, however, and its repressive response to all political opposition encouraged the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in the very same year that the new Marxist regime came to power (1974). The Oromo Liberation Front regarded Amhara-dominated Ethiopian rule as a form of colonialism, and it called for self-determination for the Oromo people and the establishment of an independent state called Oromia.

In cooperation with other anti-government forces, the Oromo Liberation Front helped to topple the Derg regime in 1991 and briefly joined the transitional government of Ethiopia under President Meles Zenawi. Support for the coalition government was short-lived, however, since the Oromos concluded that the new government merely replaced Amhara domination with that of another people, the Tigrayans. Harassment and human-rights abuses against the Oromos as well as military conflict between the transitional government of Ethiopia and the Oromo Liberation Front have been reported during the past few years. It is also not clear whether the Oromo political opposition has been crushed or whether it still functions as a viable movement.