Isokan Yoruba Magazine, Fall
1996/Winter 1997 , Volume III No. I, Page 21.
"Yorubas Have Undermined theire
Culture",
An Interview with Oba Osijeman Adefunmi I of Oyotunji, South
Carolina.
Date: June 26, 1996
In OYOTUNJI AFRICAN VILLAGE, in South Carolina
Interview is conducted on behalf of Isokan
Yoruba Magazine by Chief Ajagun
Q. Your Highness, why did you choose to adopt the Yoruba Culture?
A. Mainly because at the time of our interest
in going into African past, the Yoruba tradition was the only one
available. It was not even available in the United States and we
have to travel to Maxtansas in Cuba. It was through
Cuban-Americans that we were guided into consultation and contact
with a group of descendants of Egungunme tradition. Later,
we learnt that we had made the best, perhaps the finest choice
because Yoruba was universally spread out and had germinated in
South America all the way up at that time to Cuba. We learnt
further that there are large numbers of African-American people
who were descendants of the Yoruba tradition and culture and
through books written by researchers even in South Carolina and
also into the former Louisiana territory owned by France in
previous generations that there had been a huge importation of
Yoruba and Dahomian people. It meant that here already was a
latent reservoir of descendants of the Yoruba people.
Q. What about your name?
A. We had reclaimed our name, Adefunmi, before
we later became familiar with Yoruba history through Oro Idile
when it was discovered that there was a chieftancy located at the
ancient Oyo, named Adefunmi.
Q. May we ask Your Highness what your
childhood was like?
A. Our childhood was typical of that of second
and third generation descendants of a slave Yoruba. We were born
into freedom but our grandmother often remarked of her birth
during the slave era here in the U.S.. Our childhood was one of
extreme poverty, of being moved from one location to another as
our family sought ways and means to earn its living and to
support itself in the city of Detroit, Michigan. It was also at
Detroit that our parents had met and were married. We were raised
in a Christian environment. We attended high school in the U.S.,
all these under our slave name of Walter King. During the period
of our education, we started commercial art at CastTechnical High
School in Detroit. Our father died when I was 14 years old in
Detroit. Our mother had relocated to the suburb of Detroit but
was compelled to return to the innercity after the death of our
father. Our family members, for the most part were welfare
recipients and we as African-Americans were subject to various
discriminatory practices prevailing in Detroit at that time. I
was born in 1928, the year before the great economic depression
in the U.S. which was not relieved until the installation of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1930.
Q. What was the real turning point in Your Royal highness's life that really brought you full circle to embrace African Culture?
A. The most significant event that took
place was reading a text called My Africa written by the
Igbo writer, Mbonu Ojike, who had written a chapter on religion
that excited us and illuminated our knowledge and mind when he
argued that whether man created God or God created is an
unsettled argument. He also pointed out the failings and falsity
of Christianity and Islam in the life of the people in Nigeria.
He also commented very profoundly on the discriminating attitude
and practice of the white American community. The chapter on
religion was so illuminating and penetrating that immediately
after studying and meditating on it, we renounced our Christian
faith, the slave tradition of Christianity and we began to search
for a more African form of religion. We were also impressed by
the writings of J.A. Rogers, a popular Africanist in the 20's,
30's and 40's whose articles appeared regularly in Michigan
Chronicle and Pittsburg Courier. These articles also
opened up our mind and encouraged us to search for our African
heritage at 14 years of age..
Q. What will you call Your favorite pastime?
A. It has always been art works. Our ancestors
have bequeathed to us skill and talent in the arts. We always
elaborated on that and wherever we went; we participated with
other artists. At Detroit, we engaged in very creative pursuit
for the most part to show that art was influenced by the racial
attitude and condition of the African American people, arts
painting , sculpture and more recently, we have extended our
artistic talents and skills to writings. These have always been
our main diversion from the ordinary world of an African
American.
Q. What do you see as the future for Yoruba Culture in Africa and in the Diaspora?
A. Future of the Yoruba Culture? Well,
in our most recent visit to Nigeria, we were filled with dismay
at the extent to which the Yoruba have sold out their own culture
and have adopted foreign gods as the object of their spiritual
religion. We realized what has happened to African Americans over
the century that we have subscribed to foreign religions. We
realized that our African American spiritual religion had been
directed to Israel which is meaningless in the long run. So as a
people, our culture, politics and religious experience have been
extremely unfulfilled. We see the Yoruba now falling in the same
condition through which the African Americans had allowed
themselves to be seduced by preachers of a foreign gospel. We
know that the universalist inspiration which has come to the
Yoruba through Christianity and Islam has reduced their concern
or allegiance to their own god and by extension to their own
nationality. We see the Yoruba will be very much reduced in their
political, cultural and spiritual development by their seduction
into these alien religions. So far as the Yoruba in the western
world, we see that there are efforts at increasing inspiration to
become national or to recognise nationhood, so with that, we see
the Yoruba in the diaspora, as it is popularly called, to be the
Yoruba that will greatly guide and influence the Yoruba in the
ancient homeland, who for the most part are tending to move away
from a sense of preservation of their own culture and tradition,
particularly religion.
Q. What advice will you give to African Americans trying to find their own root?
A. African Americans attempting to find
their own roots will be better served by adopting the Yoruba
tradition which for over 30 years, we have been able to introduce
into the U.S. We see the African Americans have a profound desire
to re-identify with their ancestors and with an ancestral
tradition. We know that among vast numbers of African American
intellectuals, there is a lack of fulfillment in their
development and advancement in the Yoruba-American economic
world. They found also that Christianity is unfulfilling and that
Islam is misleading. So in consequence, African Americans are
better served by a knowledge of the custom and tradition of their
Yoruba ancestry.
Q. Any advice for the younger Yoruba generation?
A. Younger Yoruba generation will be
able to advance to the extent that they increase the knowledge or
institution among African Americans, who will serve the need for
knowledge improvement through television and resurrection and
introduction of stories and background images that established a
sense of celebration of their African ancestry.
Q. How can a contemporary Yoruba personality support Oyotunji?
A. Our main necessity or requirement or
needs for Africans or native Yoruba can best be served by
supplying us with increased knowledge with teachers of language
and history, in other words, Yoruba preachers preaching Yoruba
tradition, religion, ideals of marriage as well as spiritual
behavior. If the coming generations of African Americans are able
to receive these types of training and exposure, then there is
every indication that this will become a lasting impression and
institution which can be enlarged upon by African Americans. The
more aggresively the Yoruba culture is advertised and subscribed
to among them, the better for us all. Lastly, there is the need
for support of our cultural programs. We certainly appreciate the
Egbe Isokan Yoruba for their institution of Yoruba
cultural month at Washington, D.C. If we can extend this
particular celebration to other locations with African American
presence, Nigerians would have made the most of their sojourn and
contact with African American community meaningful.
We thank your Highness for this interview.
For More Information Contact:
Egbe Isokan Yoruba
P.O. Box 90832, Washington, DC 20090
Tel: (202) 270-6382
FAX: (301) 499-5386
Internet: isokan@yoruba.org