The significantly enduring traditional Kasena-Nankana Bayaase or Bayaaro institution is one of the profound cultural institutions that serve its communities' spiritual and mortal needs in diverse ways. A pall-bearer ritually fortified to execute indigenous morturary and burial practices. This ritual, per its very nature and function, may appear unenticing but is indispensable when it comes to preparing the dead for final travel, and the appeasement of Mother Earth. This institution has since not received deeper scholarly attention and is currently facing (...) challenges resulting from enculturation, sheer neglect, and conflict with adherents of the Christian faith. While the expected harm to face when a deceased person’s mortals and spirits are not properly and customarily interred has been the major discussion of some scholars, there is still the need to offer deeper traditional and cultural insights into this institution, considering the increasing erosion of most indigenous cultural institutions and with that, the unpalatable resultant effects. The paper scrutinises some of the key traditional practices, challenges, and services of the Bayaa institution through a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) of six seasoned Bayaase of high ranks within the Kasena-Nankana speaking areas of Navrongo. The study shows that the increasing Christian population and its ‘strange’ doctrines regarding traditional burial rites conflict with the age-long traditional practices of the Bayaase. The paper will show that from the dialogue with the Bayaase, it emerged that being subservient to traditional authority and incorporating elements of traditions that do not require traditional sacrifices are seen as one of the means for peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

In this paper we examine Ɔbenfo Mario H. Beatty’s chapter, ‘Maat the Cultural and Intellectual Allegiance of a Concept’ in terms of its articulation of MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’. This examination sets out to delineate how a return to the principles inherent in MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’ can serve to bring about the Wḥm Mswt ‘Rebirth/Renaissance’ of Kmt ‘Land of Black People’ and Kmt ‘Black People’ economically and politically. This research is significant in that it points us away from the semantically vacuous and etymologically (...) opaque terms “Africa” and “Africans” to terminology, principles and practices that restore our original identity as Kmt ‘Black People’. (shrink)