Ogoni

The Ogoni people are one of the many indigenous peoples in the Niger Delta region of southeast Nigeria. They number about a half million people and live in a 404-square mile homeland which they also refer to as Ogoni, or Ogoniland. Their carvers produce large puppets and horizontal headdresses, but they are known predominantly for their small human-face masks which are characterized by an articulated jaw with inset teeth. These masks are used during Christmas festivities and funerals.

Like many peoples on the Guinea coast, the Ogoni have an internal political structure led by chiefs. They survived the period of the slave trade in relative isolation, losing few if any of their members to enslavement. After Nigeria was colonized by the British in 1885, British soldiers arrived in Ogoni by 1901. Major resistance to their presence continued through 1914.

The Ogoni were integrated into a succession of economic systems at a pace that was extremely rapid and exacted a great toll from them. At the turn of the century, “the world to them did not extend beyond the next three or four villages,” but that soon changed. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the late president of MOSOP, described the transition this way: “if you then think that within the space of seventy years they were struck by the combined forces of modernity, colonialism, the money economy, indigenous colonialism and then the Nigerian Civil War, and that they had to adjust to these forces without adequate preparation or direction, you will appreciate the bafflement of the Ogoni people and the subsequent confusion engendered in the society.”