Welcome to Your Hadiya Media Network Site!
Maintained by volunteers, this site will host information; news; ideas; & entertainment produced by volunteers that are knowledgeable and passionate about issues of concern for the Hadiya people of Ethiopia and the country in general.
Our target audience is anyone who seeks to learn something about the Hadiya people of Ethiopia – their culture, language, history, current situation, their news, and more.
By engaging community in discussion, we hope to contribute to the knowledge available about the Hadiya ethnic group of Ethiopia – to the Hadiya themselves (yes, there is a lack of information here too), other Ethiopians, and the global community. Note that our definition of the Hadiya people is inclusive of persons who live or grew up in Hadiya areas and who identify themselves as ethnically Hadiya regardless of their ancestry.
Hadiya Media Network aims:
- By using Hadiyyisa in media, to help revive and repair the language and its associated orally transmitted narratives, oral poetry, chants, songs, and recitals that are nearing extinction due to variety of forces at play (hegemonic power of dominant language, Amharic, modernization/globalization/urbanization, legacy of social stigma associated with historically marginalized language, lack of institutional preservation efforts, etc…)
- To provide outlet so that the voiceless people of Hadiya can contribute their voice to national debates.
- To provide a platform where the Hadiya people can address their shared concerns, share ideas, learn from each other and work together to achieve common social, economic, and political advancement goals.
- To contribute towards preservation of Hadiya culture and ancestral way of life against the powerful forces that are destroying it.
- To create opportunity for older Hadiya to pass the traditions, cultural assets, heritage elements, and language to the younger generation.
- To encourage scholarly work on the Hadiya history, culture, and language.
- To expose our audience to existing studies, papers, and books about the Hadiya (their history, culture, literature, etc…)
- To expose scholars and their work to our audience. Pioneering scholars of Hadiya history and culture, such as Ulrich Braukamper, remain unknown and underutilized even among the Hadiya people.
- To expose to our audience the scholarly resources & collections of institutions pioneering Hadiya studies, such as Frobenius Institute of Germany, which remains underutilized or unknown by the Hadiya.
- To help fight the observed acceleration in the pace of loss of Hadiya culture and that of Hadiyissa language seemingly due to globalization (e.g., the Internet, increasing contact with the outside world), and pressures of pop culture (e.g, affecting the youth).
In some instances, by chatting about selected news cycle-driven, and transient issues, we will attempt to provide analysis of events and news by our own staff or invited guests. We aim to stay clear of party politics and focus on the survival of the Hadiya culture, language, and its identity as people regardless of which party may be willing to take affirmative positive actions to achieve these goals.
Among other functions, culture is a source of dignity and identity for the people. It encompasses people’s shared beliefs, moral codes, value systems, art, law, customs, habits, wisdom, skills, and more. People would not voluntarily lose their culture, but they certainly get complacent and fail to preserve good cultural assets. The losing community may not even be aware of the erosion due to its slow nature – spanning generations.
It is a concern for the country as well. A country like Ethiopia would not want to lose the richness of its divers cultural assets. Majority of Ethiopians at home and in the diaspora seem to be proud of the country’s diversity. That is a positive new-found consciousness, but Ethiopians need to recognize that remedial positive actions are needed to stop the tide and reverse the trend.
The nation would want to preserve its cultures and languages assets. But this requires hard policy choices in practical terms in a country with the history like ours. In Ethiopia, many formerly marginalized cultures, identities, and languages, have to be seen as already-damaged assets needing repair and revival. We know for instance, that many Hadiya youth have never heard that Hadiya was once one of the most powerful kingdoms of its time in the Horn of Africa. Is it any wonder then, that they show no inclination for learning their heritage language, Hadiyya (Hadiyyisa)? (An article here argues that Hadiyya language is heading for extinction in a generation or two due to this and other factors.)
But this is not a problem of young people alone. Older people too are not aware of what has been lost to external acculturation forces – as manifested, such as, by their use of words borrowed from dominant Amharic language when a perfectly valid Hadiyyisa equivalent exists. Requisite part of any cultural and language reinvigorating effort at the national level and at the level of formerly marginalized ethnic groups themselves building a vibrant media in those languages. Hadiya Media Network is established in that spirit.
HMN will produce original contents primarily through live or recorded audiovisual medium, but also via all other forms of media (pictorial and/or written) and contents produced by other with proper attribution. By education our audience about the less known traditions, history, artifacts, and cultural assets of the Hadiya people of Ethiopia we hope to help then acquire knowledge and understanding of the Hadiya people and possibly even collaborate with each other on cultural and language preservation and revival projects. Our focus will not be on the ethnic politics of the day. Instead, we focus on discussions that have long-term impact on the Hadiya; linguistically, culturally, socially, and economically by using objective facts, data, and scholarly products where possible and our editorial opinions are clearly distinguishable. We hope you enjoy our contents.
In this website, our home page (where the most recent content float to the top) is a good starting spot to start exploring the site. For more information about the Hadiya people of Ethiopia, please enjoy the great posts, articles, pictures, resources, and videos from our team at hadiyajourney.com website.
Thank you for stopping by, but keep checking back for more!