The Nuer Tribe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

The Nuer Tribe - Essay ExampleCentral Sudan, where the capital Khartoum is located, is the urban region where closely of the population resides. Speaking 300 distinct languages, the different tribes have a history of infighting since time immemorial. dearth and the almost incessant fighting between the tribes have always been catalysts for the social and economic deterioration of Sudan (Sharp 147).The important ethnic tribes are the Dinka (12%), Nuba (8%), Beja (6%), Nuer (5%) and Azande (3%) (Lye 294). Probably the most important of these is the Nuer tribe not only because its habitat, the swamps of Sudd, might oblige vast oil deposits that is currently being explored by Chevron Oil Company (Luciani 88) alone it is the largest policy-making segment of a people defined by a common language and a sentience of common identity and the tribe was the largest population who not only claims a common territory but acknowledge the right of their members to compensation for injury (Bhu shan & Malik 106).southern Sudan in the region called the Sudd, which is a Nile-fed swamp as large as the US state of Maine. The Nuer tribe habitat is therefore the flood-plains of the White Nile and its tributaries and extends southwards to Abyssinia (Wellcome equatorial Research Laboratories 325). The Nuer habitat is about 500 kilometers south of Khartoum.The Nuer tri The Nuer tribe is part of the 3 major Nilotic tribes in southern Sudan, the otherwise two being the Dinka and the Shilluk tribes, which physically bear resemblance to each other but each speak different languages and has its own customs and traditions. As a people, the Nuer tribe is shared into clans that in the 1930 census were identified to have numbered to 17 clans with a total population of 247,000 and which are dissipate throughout southern Sudan in their own villages. Each clan averages about 14,529 Nuers in the 1930 census which had bounteous to 35,351 Nuers per clan in the 1955 census (Kelly 161). Recent years have placed the Nuer population at 1.5 million. The different Nuer clans are predatory and are very successful in their belligerent activities because albeit scattered, they are unified, manifesting capacity to unify on a large scale and to organize swift large-scale raids. The Nuer internal unity and its organisational skills are impressive unlike its main warfare victim, the Dinka tribe groups which are politically autonomous and do not unite in warfare or for any other purpose. A arrest in the Nuer unity and kinship however shows, when a few Nuer clans i.e. the Jagei, the Western Jikany and Eastern Jikany oftentimes brushwood not only with the Dinka enemy but also with fellow Nuer clans (Kelly 160). The Nuer clans always fight for territorial involution and this expansionism and predisposition to territorial appropriation had been rooted in the Nuer sociocultural system (Kelly 226). Since early times, the Nuer tribes