Cultural-Ecological Wisdom with the Tradition of ‘EightMountains of God’ in Tulama Gadaa Practice: MountChukala in Focus

Abstract

6AbstractThe objective of this research to propound the cultural ecological wisdom with the traditions of“eight mountains of God” in Tulama gada practices, taking mount Chukala, the most top sacredas a case in point. A mainstream tradition of Tulama evokes about the sacredness of mountainswith the expression as ‘eight mountains of God’ owning to their ritual and religious roles andtheir management practices. Mount Chukala is a home of Crater Lake, old-aged indigenous trees,forests, scared sites and their over generation interweaving reciprocal relationships whichresulted to the conservation of one with another. However, this indigenous perspective andpractices with mountain and its biodiversity historical, cultural and spiritual roles are notpurposely studied towards understanding of culture-nature reciprocal relationships andrecommending its positive aspects for sustainability. It is widely agreed in internationalliteratures that conservation of nature is usual to most indigenous society of the world throughtheir sacred and non-sacred practices which propelled alternative ethos in natural environment.The study underlies the recent recognition of both cultural landscapes and protected landscapesand the convergence in conservation strategies and the motives to investigate its actual positionsalong global wide emerging status of indigenous wisdom and the multicultural thinking andpolicies that the country has entered into at this re-indigenization phase. To this purpose thestudy has adopted qualitative research approach and its techniques of data analysis. Selection ofstudy sites was based on its ecological representativeness, emphasis on its historical values andreligious significance, site accessibility and feasibility for the study and sites conservation valueand mixture of sites with and without threats. The finding indicted that as the result of theaforementioned values, mount Chukala ecology has remained impenetrable for anthropogenicmotives. Result showed that the ecology is one of the areas protected through mechanisms andstrategies reinforcing veneration. However, this sacred mountain and wisdoms are marginalizedowning to the influence of globalization, changes in belief system, commoditization, moderneducation, absence of support from environmental legal frames, etc. This under threatenedsacred nature conservation value of Tulama, sacred mountain physical feature, its ecology andbiodiversity should be intervened in order to save their wisdom, the mountain ecology, bearers ofthe wisdom and the culture anchored them.