Sissala Chief proposes Sissala Heritage Endowment Fund

Kuoro Bamula Basinjia Chiemina III, the Chief of Kandia in the Sissala East Municipality, has proposed the creation of Sissala Heritage Endowment Fund towards the documentation and preservation of Sissala history and traditions.

According to him, operationalisation of such a fund would help deal with the dying culture of the Sissala people, which he said was under threat due to unbridled influence of foreign traditions.

He made the suggestion during the launch of a book titled: “The Bondia Clan of the Sissala People” at the Kanton Senior High School in Tumu.

“I would like to propose the establishment of a Sissala cultural heritage endowment fund,” he said: “This proposed endowment fund should seek to mobilise financial and material resources for the systematic documentation and preservation of the history and rich traditions of the Sissala people for current and future generations”.

“It is important to emphasise at this stage that the only thing that the Sissala have which other ethnic groups don’t have is our history, language and traditions passed down to us by our ancestors. We, therefore, owe it to posterity to preserve and promote our cultural heritage.”

Kuoro Chiemina appealed to stakeholders to collaborate with the Sissala Heritage Foundation to research and publish a compendium on Sissala history and culture.

“In my opinion, the best legacy we can bequeath to our children is to leave for them a written a document containing the history and traditions of the Sissala people.”

The traditional leader and author of three books urged adoption of steps to preserve indigenous cultures as the minority ethnic cultures were being fast replaced with foreign cultural values.

“The time for the Sissala people to produce a comprehensive work on the history and culture of the Sissala people is now,” he added. “We face the extinction of our culture and potential imminent identity crisis if steps are not taken to document our history”.

Two of the brains behind Bondia clan book project, Mr Inusah Daabu and Mr Sulemana Gbana said “tracing their clan's origin hit them hard and they needed to make findings as regards their true clan’s lineage and history.