2. Ecopoetic and Ecolinguistic Approaches to ‘Broken Places’

This paper uses ecopoetic and ecolinguistic approaches to analyse the oral traditions of the Oromo people living in two areas surrounding the Ethiopian capital city, Koyyee Faccee and Boolee Arraabsaa. It explores how oral traditions have been affected by the forced displacement of local people as a result of top-down and unplanned urbanization and industrialization. The present study contributes to the ongoing green discourse about the exploitation and destruction of the natural environment, which is of global concern. We folklorists, poets, and linguists have not yet considered the relevance of ethnoecology. The relationship between people and their environment has been a vital source of inspiration for the literary traditions of Oromos living in the two areas under analysis. When people are forcibly displaced from their environment, a part of their identity – that part derives meaning from the land and the landscape – dies. Abandoned, wrecked by war and violence, or turned upside down in the name of state-driven “development”, these places become, from the perspective of their old inhabitants, lost or “broken”. Orature practitioners that derived inspiration from a specific stream or mountain also lose their source of literary creativity. Orature is not only a passive victim of these changes though. In this paper we investigate how orature has been a powerful tool of resistance for displaced people, who have used songs and poems to articulate counter-narratives of protest and dissent.