NEW on SAPIENS: An interview with Sada Mire dives into the difficulties and rewards of preserving history and letting local perspectives guide heritage management in Somalia and Somaliland.
based on what I learned about heritage from them, and this is what guides me. It’s the preservation of knowledge and skill rather than objects and artifacts. Heritage is performance that takes place on different mediums. You know, if you are in a scene, there is a sofa, maybe a chair, the way you are dressed, how you look, speak, and act. That is our heritage! That shows us as living, thinking human beings with logic.
I also have personal questions about my heritage. Somalis are Muslims, but did we ever have any other ideology? Were we at some point something else? Why do we only know Islam? Mire and her collaborators climbed Somaliland’s Golis Mountains to collect a branch of the wagar tree, which is used as a sacred medium in fertility rituals.What are some of the challenges you face when doing heritage preservation in a conflict zone?This is a post-conflict situation where the country is not officially recognized, where there are no legal instruments and no notion of heritage. Mywas the first study of heritage in Somaliland.
That was the archaeological stance 400 years ago. But in Africa, [some people think] it’s OK for it to be at that level today.