Isokan Yoruba Magazine, Fall 1996/Winter 1997 , Volume III No. I, Page 21.
"Yorubas Have Undermined theire Culture",
An Interview with Oba Osijeman Adefunmi I of Oyotunji, South Carolina.


Date: June 26, 1996


In OYOTUNJI AFRICAN VILLAGE, in South Carolina



Interview is conducted on behalf of Isokan Yoruba Magazine by Chief Ajagun


Q. Your Highness, why did you choose to adopt the Yoruba Culture?

A. Mainly because at the time of our interest in going into African past, the Yoruba tradition was the only one available. It was not even available in the United States and we have to travel to Maxtansas in Cuba. It was through Cuban-Americans that we were guided into consultation and contact with a group of descendants of Egungunme tradition. Later, we learnt that we had made the best, perhaps the finest choice because Yoruba was universally spread out and had germinated in South America all the way up at that time to Cuba. We learnt further that there are large numbers of African-American people who were descendants of the Yoruba tradition and culture and through books written by researchers even in South Carolina and also into the former Louisiana territory owned by France in previous generations that there had been a huge importation of Yoruba and Dahomian people. It meant that here already was a latent reservoir of descendants of the Yoruba people.


Q. What about your name?

A. We had reclaimed our name, Adefunmi, before we later became familiar with Yoruba history through Oro Idile when it was discovered that there was a chieftancy located at the ancient Oyo, named Adefunmi.


Q. May we ask Your Highness what your childhood was like?


A. Our childhood was typical of that of second and third generation descendants of a slave Yoruba. We were born into freedom but our grandmother often remarked of her birth during the slave era here in the U.S.. Our childhood was one of extreme poverty, of being moved from one location to another as our family sought ways and means to earn its living and to support itself in the city of Detroit, Michigan. It was also at Detroit that our parents had met and were married. We were raised in a Christian environment. We attended high school in the U.S., all these under our slave name of Walter King. During the period of our education, we started commercial art at CastTechnical High School in Detroit. Our father died when I was 14 years old in Detroit. Our mother had relocated to the suburb of Detroit but was compelled to return to the innercity after the death of our father. Our family members, for the most part were welfare recipients and we as African-Americans were subject to various discriminatory practices prevailing in Detroit at that time. I was born in 1928, the year before the great economic depression in the U.S. which was not relieved until the installation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1930.


Q. What was the real turning point in Your Royal highness's life that really brought you full circle to embrace African Culture?

A. The most significant event that took place was reading a text called My Africa written by the Igbo writer, Mbonu Ojike, who had written a chapter on religion that excited us and illuminated our knowledge and mind when he argued that whether man created God or God created is an unsettled argument. He also pointed out the failings and falsity of Christianity and Islam in the life of the people in Nigeria. He also commented very profoundly on the discriminating attitude and practice of the white American community. The chapter on religion was so illuminating and penetrating that immediately after studying and meditating on it, we renounced our Christian faith, the slave tradition of Christianity and we began to search for a more African form of religion. We were also impressed by the writings of J.A. Rogers, a popular Africanist in the 20's, 30's and 40's whose articles appeared regularly in Michigan Chronicle and Pittsburg Courier. These articles also opened up our mind and encouraged us to search for our African heritage at 14 years of age..


Q. What will you call Your favorite pastime?

A. It has always been art works. Our ancestors have bequeathed to us skill and talent in the arts. We always elaborated on that and wherever we went; we participated with other artists. At Detroit, we engaged in very creative pursuit for the most part to show that art was influenced by the racial attitude and condition of the African American people, arts painting , sculpture and more recently, we have extended our artistic talents and skills to writings. These have always been our main diversion from the ordinary world of an African American.


Q. What do you see as the future for Yoruba Culture in Africa and in the Diaspora?

A. Future of the Yoruba Culture? Well, in our most recent visit to Nigeria, we were filled with dismay at the extent to which the Yoruba have sold out their own culture and have adopted foreign gods as the object of their spiritual religion. We realized what has happened to African Americans over the century that we have subscribed to foreign religions. We realized that our African American spiritual religion had been directed to Israel which is meaningless in the long run. So as a people, our culture, politics and religious experience have been extremely unfulfilled. We see the Yoruba now falling in the same condition through which the African Americans had allowed themselves to be seduced by preachers of a foreign gospel. We know that the universalist inspiration which has come to the Yoruba through Christianity and Islam has reduced their concern or allegiance to their own god and by extension to their own nationality. We see the Yoruba will be very much reduced in their political, cultural and spiritual development by their seduction into these alien religions. So far as the Yoruba in the western world, we see that there are efforts at increasing inspiration to become national or to recognise nationhood, so with that, we see the Yoruba in the diaspora, as it is popularly called, to be the Yoruba that will greatly guide and influence the Yoruba in the ancient homeland, who for the most part are tending to move away from a sense of preservation of their own culture and tradition, particularly religion.


Q. What advice will you give to African Americans trying to find their own root?

A. African Americans attempting to find their own roots will be better served by adopting the Yoruba tradition which for over 30 years, we have been able to introduce into the U.S. We see the African Americans have a profound desire to re-identify with their ancestors and with an ancestral tradition. We know that among vast numbers of African American intellectuals, there is a lack of fulfillment in their development and advancement in the Yoruba-American economic world. They found also that Christianity is unfulfilling and that Islam is misleading. So in consequence, African Americans are better served by a knowledge of the custom and tradition of their Yoruba ancestry.


Q. Any advice for the younger Yoruba generation?

A. Younger Yoruba generation will be able to advance to the extent that they increase the knowledge or institution among African Americans, who will serve the need for knowledge improvement through television and resurrection and introduction of stories and background images that established a sense of celebration of their African ancestry.


Q. How can a contemporary Yoruba personality support Oyotunji?

A. Our main necessity or requirement or needs for Africans or native Yoruba can best be served by supplying us with increased knowledge with teachers of language and history, in other words, Yoruba preachers preaching Yoruba tradition, religion, ideals of marriage as well as spiritual behavior. If the coming generations of African Americans are able to receive these types of training and exposure, then there is every indication that this will become a lasting impression and institution which can be enlarged upon by African Americans. The more aggresively the Yoruba culture is advertised and subscribed to among them, the better for us all. Lastly, there is the need for support of our cultural programs. We certainly appreciate the Egbe Isokan Yoruba for their institution of Yoruba cultural month at Washington, D.C. If we can extend this particular celebration to other locations with African American presence, Nigerians would have made the most of their sojourn and contact with African American community meaningful.



We thank your Highness for this interview.





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