Dagara Cultural History: Cardinal Peter Poreku Dery

  Colloquium Abstract : Pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial events in Africa have all combined to give a certain image and role religion and culture play and should play in social and human development and progress. In the first place the narrow western definition of religion as an abstract phenomena focusing on believe in a subjective and empirically unverifiable notions of the spiritual world and the constant recourse to a dualistic thinking that pitches nature against culture have heavily poisoned the thinking frames via which scholars tend to understand and deal with religion and culture as integral part of human development and progress. This is particularly the case when it comes to indigenous African religion and culture. The situation is made worse with the persistent grounding of the philosophical notion that only one truth relating to religion and science exists and that this truth can only be found in the supposedly “more advanced and developed” systems. Though many s

  Colloquium Summary : On Monday, 23 April 1906 the Missionaries of Africa also known as the White Fathers, arrived from Upper Volta, today known as Burkina Faso, to begin their missionary activities in northern Ghana. The small group consisted of Rev. Fathers Jean-Marie Chollet and Brother Eugene Gall from France and Oscar Morin from Canada as missionaries and a contingent of about 20 Africans as helpers. Socially and culturally, the region was still suffering from the consequences of the just outlawed slave raiding and the coming to end of terror regimes by war-lords initiated by such Zabarma generals as Samouri and Babatu. The populations were still to come to terms with the European (French, British and German) use of military forces to try to establish their colonial rule. Many of the ethnic populations and groups residing in what is today called the Northern Region of Ghana and also those in semi-urban trading centres such as Wa and Bawku had, over the past century, for reasons