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Help me Repatriate My Recorded Endangered South Sudanese Culture and Tradition: “Repatriation is the return of documentation by scholars and others to source communities and artists and their families, in accessible and educational forms--and within the context of a kind negotiation and support, on the ground, which can help prepare local institutions, community members, and leaders to curate and take charge of it” ACE.
Hello friends, my name is Dominic Raimondo, I am one of the former Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of some 16,000 orphaned young men who walked over 400,000 miles from their villages in South Sudan to neighboring borders of Ethiopia and Kenya to escaped the rebel armies in the civil war when my village was attacked.
After my arrival and living in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya in Africa for 10 years without parent, I got an opportunity to come to United States.
Since my arrival here in US, many of you might have seen or met me somewhere, I have been consistently sharing my traditions, teaching Didinga dance, sharing cultural arts, creating clay bulls figurines, singing the bull songs and warrior’s song in schools and in the communities across the States to enrich our great community here where I live now in US.
Recently with Association for Cultural Equity’s support and good friends, I was able to return to Kakuma Refugee Camp and organized my community, recorded traditional music, dances, oral history, women’s dance and songs. While visiting the camp also, I applied the training and skills I received in ethnographic fieldwork and documentation to the recuperation and preservation of Didinga expressive tradition.
Through my continues commitment to my cultural traditions interest to save this endangered tradition, I have established proper relationships with tribal elders and families, gathering an extraordinary collection of audio and visual materials of Didinga Tribe Cultural Practices.
Now, I have completed the cataloging of the cultural documentation that I have collected and I plan to return them soon to my community and also deposited the materials with a national archive, to serve as a cultural resources for my people, the world’s knowledge of the Didinga Tribe of South Sudan.
I also plan to go and help empower the community in my village to build a traditional house building for cultural Center where they can come harness their talent in bead work, clay work and also to practice their traditional dances and songs.
This will definitely inspire my community and many other tribes of South Sudan to practice, preserve, protect and pass over their cultures to young ones.
Therefore, your support on this work will definitely and highly be appreciated and will help me make it a reality as well as walking the walk for my people.
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