‘Returning to the world of ancestors’: death and dying among the Acholi of Northern Uganda, 1900s–1980s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The encounters between Acholi and Europeans, beginning in 1904 with the settlement of the Church Missionary Society in Acholiland, had a profound impact on the people. Scholars have long examined the impact of these encounters on various aspects of life. But a study of their impact on mortuary practices in the region has largely been neglected. Recently, scholars have shined a spotlight on death and dying as a result of the armed conflict that engulfed Acholiland from the late 1980s. Drawing on previously untapped primary sources, interviews, and works of Acholi intellectuals, this article complements this new trend, by focusing on death and mortuary practices between the 1900s and the 1980s. Specifically, it recreates these practices and demonstrates change and continuity; and it concludes with a history of the cemetery in Acholiland.