Traditionalist, nationalist and Christian discourses on land rights: a case study from the Ghana-Burkina Faso border

* Prof. dr. Carola Lentz, Institut für Historische Ethnologie,Goethe University, Germany.

Traditional land rights in the precolonial stateless Dagara and Sisala societies in Burkina Faso and Ghana are closely connected to the concept of earth-shrine parishes under the protection of a local land god and ideally in custody of the "firstcomers" to the area. The earth priests perform regular sacrifices at the shrine and allocate land as well as the right to build houses and bury their dead to later immigrants, often in exchange for gifts. The international border between Ghana and Burkina Faso which was drawn up in 1898 and runs along the 11th parallel often cuts across earth-shine parishes. Particularly since the border demarcation exercise in the 1970's, the spatial separation of Sisala earth priests on one side of the border from the Dagara immigrants on the other side has given rise to intricate conflicts over land rights. The paper will present the history of one such conflict and look at the various land-related discourses (traditionalist, nationalist and Christian) which the adversaries forward in order to substantiate their claims.