Our grandmothers, excluded from history, preservers and transmitters of indegenous values: ecomaternalistic approach

Abstract

The phenomena of sexism and patriarchal structures in many part of Africa have received robust attention in literature especially within the feminist theology, an offshot of liberation theology. The dehumanizing potency of sexism and injustice and domination of women and natural environment have also been widely discussed. Women as the ‘voiceless’ or ‘nameless’ in many traditional societies has been made manifest on their exclusion from history despite their roles on sustainable development. This has hitherto been observed to have contributed to the seemingly lost of African indegenous knowledge and values in this era of globalization espercially in Igboland. Respective of the foregoing orthodoxy, this paper using the ecomatemalistic theory by Swila (2014) and Talitha cum theory by Dube (2002) retracts the instrumentality of African women in fostering the preservation and transmission of indegenous knowledge and values which has been excluded from history due to patriarchal structure. It further calls for the retrieval of the said hidden histories of women which would hopefully be a lesson for the contemporary and future women.