Kassena

The Kassena people are an ethnic group of Kingdom of Dagbon northern Ghana and Burkina Faso, and their language is the Kasem language. Their number is estimated to be about 161,000. Their chief lives in the town of Tiébélé.

History

The Kassena people are part of the greater Gurunsi group and were separated from the Gurunsi ethnic group at the beginning of the 20th century, as a consequence of colonialism and more specifically of the partitioning of the Burkina Faso-Ghana area between France and United Kingdom. As most of the Gurunsi people live in Burkina, the Kassena were isolated and gradually developed an independent cultural identity. Kassena mostly live on agriculture, growing millet, sorghum, yam and, to a lesser extent, maize, rice, groundnuts, beans. During the dry season they also hunt and fish.

Home Call

The Belgian anthropologist, Ann Cassiman, conducted detailed ethnographic accounts of the Kassena. In her book “Stirring Life: Women's Paths and Places Among the Kasena of Northern Ghana”, she elaborates on the material culture, rituals and social practices as experienced in a rural Kassena village. This research also led to a museum exhibition entitled 'Home Call', housed by the Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp, Belgium.