Anuak also known as the Anyuak, Agnwak and Anywaa, are riparian or riverine, agro-pastoralist, and Nilotic ethnic group of the Luo cluster inhabiting parts of East Africa. They are primarily found in villages situated along the banks and rivers of southeastern South Sudan as well as southwestern Ethiopia, especially the Gambela Region.
The people call themselves Anywaa; others particularly their neighbours simply know them as Anyuak. The name ‘Anyuak’ or ‘Anuak’ or ‘Anywaa (Anywaae)’ literally means ‘I shared’ or ‘to share’. The Anuak are a distinct people who have always had close ties to their environment. As an indigenous population, they have been marginalised by the government for many years. They sustain themselves mainly through farming, hunting and fishing, while some Anuak are also pastoralists. Some Anuaks are gold miners and iron technologists.
In the early 2003 and 2004 the Anuaks were targeted for repression, mass rape and killings by The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Defense Front and highland Ethiopian civilians, for daring to resist the government attempt to grab their bonafide traditional lands. Historically, the lighter-skinned Ethiopian tribes have shunned the darker-skinned African tribes, and sometimes raided the tribes to acquire slaves. The Anuak are one such dark-skinned African people indigenous to regions of the lower Nile, others including the Nuer, Dinka, and Shilluk. All these tribes are racially distinct from the olive-skinned Ethiopian tribes such as the Tigray, the Oromo, and the Amhara.
The Anuak’s ancestral homeland of Gambella is not only geographically remote from the capital of Addis Ababa – it is also agriculturally fertile, relatively sparsely populated, and blessed with gold and oil reserves. This has made their land much coveted by the central government for economic development and population resettlement. “Gambella is potentially a very rich area,” said Gebre-Ab. “It could be the breadbasket of Ethiopia.
The legacies of colonialism left Anywaa people divided into two countries, Ethiopia and Republic of South Sudan. Most of Anywaae are living in the Southwestern of Ethiopia, Gambella Region, where as minority of them live in Southern Sudan mainly in Akobo and Pochalla counties adjacent to the border of Gambella Region. According to Kevin Shillington this was the same period of 2200 B.C "when Sahara was drying out increasingly… rapidly and the large numbers of Sahara pastoralists and hunter push into the Nile valley, disrupting the settled farmers whom they found there." Cheway was a member of Nilo-Sahara African peoples’ group and had migrated together with his “Lou” people group along the Nile River downward to southwest. For instance, there is a proverb in Anyuak language that the name ‘Lou people’ was obsessed from migration. It means, let us (Innocent and good people) walk along the river bank to southward following this monster, longest, and giant river; the Nile.
