TRIBE OF THE DAY!!! : irigwe
Irigwe people (Rigwe: Nneirigwe; Hausa: Miyango) are found mainly in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State, Middle Belt (central) Nigeria.
They speak the Rigwe language (also Nkarigwe), a Central Plateau language. Their headquarters is the town of Miango, west of the state capital, Jos.
Irigwe people are ancient hospitable and friendly Bantu rigwe-speaking people of larger Benue-Congo ethnolinguistic group living in Bassa and Barakin Ladi Local Government Areas of Plateau State and Saminaka Local Government Area in Kaduna state. The Irigwe, mostly live in Miango, Jos and Bukuru village in Bassa LGA of Plateau State.
This people were famous to the anthropologist for its polyandry practice and traditional ritual dance. There are a lot of tourist attractions in the Miango village like water falls, high hills, the Miango rest house etc. Currently there are about 70,000 Irigwe people living Nigeria. As a result of Christianity and anthropologists tagging of Irigwe tribe as "primitive" and "pagan" society for practicing polyandry and the British government that kill many of it indigenes because they were threat to them, most Irigwes do not practice polyandry again.
The following are also Irigwe tribes and can be used to refer to as Irigwe; Aregwe, Idafan, Kwal, Kwan, Kwoll, Miango, Nkarigwe, Nnerigwe, Nyango,Rigwe etc. The Irigwe call their language as rigwe. They call themselves as yirigwe and an Irigwe person (singular) is also yirigwe.
Irigwe traditionally had no tribal chief, and lacked any formalized political hierarchy as such. Instead the tribe was subdivided into 25 semi-autonomous agnatically based ritual units or "sections" (rekla). They are bound together on the one hand by each section's having exclusive responsibility for performing one or another ritual felt to be necessary for the tribe, and on the other hand by cross-cutting affinal and cognatic bonds mediated by both primary (fo’wena ‘taking a girl,’ band by the women as nynira ‘a from-to’) and "secondary" (fo mbru ‘taking a woman or wife’ by the men and vwevwe ‘sing-sing’ by the women) intersection marriages (Sangree 1972).
The Irigwe repeatedly utilize the idiom of generation and sex (i.e., parent-child and male female) to characterize and classify aspects of their world, both social and geographical. As a result each of their twenty-four agnatically based Irigwe subdivisions or “sections,” as the Irigwe call them, has its own shrine house, rather womb-like in shape, called a branyi. Each Irigwe section regards its branyi as sacred and as its center of strength and regeneration, and skulls and other relics of warfare and hunting are preserved therein. Each branyi is presided over by a senior man of the section’s senior most lineage. The twenty-four sections are grouped into two geographically discrete divisions. Rigwe (Kwon District), the “parent” division, which lies south of the River Ngell, has ten sections, which together control a major portion of the important tribal ritual.
"Among the Irigwe people, each ward of a village has a leading dance group. Dancers are selected on the basis of their dance ability. Senior members of the dance group now carry an axe in the right hand and a cowtail switch in the left. The dance uniform of short trousers and a moulded cap of red felt was introduced in the early fifties. The idiophones now in use are made of palm leaves woven into a series of pockets, containing pebbles attached round the lower leg.
Two drums lead the dance. A large double faced membranophone with a single snare, called biange and, a smaller membranophone, of identical design, called ishinge. Today the dances, together with a large repertoire within the same style are performed on three distinct occasions. The dance at its most vigorous remains an expression of the communal way of life at festivals celebrating the agricultural cycle. The second occasion occurs when a prominent member of the community dies and dances are performed as part of the funeral ceremonies. Finally the dances are performed to entertain important visitors
the source comes from 101lasttribes.com and the search was hard to find the traditional clothing that isn't the dance clothes for this tribe but i did, I recommend searching for this tribe too
but
LETS CELEBRATE THE IRIGWE PEOPLE!!!!
