According to Dr. Wade Davis, over 50% of cultures are on the brink of extinction with one dying every two weeks. Dr. Davis points to loss of language as the biggest sign of cultural extinction as many norms and practices aren’t able to be passed down from generation to generation without a means of communication; therefore, not teaching a language to children makes it essentially dead decades before it even goes unspoken. In Rwanda, the official languages are Kinyarwanda, English and French, with over 98% of the population having Kinyarwanda as their first language. Kinyarwanda is part of the Bantu language family, with 12 languages with over 5 million speakers, primarily from the African countries Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Xhosa, and Zulu. In terms of cultural endangerment, in Rwanda the most severely affected would be the Twa peoples. Originally forest dwellers, the clear-cutting of their ancestral forests resulted in the Twa people having to abandon their traditional lifestyle, and in turn, culture. Because they’ve lost access to their forests, or the forests simply don’t exist anymore, much of their indigenous knowledge is quickly fading away. Nowadays, many Twa people survive by making and selling pottery. Stigmatized by both the Hutus and Tutsis, the Twa people have been pushed to the sidelines and made a marginalized caste in Rwanda. Additionally, according to MinorityRights.com, “the government of Rwanda, bent on denying ethnicity, has threatened to cut off all assistance to the Twa and their organizations if they continue to consider themselves as a distinct people.” Thus the Twa people are caught in an impossible decision, to either assimilate, abandoning their cultural practices, or to continue to be shunned and cast out of society. This clear threat against an indigenous culture aligns with what Dr. Davis was saying, time doesn’t make a culture go extinct, a distinct actor with power over the other can stamp out a culture.
“Rwanda Culture : Language, Religion, Food – Original Travel.” Rwanda Culture : Language, Religion, Food – Original Travel, https://www.originaltravel.co.uk/travel-guide/rwanda/culture#:~:text=Kinyarwanda%20(Bantu%20family)%20is%20the,speak%20Swahili%2C%20French%20or%20English.
“Twa.” Minority Rights Group, 2 Dec. 2020, https://minorityrights.org/minorities/twa-2/.