Further Readings
Asante, M. K., & Nwadiora, E. (2007).Spear Masters:
An Introduction to African Religion. Lanham, MD:
University Press of America.
Balandier, G., & Maquet, J. (1974).Dictionary of Black
African Civilization. New York: Amiel.
GURUNSI
The termGurunsiorGrusirelates to groups of
people as well as languages and is therefore con-
sidered by some authors as an ethnic and linguis-
tic unit. The following groups are identified as
parts of the Gurunsi peoples in the Asante region
of Ghana: Nunuma or Nuruma generally known
as Nuna; Kasena; Sisala; Ko; Lilse or Lyela;
Tamprusi; Vagala; Degha; Siti; Builsa; and Tem,
all living mainly in Accra and Ga areas of Ghana.
In this vast Western African area around the
Adere and Volta rivers, where we can find today’s
Ghana and Burkina Faso, live a great variety of
peoples that can be grouped under the Gur
language, families like the Mossi and the Bobo,
as well as the Nuna, Kasena, Sisala, and Winiama
of the Gurunsi language group.
The termGrusiorGurunsiwas also found to
be controversial and sometimes derogatory
because it was used as a collective to denote
peoples who share the same cultural traits and
language roots. As a generic, it includes those
who, although belonging to the Gurunsi branch,
have been defeated and therefore subjugated in
the historical development of the southern Asante
region. Treated as servants by the conquering peo-
ples like the Mossi, the use of the wordGurunsi
has become, for that matter, a synonym with
servant among their conquerors.
However, the Kasena, Nuna, and Sisala refer
to themselves as Gurunsi, talk about Gurunsi
songs and Gurunsi customs and traditions, and
the Nuna even consider themselves as the best
preservers of the Gurunsi traditions, where the
old customs and practices still stand. Although
of uncertain origin, the term Gurunsi is still
currently used, at least by these three groups, as
recognition of their common cultural and lin-
guistic ancestry because they share the same
cultural traits and language roots and even bear
the same facial marks.
Like most African peoples, the Gurunsi believe
in the existence of a spirit world connected
to every particular object and phenomenon in the
world, in natural forces that permeate every
aspect of their everyday lives, and in the powerful
mediation of the ancestors to help them lead a
harmonious existence—in a holistic sense of the
world as a balanced relationship between the
human beings and nature and the cosmos.
Their cosmological sense can be fully appreci-
ated through their narratives of creation. These
narratives vary according to the particular experi-
ences of every particular people, and their totemic
objects and masks, used in rites and ceremonies,
generally embody and symbolize a particular
spirit that they believe governs or is the cohesive
driving force behind a particular community.
The Gurunsi, like the peoples around them (the
Mossi, Bwa, or Bobo), being mainly hunters,
derive their symbols from the nature around the
family compounds and of the hardships they
encounter in every act of daily survival. As a
means of access to an invisible world inhabited by
the divinities and spirits, which are held in African
cosmogony to share the universe with mankind,
they use masks in the course of religious rituals
and ceremonies to establish communication
between human beings and the spiritual world.
These masks symbolize a particular animal like
the antelope, eagle, or gazelle. The narrative of
their origin and identity as a people includes their
encounters with such animals and determines their
sense of a common history, moral values, and ideals
to be preserved, passed on, taught to the new gen-
erations by the ancestors either during rites of initi-
ation or during religious and/or social ceremonies.
However, although the concept of a first creator,
a breath, a wind, a first occasion, or a great, great
ancestor is paramount and present in every African
community, along with the holistic sense of a
human and cosmological relationship, it must be
noted that, under late Semitic and/or Arab influ-
ences, African cosmology and African peoples’
perceptions of the world have been severely
impacted by the colonial and missionary agency
that sidelined the concept of a Almighty God with
African spirituality and created a conformity to a
Western religious conceptualization, language, andGurunsi 301