Dinka

Member of a Nilotic minority group in southern Sudan. The Dinka are transhumant pastoralists, moving their cattle from river-area camps in the dry season to savannah forest and permanent settlements in the wet season. They inhabit approximately 388,600 sq km/150,000 sq mi around the river system that flows into the White Nile. Their language belongs to the Chari-Nile branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. The Dinka number around 1–2 million.

Cattle play an important part in their social organization and in their religious beliefs and practices. The Dinka's animist beliefs conflict with those of Islam, the official state religion. In the civil war in Sudan that began in the 1980s, by 1995 thousands of Dinka had been massacred and more than 200,000 forced from their homes.

The Dinka comprise several independent groups linked by ties of kinship; certain clans traditionally provide the ritual chiefs of the tribe – the ‘masters of the fishing spear’. Dinka religion has one God, Nhialic (Sky), who speaks through a number of spirits who in turn take possession of individuals in order to speak through them. The sacrificing of oxen forms a central component of the faith, carried out by leaders known as the spear masters. These powerful figures make decisions involving the entire people.