the resettlement of the Somali Bantus: an unreported story

 I worked with Ojibwe in northern Minnesota, but was aware of the large Hmong refugee population of Minneapolis, and later the resettlement of thousands of Somalis, who by the way did not assimilate with the small native African Americans who were living there.

However, on looking into why they were settled there as refugees, I found that many of them were actually Bantu Somalis: Webpage here.

https://somalibantumaine.org/somali-bantu-background/

When civil war broke out in Somalia, the Somali Bantus were sent from their homes and farms by armed people of the Somali clan. The legacy and stigma of slavery made the Bantu population particularly vulnerable and many Somali Bantus were killed, tortured, and raped by the ethnic Somalis as the famine increased. The ones who were able to flee walked anywhere from two to four weeks to reach the Kenyan border.

a long complicated history there about slavery, assimilation, the various tribes in Somalia, and the civil war (including the pasturalist vs the SomaliBantu agricultural workers being part of the background) and a report on how many ended up fleeing to nearby countries.

 So  how did a lot of them end up in Minneapolis?

The US State Dept resettled them as refugees.

the refugee program has come to be shaped by a global human rights agenda, divorced from the previous grounding in foreign policy and national interest. The most recent evidence for this is the decision to resettle a tribe known as the Somali Bantu from UN refugee camps to the United States, rather than explore the very real possibility of solutions within Africa itself.

... Under this new model refugees to the United States are more likely to be direct referrals from UN-run refugee camps. The U.S. State Department has committed to taking at least 50 percent of those refugees, ... Since 1992, 77 percent of refugees who were resettled permanently in industrialized countries came to the United States.

 

The UNHCR has three options for dealing with the refugees in its care, who by definition have fled their country of origin to another country of “first asylum.” Besides maintaining the supposedly temporary camps where the refugees reside, the UNHCR pursues “durable solutions” which include 1) voluntary repatriation — return to the country of immediate origin; 2) integration and permanent residence in the country of “first asylum;” or 3) resettlement to a third country. Repatriation is by far the most commonly used solution.

so who are the Somali Bantu? 

The Somali Bantu, which comprise several tribes, are viewed as two subgroups in their relationship to Somali majority society. One group’s ancestors migrated to modern-day Somalia roughly a thousand years ago and consider themselves to be Somalis. The other group, numbering about 300,000 to 400,000 are descendants of Bantu brought to East Africa by Arab slavers in the 19th century. Severely discriminated against by ruling class or “dominant clan” Somalis, part of this group, also known as Mushungulis, sought refuge in neighboring Tanzania and Kenya with over half of those who fled winding up in UN refugee camps in Kenya.

It is the Somali Bantu in Kenyan UN refugee camps that the United States has agreed to admit on its refugee program.

the article discusses the decision of resettling far away instead of what would be cheaper and better for all involved: Resettle in nearby countries.

a book on their resettlement in Maine.