History of the Aka

The Aka people are not literate therefore they do not have nay written history or recollection of their people's history.  Everything everyone Aka knows about his or her ancestors and their tradition is passed on by word of mouth through generations. The Aka live in the northwestern region of the Congo Basin, in the tropical forests of southwestern Central African Republic (CAR) and northern Congo-Brazzaville.  They primarily live and work off of the rainforest even though some men travel into cities to look for work.  The Aka identify themselves as "peoples of the forest" and tend to refer to outsiders as "peoples of the village".  The Aka are have become specialized in several aspects of the rainforest including the gathering of honey for which the locals are willing to pay good money for.  Their is group identification within the Aka with several farming clans having emerged these Aka travel more and interact with society much more often.  The Aka will set a core nuclear family in a tribe and these families work together to obtain things like food and water.  With European colonialism in effect in the 18th century, many other African tribes were pushed into Aka lands.  This led to these outside clans becoming affiliated with and eventually incorporating themselves into the Aka tribe.  From 1910 to the 1940's the Aka were under French Equatorial Africa, and during this rule the French tried to put tribes people of Africa into more modern societies, but this failed and led to many more Africans traveling into Aka lands.  This then led to an increased demand for bush meat and new ways of hunting were established making it easier for the Aka to obtain food during hunting, it also made hunting easy enough for women of the tribe to participate in the activity.  Today the Aka are again being forced out of the rainforest and finding work on coffee farms.