Preserving, Promoting Zaar Cultural Heritage to the World not Division.

 Preserving, Promoting  Zaar Cultural Heritage to the World not division.

✍🏾 Madalla Kadiri, Zaar Activist

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘heritage’ as ‘property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance’, ‘valued things such as historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations’, and ‘relating to things of historic or cultural value that are worthy of preservation’.

The emphasis on inheritance and conservation is important here, as is the focus on ‘property’, ‘things’ or ‘buildings’. So (according to the Oxford English Dictionary, anyway), heritage is something that can be passed from one generation to the next, something that can be conserved or inherited, and something that has historic or cultural value. Heritage might be understood to be a physical ‘object’: a piece of property, a building or a place that is able to be ‘owned’ and ‘passed on’ to someone else.

In addition to these physical objects and places of heritage there are also various practices of heritage that are conserved or handed down from one generation to the next. 

Language is an important aspect of who we understand ourselves to be, and it is learned and passed from adult to child, from generation to generation. 

These invisible or ‘intangible’ practices of heritage, such as language, culture, popular song, literature or dress, are as important in helping us to understand who we are as the physical objects and buildings that we are more used to thinking of as ‘heritage’. 

Another aspect of these practices of heritage is the ways in which we go about conserving things – the choices we make about what to conserve from the past and what to discard: which memories to keep, and which to forget; which memorials to maintain, and which to allow to be demolished; which buildings to save, and which ones to allow to be built over. Practices of heritage are customs and habits which, although intangible, inform who we are as collectives, and help to create our collective social memory. 

There are many tribes  in Nigeria including Zaar  that have developed the habit of making choice, selection of which heritage to conserve from the past  and what to  discard, which memories to keep, and which to forget; which memorials to maintain, and which to allow to be demolished; which buildings to save, and which ones to allow to be built over. 

Many tribes in Nigeria including the  Zaar  gives  more  priorities in conserving  invisible or ‘intangible’  heritage, such as language, culture, popular song etc. while abandoning, neglecting the conservation of  tangible heritage Sites  such as historic  physical objects like  buildings,  literature or dress, artefacts etc. 

Zaarland  tangible heritage Sites  such as; 1. historic  physical objects like  buildings, vun tongah etc  in various hills our forefathers lives before coming down  to lowland after peace treaty with the jihadist,  2.  literature or dress; The olden days literature and there  dress, 3. artefacts etc  have been neglected,  abandoned and also  not preserve for future generation.

Zaar  cultural heritage  if well  preserve,  develop,  manage,  also got  promoted by Zaar Content Creators on  social media around the world it will  attract tourist all over the world to Zaarland,  Zaarland will became  an international tourist hub.

Promoting division rather than promoting our cultural heritage to the outside world will not help us as a society that is  politically disadvantage due to low  population.