Olga de Alaketu

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Olga de Alaketu
Mother Olga de Alaketu, Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture, Mother Stella de Oxóssi
Born	c. 1925 Ketu, West Africa (present-day Benin)
Died	29 September 2005 (aged 79-80) Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian
Occupation(s)	Iyalawo, Priestess of Ifá
Title	High Priestess of Candomblé

Olga de Alaketu or Mother Olga (c.1925 – September 29, 2005) was a prominent Candomblé high priestess, who was influential in promoting the African diasporic religion Candomblé and distancing it from Catholicism.

Early life and career[edit]

Olga de Alaketu was born in the Ketu Nation of West Africa in 1925, the descendant of a long line of priestesses and queens.^[1] However, after being brought by the Portuguese to Bahia, Brazil, she was forced into slavery^{[citation needed]}.

Alaketu used the customs and traditions of her homeland to establish herself in Afro-Brazilian society and differentiate herself from her slave identity. With the help of others she integrated European and African culture together in order to strengthen the Afro-Brazilian culture and the religious tradition of Candomblé ^{[citation needed]}.

In addition, Alaketu played a central role in many spiritual initiatives within her community, such as giving sermons on inequality and injustice. Furthermore, she served as an instrumental part of the local university's Psychiatry department to help local people discuss their problems, and those who were suffering from mental illness.

Ancestry, early life and career[edit]

The fifth generation descendant of the royal house of Aro in modern Benin, Alaketu was descended from a Ketu princess, who had been kidnapped and sold as a slave in Bahia between c. 1636 and the end of the 18th century), Alaketu served as the high priestess of the Ile Maroia Laji temple in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, one of the oldest Candomblé temples in the country. This temple attracted many prominent people including the writer Jorge Amado, and the French anthropologist Pierre Verger.

When the Ile Maroia Laji temple was declared a national heritage site, Cultural Minister Gilberto Gil said of Alaketu:

"In the last forty years, we can consider Mother Olga as the greatest proponent of the religion of the Orishas in all Brazil."

Ketu Nation and Olga[edit]

The Ketu nation into which Olga de Alaketu was born has a long history of religious oral tradition. Alaketu refers to a religiously-centered temple, known as Ilê Maroiá Laji, in the Matatu district of Ketu, one of the oldest of its kind. It was founded by Otampê Ojaró in the early 1600s. Anthropologist Vivaldo da Costa Lima, the first scholar to take interest in the history of the temple, supports this. “Lima gave credence to the memory of Otampê Ojaró's ethnic origin, showing that the temple's nickname, Alaketu, is probably a variant of the Yoruba ara Ketu (people from Ketu), also noting that the surname Ojaró is a variant of Aro, one of Ketu's royal lineages”.^[2] One notable characteristic of the religious tradition of the Ketu is its separation from the Catholic traditions of European colonizers. Olga da Alaketu was actually born into this Afro-Brazilian religious tradition in 1925. She died from complications caused by diabetes on September 29, 2005, and was buried in the Bosque da Paz Cemetery. She was succeeded by her eldest daughter Jocelina Barbosa Bispo ("Jojó").

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• "Olga de Alaketu, 80, Afro-Brazilian Priestess". New York Times. 2005-10-04. Retrieved 2008-08-09.