Balanta

The Balanta, whose Mandinka name means those who resist, are a West Atlantic people of the coastal flats and mangrove channels of Guinea-Bissau, settled chiefly south of the Geba River. Archaeological evidence suggests ancestors arrived from the east in small groups between the 900s and 1300s, and they call the land between the Mansôa and Geba rivers their homeland of Nhacra.

They never built kingship like the empires around them, but lived in autonomous clan villages governed by councils of elders, standing coming from age-set initiations crowned by the four-yearly Fanado rite in the sacred woods. Expert rice farmers, they devised irrigation works blending salt and fresh water to keep paddies fertile, raising cattle for sacrifice.

As the Kaabu kingdom expanded in the 1800s, Balanta groups spread through the region rather than submit, the resistance that gave them their name.