Duula Galaa – Liberation and Resettlement

This pivotal chapter recontextualises the Oromo military campaigns of the 16th and 17th centuries as Duula Galaa —an indigenous liberation and resettlement project rooted in normative ethical frameworks. The campaigns are not interpreted as territorial expansion for conquest, but as restorative movements to reclaim dispossessed ancestral lands from imperial and religious encroachment. Through extensive use of oral traditions and Gadaa-based genealogies, the author reconstructs the spatial, spiritual, and political dimensions of Oromo movements across vast territories. The chapter challenges conquest-centred historiography and replaces it with a moral geography of Oromo survival, resurgence, and settlement.