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Nubia is a Sacred Land
About Us
Rise Up. Speak Up. Join Up.
Nubia Project is a movement dedicated to cementing a better future for all Kushite-Nubian-Nilotic and other marginalized groups in the greater region of Nubia-Kush. Founded in 2008, the Nubia project has raised awareness of the Nubian Anti-damming movement, and founded 'Nubia Day' to raise awareness of the Nubian people, Language, and Culture, and to end the Damming of Nubia. leading the International Nubian Language campaign to recognize the Nubian Langauge as an official language in Egypt and Sudan by opposing the Nubian Language Ban from official instruction in Egypt and Sudan and supporting the generational struggle to preserve Nubian Culture, Language, and History.
We have fought for impactful policy changes on the local, and international levels to bring awareness and help to the marginalized of Sudan, South Sudan, and Egypt. We strive to hold our leaders accountable, and the movement aware, trained, and knowledgeable with the tools and connections to succeed.
Learn how to get involved.
About
Who We Are
The Nubia Project was founded in 2008 in Washington, DC by retired Sudanese Ambassador Nuraddin Abdulmannan (aka Nuraddin Mannan), Khalid Gerais (aka Tanut
Amon), Fagiri Gawish, and Mayada Kandaka Mannan-Brake. The group worked with many Sudanese organizations as human rights activists with other Sudanese activists in
Sudan, the US, and Europe to expose the human rights violations in Sudan by the defunct Islamist military government of General Omer Elbashir. The need for forming a Nubian organization outside Sudan became necessary to support the Nubian resistance against damming Nubia, destroying its monuments, antiquities, and archaeological sites described by the British historian Basil Davidson as the largest archaeological site of the
world.
In 1954 the Egyptian Government announced the construction of the Aswan High Dam, and due to massive protest by the Nubians of Egypt and Sudan who did not want
to relocate from their land along the Nile, the Sudanese and Egyptian Governments in 1959 requested UNESCO to save the Nubian Monuments from being swallowed by the powerful waters of the Dam. There was no regard to the Nubians themselves, conservative estimates claim over 160,000 Nubians between Egypt and Sudan were forced to move to the hot desert away from their hospitable fertile land. some did not
leave and were swallowed, even some children were lost to the devastation of the water and forced migration when schools could not begin until third grade for Nubian children.
This was the first Nubia project, to save some Nubian monuments, with no regard to the people. Former Ambassador Nuraddin Abdulmannan was part of this forced migration,
and he was part of the Nubians that resisted the deliberate eraser of the Nobiin language by the Sudanese and Egyptian Governments at that time.
Nubia Project has helped in organizing the Nubians in the diaspora to oppose
damming of Nubia, coordinating with the Nubians in Sudan with the Anti-damming movement that continues to relocate and culturally cleanse Nubians to adopt Arab identities and forget to abandon their language and culture. The dictatorship that was recently removed in December 19, 2019, for 30 years planned the building of five Dams
along the Nile, and this became a threat once more to Nubian groups in Sudan.
Nubia Project made the campaign international to garner support, and to once more bring attention not only to save Nubia from Damming only, but to save the Nubian people from cultural cleansing, and to make the Nobiin language as an officially recognized language by Sudan and Egypt as it remains banned and unrecognized in
both countries.
Through many meetings, rallies, and demonstrations in front of the embassy of Sudan in Washington, DC, the Sudan Permanent mission in New York, embassies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and China in Washington, DC and sending messages to US Congress members and sister organizations, the Nubia Project has made a good
breakthrough and relations with many organizations and activists and academicians
especially among the African American organizations and willing to promote relations by connecting the US and Sudanese organizations, universities, hospitals, businesses,
communities etc., and getting help to develop and preserve the Nubian antiquities and historical sites and help in promoting tourism and developing the Nubian land resources and make it an oasis of peace and stability.
Today, few Nubians write the Nubian Language but spoken by millions of
Nubians in Sudan and Egypt, and it remains as the oldest living written African language today. For Centuries the forcible and intentional systematic cultural cleansing continued, the successive Governments of Sudan and Egypt have played a destructive
role in marginalizing and destroying the Nubian language and culture as well as many indigenous African languages by excluding their language from their school curriculum and implementing mandatory Arabic curriculums, and Arabizing indigenous groups to
become assimilated into Arabic culture.
Nubian Students were routinely flogged and mocked for speaking the Nubian
language. Students who fail in the Arabic language and Islamic Studies, automatically lose the opportunity for higher education and to further their schooling. All textbooks endorsed by the educational institutions in Sudan and Egypt do not mention Nubian
history, but rather focus on the spread of Islam and Arabic language as a blessing and consider African Languages such as Nubian and culture as obsolete and uncivilized
languages.
Today we are proud that former Ambassador and Linguist Nuraddin
Abdulmannan, completed the first book on the Nobiin Language and Grammar-Book 1, and created a keyboard for the Nobiin alphabet, carrying forth the pioneering work of the late Dr. Mukhtar Khalil Kabbara, and Nubian linguist and archeologist, authored his
book written in the Nobiin language and brought back to life! This standard of phonetics of the Alphabet can be found at the Nubian Documentation Center, Cairo Egypt. The
design by the late Nubian Dr. Abdelgadir Shalabi and his continuous support through www.napata.org. We continue the fight of the Mother of Nubians, Kandake (Queen) Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, who devoted her life to the Nubian cause, and her efforts in Sudan to bring the Nubian language back to life through the Nubian Studies
and Documentation Center in Cairo, Egypt. It is important for Nubians to build on this great foundation and be aware of it!