The Gourmantché people history, religion and philosophy are few known. They are closely linked with nature and wildlife. Swanson (1976) and Lahoande (2006) made approaches on them, but a detailed study didn’t exist until I made a long term research among Gourmantché communities of Niger W region. They are illustrative of these cultures representations of nature, and show their links with the ecosystem. These communities have a balanced coexistence with nature. They coexist with lions and large fauna, and keep traditional land use systems. Their cultural representations of nature and their relationships with the ecosystem are inseparable from their concept of reality dynamics that include the visible beings but also invisible ones, living spiritual beings that also act on reality. They represent time and space as changeable, and have not a hierarchic representation of living beings. Some of the explored topics are the Gourmantché physical categories, cosmogony, representations of mineral, vegetal, animal and human life, moral categories, representations of human life-cycle, representations of nature’ spiritual beings, and magic-religious and divination practices. For the Gourmantché, animals, plants and minerals have spiritual beings that lead and take care of them. Often, the characteristics of each one match with the ecology of the species he is related to. They are invisible, and show their existence by subtle signs and by the whole of natural processes. Inhabitants’ relationships with nature are linked with these representations. For instance, traditional hunting impact on game populations is regulated by them, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Spiritual masters and hunters use magic-religious rituals and practices to mediate with the spiritual beings and to intervene on reality. Usually, such practices result on the making of a gri-gri, an amulet-like object containing parts of animals and plants. Those ingredients, and their combination, “contain” the spirits of those beings and, thus, their power. Gris-gris do not act by cause and effect, but by immediate or diachronic simultaneity, as Gourmantché think that all beings and facts are interconnected. For the Gourmantché, minerals, plants, animals may think and speak, and are interconnected in a network in which a change on one of its parts reflects its changes in the whole reality. Those interactions are managed by spiritual beings. Often, their representations of nature match with scientific ecology, and favour a balanced coexistence with the other living species. An evidence of it is that these societies conserved their environment high biodiversity.

Niger; Gourmantché; Religion