Talk:Akiek people

"Akiek" is just another name for the Ogiek and Akie peoples
I've been looking around and I can't find any convincing evidence of an "Akiek" people existing anywhere in reliable sources. It appears to be just another name for the Ogiek and Akie peoples, two related but distinct ethnic groups living in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania respectively.

The first source in this article, Tanzania And Its People by David Lawrence, was cited by just 28 other papers according to Google Scholar. The book was self-published rather than being published through any academic source, and I could not confirm whether or not David Lawrence is a subject matter expert because his name is so generic it gets hundreds of hits for dozens of different David Lawrences in various databases.

The second source in this article, UNESCO's Observatory on Multilingualism, says that Akiek is just an alternate name for the Akie language, similarly to "Mósiro", though in that case Mósiro tends to refer to an Akie clan. Thus far I have not found any evidence for an Akiek clan.

A now-dead website named OGIEK is linked to on the article, but it does not mention the Akiek either. It also doesn't mention the Akie, but this is likely because the website was for an indigenous rights organization in Kenya, so either of those would've been out of scope. Especially the Akie, who live in Tanzania.

According to page 830 of Indigenous Peoples - An Encyclopedia of Culture, History, and Threats to Survival written by Victoria R. Williams and published by ABC-CLIO, "Akiek" is just an another name for the Ogiek people.

Lastly, page 30 of Nancy C. Dorian's book Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death mentions two distinct groups she refers to as Akiek; one in Kenya and one in Tanzania. These two groups appear to match the descriptions of the Ogiek and Akie peoples respectively, and this is further implied by the lack of any reference to the Ogiek/Okiek or the Akie throughout the book. As such, it's likely that these two groups are the Ogiek and Akie. The book was published by Cambridge University Press and the author is a renowned subject matter expert, so this source is almost certainly reliable.

Other sources on the subject appear to be from self-published sources with few other publications citing them for information, or they use Akiek to refer to the Ogiek or Akie peoples.

In conclusion, I think it's quite clear that the "Akiek" do not actually exist as an independent group or subgroup of the Ogiek or Akie peoples, and that Akiek is just another name for those two groups. As such, I'll be turning Akiek people into a disambiguation page for the two groups. ~Cherri of Arctic Circle System (talk) 22:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC) Arctic Circle System (talk) 22:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC)