Aari people

Aari or Ari are a tribal Omotic people indigenous to Omo Valley of Ethiopia. According to 2007 census there are 289,835 ethnic Aari in Ethiopia, which makes up around 0.29% of the country's total population. Nearly all Aari speak the South Omotic Aari language, though more than half of them are multilingual and can also speak other languages such as Amharic.

In the late 1800s, the Omo River region was conquered by the Ethiopian Empire under Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, which resulted in the widespread adoption of Amharic culture and the Amharic language there. By the early 1900s, the Amhara rulers had consolidated their control over the region and many Aari became serfs. Aari culture experienced significant decline during this time, although it and the Aari language survived. and interest in education has flourished; most Aari towns today have at least one primary school.

The Ari peoples of Ethiopia comprise different occupational groups and their society is socially divided and stratified according to each Aari individual's respective occupation. The lower castes of the society are composed of potters, tanners and blacksmiths and collectively named as mana in the Aari language. Blacksmiths (faka mana) who also do woodworking are marginalized and occupy an inferior position to tanners and potters (tila mana). Kantsa is the name given to the agriculturalist caste which holds a privileged position in the society. Intermarriage between mana and katsa is forbidden and considered as taboo according to Ari customs. The occupational segregation and caste-based endogamy practiced among the Ari have been revealed by advances in archaeogenetics to be one the oldest continuous caste systems in existence. After the introduction of Christianity the social division between Christian Aari belonging to differing castes has been reported to have become less important.