Urom

Urom are a heterogeneous category of non-Coscivian peoples native to Great Kirav, distinguished from the other non-Coscivian minorities of the island continent (termed “National Minorities”) by their, historical umpéa status under Imperial law, lack of integration into mainstream Kiravian society, and special developmental concerns. Collectively, they represent 2.1% of the Kiravian population, around 24 million people.

Urom peoples, having many cultural characteristics in common with on other continents and beset with similar socio-economic and political challenges, are often included in Occidental discourse on. In the Coscivian world, however, Uromkor is understood as a function of socio-cultural rather than  and colonial displacement, and Urom peoples are generally not regarded as being any more “indigenous” to Great Kirav than the National Minorities or Coscivian peoples, though claims to the contrary have been advanced by Urom activists.

Urom are not a single people, and ideas of a collective Urom identity have yet to extend beyond the context of political agitation. There is great diversity among the various Urom tribes in terms of ancestry, appearance, language, religion, and lifestyle.

Concept
The concept of Urom derives from the self-understanding of Coscivian civilisation and its origins. According to tradition, primitive agricultural Kirav was a violent and brutish environment characterised by near-constant between small tribal units, and widespread murderous practices such as  and  within tribes due to both ritual demand and resource scarcity. Lifespans were extremely short, with the prelude to the Great Law Chant reminding Coscivians that "mere beards - not white but rich with ūmar were the mark of the elder; fortunate and few were those who survived to full manhood, for the earth was bathed in the young blood of hairless youth." It was only with the rise of the Emperors, through their imposition of the Four Laws and patronage of the Four Rites, that communities were able to know peace and order. During this nascent stage of Coscivian civilisation, known as the "Lawful Commonwealth", the "Empire" was a tribal confederacy rather than a proper state, without an administration or defined territory. The Four Laws and Four Rites spread by voluntary diffusion more so than conquest, and from this emerged a binary identity of Lawful tribes who accepted the Emperor's authority versus tribes who did not.

The discovery of that enabled the consolidation of stable political control over wider areas and facilitated the evolution of the Empire into a territorial entity complicated this binary, as the Emperor's authority was no longer limited to those communities that had accepted the Law and Rites voluntarily, and now extended to communities brought under his rule by conquest, bound by the Law but (initially) not admitted to the Rites. This engendered a trifurcate distinction between Subjects of the Emperor (ritually initiated), Subjects of the Land (lawful but uninitiated), and barbarians (lawless). Over time, many Subjects of the Land, either on a corporate or individual basis, undertook the Rites and adopted the emerging Coscivian identity. At several junctures, such as the Great Invitation of Emperor Kompūserv and Emperor Ṉspektadek's Naturalisation of the Land, these initiations occurred en masse and may have been less-than-voluntary. At any rate, the arc of Imperial Coscivian history was long, but it bent toward the convergence of Subjects of the Land with the Emperor's Subjects, and also toward territorial expansion and the closure of the frontiers, such that by [Milestone], few redoubts of ungoverned barbarians persisted, and most remaining Subjects of the Land were tribal peoples living on marginal lands, especially inaccessible mountains, dense forests, and malarial swamps.

To Be Continued.

Heterodox Customs
The traditional narrative ascribes the ancestral Urom's refusal to assimilate into Coscivian society to their desire to retain customs that did not conform to the Four Laws or other defining norms of Coscivian culture. Commonly cited examples of such customs include marital norms, with many Urom peoples having practised (at least historically) forms of polygamy, or (especially in the case of hunter-gatherer groups) eschewing the marriage bond in favour of serial partnerships. Many Urom of the Southwest and the Western Highlands continue to (extralegally) observe customs obligating a married man to marry his brother's widow as an additional wife.

To be continued with weirder stuff.

Some Urom tribes have no cultural memory of customs at odds with fundamental Coscivian norms. Many other tribes who once had such customs later abandoned them without assimilating into Coscivian society. In High Modernity, both Federalist and Kirosocialist governments asserted stricter control of the Urom reductions and suppressed practices such as polygamy.

Demographic stability
Although the total Urom population has increased according to every census since the end of Kirosocialism, buoyed by growth among larger and more developed groups such as the Qódava, Xufur, and Wawa, most Urom peoples - particularly those with smaller populations to begin with - have suffered a decline in absolute numbers during the same period. The Oklʌsterbé, presently reduced to nine individuals with the youngest females in their late fifties, face complete extinction with the passing of the current generation. Other small tribes with collapsing age pyramids must reckon with looming cultural extinction as their populations will soon be too small to maintain community life and traditional continuity, even if their genetic lineage survives.

The familiar compounding factors of poverty, poor health outcomes, and the pressures of assimilation and exogamy, as well as the disruption of traditional lifestyles and economies, are believed to contribute to this decline. However, there is also the phenomenon of "Late-Modern Urom Sterility" observed across an array of Urom peoples from different regions, characterised by precipitous declines in fertility beginning during Mid-Kirosocialism that are not evident among similarly-situated Coscivian or National Minority communities. The cause(s) of Late-Modern Urom Sterility are presumed to be environmental or socio-economic in nature, but the exact etiology remains an open question.

Current

 * Biznad͡ʒ - Native to Korlēdan and Argévia.
 * Oklʌsterbé - Native to Lataskia; moribund with all 9 remaining Oklʌsterbé past reproductive age.
 * Pungōvak - Native to Inokarya and Qihuxia, related to the Coscivian Kayakem.
 * Qódava - Largest Urom tribe, with around four million members.
 * Rifpito - Relatives of the Qódava.
 * Varekthari - Native to Metrea.
 * Wamdue - Native to Sixua, once ruled a confederation of chiefdoms and proto-states at parity with neighbouring Coscivian polities.
 * Wawa - Native to Váuadra.
 * Wisaya - Native to Sixua and known for their exotic marital norms.
 * Wod͡ʒagat - Native to Kensonia, known for their distinctive and haunting geoglyphs.

Historical
Surfantur - Inhabited coastal swamps in Fariva, extinct since the 17th century AD.

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Kiravian Urom or Urom are a polyphyletic group of peoples who are collectively considered the indigenous inhabitants of the island continent of Great Kirav and its surrounding islands, present there before the arrival of the proto-Coscivians.

Definition
The definition of 'Urom' that has guided Kiravian aboriginal policy since the Térunbuir administration has been:

ethno-social communities having;
 * continuity in lineage and identity with the inhabitants of Great Kirav prior to the arrival of the Elutic and Cosco-Adratic peoples,
 * some meaningful continuity in language, culture, lifestyle, or social organisation with the same,
 * a history of political autonomy from Coscivian polities and social separation from the Emperor’s subjects, and
 * economic and developmental disadvantages compared to neighbouring communities not so distinguished.

This definition encompasses a diverse collection of people groups, many of them small-numbered, across different language families, traditional lifestyles, phenotypes, religious traditions, and degrees and manners of differentiation from Coscivian and Coscivian-adjacent society. Although components of the standard definition have been criticised on various grounds, it is nonetheless the most widely used definition by government and civil society alike. According to Rifpito activist and scholar Yefes Ayefsipti, the classification of groups as Urom or non-Urom can seem arbitrary and artificial to urban Coscivians and to Western observers, but in regions with established Urom populations the of Uromity is an inescapable and deeply felt social reality. A point of agreement between the government and Urom leaders is that Uromity is fundamentally an attribute of peoples and tribes, and that individuals are only Urom by virtue of belonging to such a people.

In sociological and public policy discourse, usage of the term 'Urom' normally excludes the Scheduled Minorities (who maintain a separate identity from Coscivians but have long histories of statehood and civil integration), as well as groups such as the Kiorgians and Indokwéans who are of heavily Palæo-Kiravian descent but identify as Coscivians. However, these groups may considered Urom in anthropological and historical contexts.

Speculative Origins
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Population
As of the latest census, Urom numbered just over 34.4 million people, accounting for about three percent of the total population of the Kiravian Federacy. 62% of Urom live in West Kirav.

Political Status
Today, all Urom Kiravians are citizens of the Kiravian Federacy, with the four Draili tribes being the last to gain citizenship in 21126. Previously, the civil status of Urom varied by the political favour in which their tribe was held, usually entailing lower grades of status such as metics, mere nationals, or subjects of the land.

Overall, 48% of Urom live outside of tribal jurisdiction and are subject to the same laws as other Kiravian citizens. The 52% that live on tribal lands enjoy special autonomy and exemptions from state and federal laws that vary by the type of tribal jurisdiction they inhabit.

The larger Treaty Tribes govern Tribal Authorities, defined by the Urom Affairs Code as “domestic, dependent, but autocephalous subjects of federal law”. Though they are not states themselves and have no independent input into federal politics as states, territories, and other federal subjects do, Tribal Authorities have the same standing as states under federal law. They exercise most administrative powers of states – levying taxes, operating police forces, issuing licences, and passing laws – within areas under their jurisdiction, which include both one or more autonomous counties and larger non-autonomous areas of states where the Tribal Authority’s jurisdiction is extraterritorial.

Smaller Treaty Tribes have Autonomous Countyships – Areas within a state that can operate internally as if they were their own state, but are not subjects of federal law.

Neutral Tribes, small Treaty Tribes in the East, and two Defeated Tribes have access to reservations. The nature and powers of reservations vary widely. Some are virtually indistinguishable from autonomous countyships, having a great deal of autonomy. Others have more limited powers, behaving much like ordinary countyships or municipal authorities, and still others are very weak, resembling mere planning districts and homeowner’s associations.

Settlements
Drail (Kiravic: Drayin) is by far the largest Kiravian settlement with an Urom-majority population (78% of its 84,000 people in 21205), followed by Saɣuarśa, the capital of the Xéoxƿém Tribal Authority in Transateranda (84% of its 46,000 people).

Major Kiravian cities with large Urom populations include:
 * Escarda (14.7%)
 * Kaþedra (20.6%)
 * Tetraliþka (23.3%)

List of Recognised Tribes

 * Draili - Devahoma
 * Tapkek - Kaviska, Niyaska
 * Hidenrek - Kastera, Arkvera
 * Qódavas - Súneridan
 * Rifpito - Súneridan
 * Rofo - Váuadra, Hanoram, Ventarya
 * Shyotse (Śêtsem) - Etivéra
 * Síkuru - Kyllera, Îkodha
 * Yutuxno - Metrea, Ilfenóra
 * Varekthari - Metrea
 * Wawa (Váua) - Váuadra, Etivéra (historically), Hanoram

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