What is cultural identity ,really?

If someone asked me where I come from, I would probably say, “I’m from Western Kenya, from Vihiga County.”

It is usually enough of an answer.

Perhaps they might ask which community I belong to, and I would tell them. Maybe they would ask where exactly in Vihiga, whether I speak the language, or what food we eat.

And just like that, they would have a few pieces of information that help them place me on a cultural map,but would they really know my cultural identity?

Would knowing my county tell them what traditions I grew up with? Would knowing my ethnic community tell them which parts of that culture I still practice, which ones I have questioned, or which ones I may have quietly let go of?

And if I don't speak my ancestral language as fluently as my grandparents did, does that make me less connected to where I come from?If I live in a city, consume global media, dress in ways that would have been unfamiliar to previous generations, and have ideas about life that differ from those of the people who came before me, where exactly does my culture end and something else begin?

What is cultural identity, really?

I know where I come from. But what does that mean?

When I say I am from Vihiga, I am giving you a geographical answer but there is a difference between knowing where you come from and understanding what that place has given you.

For me, Vihiga is not simply a county on a map. It is connected to people, memories, family, language, food, stories and ways of seeing the world. Some of those things I carry consciously. Others probably shaped me before I was even old enough to understand that they were shaping me.

And that, perhaps, is one of the most interesting things about culture.

We often think of culture as the things we can name.

The traditional dance,the food,the language,

the ceremony,the clothing and the song.But culture can also be much quieter. It can exist in the way a family tells stories,in the way elders are addressed,in what children are expected to learn from their grandparents,In the things that are considered respectful or disrespectful,

In the way people gather when there is joy, grief or celebration and in the values we absorb so early that we don't even recognize them as cultural.

Sometimes culture is not something someone sits you down and teaches you.

Sometimes, you simply grow up inside it.

Can my name tell you who I am?

Take my surname, for example.

It is rather ambiguous.

People have tried to figure out my cultural background from it. Some have guessed Luo. Others have wondered whether I might be Nigerian. Sometimes the guesses are right, sometimes they're nowhere close.

And it always makes me wonder: how much can a name actually tell you about a person's cultural identity?

A surname can carry history.

It can point to ancestry, family, lineage, migration or even the complicated ways different cultures have interacted over generations.

But does it tell you how someone practices their culture?

Does my surname tell you what language I grew up speaking?

Does it tell you which traditions my family observes?

Does it tell you what food feels like home to me?

Does it tell you which cultural values I hold closely or which ones I have questioned?

Probably not.

And this becomes even more interesting when we think about people from mixed cultural backgrounds.

Someone can carry a name associated with one ethnic community while growing up immersed in the language and traditions of another.

Someone can have parents from different communities and feel equally connected to both or perhaps more connected to one than the other.

Someone might have a surname that points strongly in one cultural direction while almost everything about the way they were raised points somewhere else.

So which one is the “real” culture?

The name?

The bloodline?

The language?

The community that raised them?

The traditions they practice?

Or the culture they personally identify with?

Perhaps the problem is that we keep trying to make cultural identity fit neatly into categories that human lives were never designed to fit into.

A name can tell us where a story may have begun. It cannot necessarily tell us where that story has gone.

And yet, growing up inside a culture doesn't mean accepting all of it

This is where cultural identity becomes complicated.

Because if culture is part of who we are, what happens when there are parts of it that we don't agree with?

Can I question a tradition without rejecting my culture?

Can I decide that a particular practice no longer belongs in my life while still respecting the people who came before me?

Can I choose some parts of my heritage and leave others behind?

I think we sometimes place an unnecessary burden on culture by treating it as something that must be preserved exactly as it was handed to us.

But people change.

Circumstances change.

Communities change.

And culture changes with them.

That doesn't mean everything should be abandoned in the name of modernity.

There are things worth preserving precisely because they carry knowledge, history and memory that cannot easily be recreated once lost.

But preservation and permanence are not the same thing.

Something can be preserved while still being allowed to breathe.

I am not my ancestors. But I carry them.

There is a strange tension in belonging to a culture.

I am not the person my grandparents were.

I have lived through things they never experienced. I have access to information they never had. I have grown up in a world shaped by technology, globalization and influences from places they may never have visited.

My worldview cannot be identical to theirs.

And yet, there are pieces of them in me.

Perhaps that is what cultural inheritance really looks like.

Not becoming a replica of the people who came before you.

But carrying fragments of them into a world they could never have imagined.

Some fragments you keep exactly as they were given to you.

Some you modify.

Some you question.

Some you lose.

And some you find again years later and suddenly realize:

“This has been part of me all along.”

Maybe culture is not a museum

I sometimes wonder whether our fear of “losing culture” comes from imagining culture as a museum.

A place where everything must remain exactly where it was placed.

Where changing something makes it less authentic.

Where the old version is automatically considered the real version.

But culture has never really worked that way.

It has travelled.

It has mixed.

It has adapted.

It has survived because people carried it into new places and new circumstances.

Even the things we now describe as traditional were shaped by the people who lived before us responding to the world around them.

So perhaps the question should not always be:

“Are young people losing their culture?”

Maybe we should sometimes ask:

“What culture are they creating?”

Because the young person who speaks English, Kiswahili and Sheng, listens to Afrobeats and international music, wears modern clothes, eats traditional food at home and learns an old dance from TikTok is not necessarily culturally empty.

They may simply be expressing culture differently.

The form has changed.

The connection may still be there.

What parts of me are cultural?

This is the question I find myself returning to.

If someone looked at me and tried to identify everything about me that is “cultural,” where would they begin?

Would they look at my surname?

My county?

My ethnic community?

The language I speak?

The food I eat?

The traditions I practice?

Or would they look at the less obvious things the values I carry, the stories I know, the things my family taught me, the ways I relate to people, the memories attached to where I come from?

And what about the parts of me that were shaped by places outside my heritage?

Do those make me less culturally authentic?

I don't think so.

Because identity is rarely made from one ingredient.

It is layered.

I can be connected to Vihiga and still be shaped by Nairobi.

I can carry something from my grandparents while embracing something completely new.

I can love parts of my heritage and question others.

I can lose something and still feel its absence.

I can rediscover something I thought I had lost.

And perhaps all of those things can exist at the same time.

Maybe cultural identity is not about proving that you belong

Maybe this is what I am slowly beginning to understand about cultural identity.

It isn't necessarily about proving that you are “traditional enough.”

It isn't a test where you get more points for speaking your ancestral language perfectly, knowing every traditional dish, participating in every ceremony or living exactly as your ancestors did.

Those things can be meaningful. They can strengthen our connection to our heritage.

But identity is more complicated than a checklist.

Perhaps cultural identity is the relationship between where we come from and who we are becoming.

It is what we inherit.

What we remember.

What we practice.

What we question.

What we choose.

And what we create.

So when I say, “I am from Vihiga,” I am giving you an answer about geography.

But perhaps there is another answer underneath it.

An answer made up of memories, people, stories, values, things I carry and things I have let go of.

And maybe that is what culture really is.

Not simply the place we come from.

But the parts of that place that continue to live in us even as we change.

Perhaps cultural identity isn't a house we inherit and remain inside unchanged.

Perhaps it is a home we inherit the foundations of, renovate as we grow, and sometimes rebuild entirely while still carrying traces of the people who built it before us.

And maybe the question isn't:

“Am I still practicing my culture exactly as my ancestors did?”

Maybe it is:

“What have I inherited, what have I chosen to carry, and what am I creating for those who will come after me?”

Because cultural identity is not something we merely receive. It is something we interpret, reshape and pass forward. We are not only the descendants of a culture; we are its next chapter.

Article by

Michelle Okah.