Yazidi men with traditional Yazidi braids, Northern Iraq, c. 1930's, 1950's, and 2017. #NativeThreads // www.nativethreads.co ⠀
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Yazidis are an ethnoreligious and endogamous (self-segregating) people indigenous Northern Iraq. They practice the Yazidi religion which is monotheistic and can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamian religions. ⠀
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The Yazidis faced persecution from the Arabization policies of the Saddam Ba'ath regime where many of their villages were bombed from 1970 to 2003. After the fall of Saddam, they faced a genocide by ISIS where thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery and thousands of Yazidi men killed. Over 200 thousand were displaced from their homes.