Gurma (also called Gourma or Gourmantché) is an ethnic group living mainly in northeastern Ghana, Burkina Faso, around Fada N'Gourma, and also in northern areas of Togo and Benin, as well as southwestern Niger.

The book presents Gourmantché perception of 'human being' from the perspective of the people themselves, using their own language texts to illustrate concepts.

Concepts of God (Otienu), destiny (licabili), the body (gbannandi), life (limiali), death (mikuuma), and all known terms for human body parts are also discussed.

In 2006, in Burkina Faso, Salif Titamba Lankoande published a book on the History and Ethnography of the Gourmantché (“Les Gourmantche”, Presses Africaines du Burkina, Ouagadougou, 2006, 211 p.).

Also, in 2010 and 2011, the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Madrid, Spain), from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spain) presented a public exhibition mainly based on the research works of this Anthropologist and Ethnobiologist, showing his main data, analysis and concepts, a selection of his photographic archive and his collection of ethnographic and ethnobiological objects collected in several research fields; One part of this exhibition was about the Gourmantché culture and the coexistence among humans, lions and biodiversity in the W of Niger; The title of this exhibition was "Vivir en biodiversidad total con leones, tigres o lobos".