The Sihanaka are a Malagasy ethnic group concentrated around Lake Alaotra and the town of Ambatondrazaka in central northeastern Madagascar.

Today the Sihanaka practice intensive agriculture and rice yields are higher in this region than elsewhere, placing strain on the many unique plant and animal species that depend on the Lake Alaotra ecosystem for survival.

Traditional social practices include complex funeral and divorce rites and a strong and continuing prohibition on working in paddy fields on Tuesdays.

The Sihanaka are concentrated around the historically swampy land surrounding Lake Alaotra and the town of Ambatondrazaka in central northeastern Madagascar.

[1] More specifically, the word for swamp is a compound composed of sia (to wander or lose one's way) and hanaka (spilling or scattering), and some ethnologists have proposed that the name evokes the earliest period in Sihanaka identity when the group's ancestors were migrating in search of the better home they eventually found at Alaotra.

Another view posits that the presence of ancient earthen defensive trenches suggests the ancestors of the Merina may have passed by Lake Alaotra on their migration from the southeastern coast to the central highlands, leaving behind settlers whose descendants formed the first Sihanaka communities.

[5] To protect themselves and their wealth, Sihanaka villages were often fortified by earthen walls (tamboho) of the type also prevalent in the neighboring Kingdom of Imerina.

This incursion was foiled through a combination of firepower - the Sihanaka having obtained numerous firearms through trade with the Sakalava to the west - and the prevalence of malaria and other tropical diseases that decimated the French soldiers.

[9] Following French colonization of the island in 1897, the colonial administration imposed a heavy burden of corvée (statute labor) on the Sihanaka in the 1910s, requisitioning them for minimal to no pay to build the railroad linking the coastal port of Toamasina to the capital city.

[10] Today, the Sihanaka heavily cultivate the land around Laka Alaotra and have increasingly drained the swamps to make way for farming using heavy machinery.

[14] To reinforce this forbidden physical intimacy, Sihanaka have historically used a formal term of address when speaking to these particular family members.

[7] The traditional beliefs of the Sihanaka, as elsewhere in Madagascar, revolve around respect for a creator god (Zanahary), the ancestors, and fady (ancestral interdictions).

[17] The Sihanaka share the belief common throughout the island that the spirits of ancestors can possess the living, placing them in a trance state called a tromba.

[18] Communities look to ombiasy (wise men) for spiritual guidance, to commune with the ancestors, and to determine which days are auspicious for undertaking particular tasks or endeavors.

[4] By the 1600s, a uniform religious belief system had grown around a group of sampy (idols) believed to channel the protective spiritual power of 11 deities.

Following the French capture of the Merina capital in 1895, Christianity was largely abandoned in Sihanaka and traditional religious beliefs regained preeminence; at least one major historic church in the area was burned.

The rice based diet was supplemented by a wide range of game and other meats, including lemurs, wild boars, snakes, owls, rats, cats and crocodile, the latter having at one time been protected by a fady that was eventually abandoned.

[32] Before the body was removed, the widow of the deceased would dress in a fine red lamba and put on all her jewelry, then watch the procession from her seat at the main entryway to her house.

[34] After the feast, a community leader would dip his finger in melted fat and touch those who had assisted in the funeral, to protect them against illness and from being followed by malevolent spirits.

Lemon or lime leaves and two other herbs were soaked in a bowl of water, and a family member whose parents were still living would be chosen to sprinkle it on the deceased's possessions, enabling them to be redistributed and reused.

After this period she could abandon the mourning ritual and was considered "divorced" (i.e. free to remarry and visit her own parents and family members, previously forbidden); however, if the parents of her deceased husband were still living, only they could declare her divorced, and she was indefinitely required to remain unmarried and forbidden from visiting family if this status was not granted by them.

[39] Wealth is unequally distributed, with the wealthy owning the majority of the fertile land, which is either rented to the poor or worked by them for low wages.