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New article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Ute Dieckmann

 Thinking with relations in nature conservation? A case study of the Etosha National Park and Haiǁom. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) (2023)

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Abstract: 
The area of the Etosha National Park in Namibia has been inhabited for many centuries by Haiǁom, a group of (now former) hunter-gatherers. In 1907, Etosha was proclaimed as a game reserve, although Haiǁom were still allowed to live in the area until they were expelled in the 1950s due to then-dominant ideas of fortress conservation. In recent years, Haiǁom have been provided with several resettlement farms by the Namibian government as a reaction to the colonial land dispossession. In this article, I explore the onto-epistemology of Haiǁom (i.e. their being in and knowing the Etosha area), focusing on their relations with the land and with human and beyond-the-human beings before their eviction. I argue that the eviction implies not only economic marginalization but also social deprivation, which is inadequately addressed with resettlement. I suggest that thinking with relations, illustrated with the Haiǁom case, would call for other solutions in the context of measures taken for past land dispossessions and would open new paths for Namibia’s nature conservation initiatives.

New article in the Journal of Political Ecology

Sian Sullivan

“Hunting Africa”: how international trophy hunting may constitute neocolonial green extractivism. Journal of Political Ecology 30 (2023),
in Themed Issue on ‘Political Ecology of Green Extractivism’ edited by Alexander Dunlap and Judith Verweijen

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Abstract: 
In the post-Cold War neoliberal moment of the mid-1990s, Safari Club International's (SCI) nascent but now defunct 'African Chapter' published a Strategic Plan for Africa. Its aim was to secure the "greatest hunting grounds in the world" for access by SCI's hunting membership, the core of which is based in the United States. In advocating private sector-led trophy hunting under the umbrella of the SCI "market place", the plan supported an archetypal mode of 'green extractivism': killing indigenous African mammals and exporting body parts as hunting trophies was justified as 'green' by claiming this elite and arguably 'neocolonial' extraction of animals is essential for wildlife conservation. Already in 1996 SCI deflected scrutiny of this form of 'green extractivism' through promoting a view that any critique of this putative 'green hunting' should itself be dismissed as 'neocolonial.' This discursive twist remains evident in a moment in which trophy hunting is receiving renewed attention as countries such as the UK attempt to write trophy import bans into legislation. I engage with these politicized claims and counter-claims to foreground the lack of neutrality permeating trophy hunting discourse. I work with recent political ecology engagements with 'post-truth politics' to unpack SCI-supported advocacy for using accusations of 'neocolonialism' to counter critique of the neocolonial dimensions of trophy-hunting; showing how elite and greened extractivism through recreational access to land and African fauna is thereby consolidated. I draw on case material from Namibia – a country exhibiting stark inequalities of land and income distribution alongside a thriving trophy hunting industry – to explore how extracted 'green value' from 'conservation hunting' may shore up, rather than refract, neocolonial inequalities.

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Keywords: Trophy hunting, extractivism / 'green extractivism', CBNRM, Namibia, Safari Club International, disinformation, post-truth politics, neocolonialism, political ecology, inequality

Media: 
Harvey, R. 2023 The camouflage of hunting for sport. 15 June, Business Live. 

Harvey, R. 2023 Trophy hunting propaganda is one more form of greenwashing. 10 July, The Revelator

Sullivan, S. 2023 House of Lords must beware the misleading campaign to thwart the trophy hunting import ban. 7 July, The Canary.

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Invited article for Gobabeb@60 Special Issue

Sian Sullivan and Welhemina Suro Ganuses

 !Nara harvesters of the northern Namib: a cultural history through three photographed encounters. Journal of the Namibian Scientific Society 69 (2022): 115-139, Special Issue “Gobabeb@60”, edited by Scott Turner. ISSN 1018-7677

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Abstracts: 

English
We report on Indigenous cultural heritage and histories associated with the northern Namib desert, designated since 1971 as the Skeleton Coast National Park. Review of historical documents and oral histories from elderly people with direct and familial memories of accessing and living in the northern Namib show how places and resources were used here by Khoekhoegowab-speaking peoples in the past. A focus of this use was the availability of valued foods, especially melons of the !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus). Three photographed encounters provide focus for a narrative connecting memories about the northern Namib that stretch back to the first European colonial journeys into this remote area of north-west Namibia. In ‘repeopling’ the northern Namib, we aim to also ‘rehumanise’ documented colonial encounters that objectified and diminished the peoples who knew, accessed and dwelled in this now protected area.

Khoekhoegowab
Nēba ta ge ǃhūǁî khoen di ǃhaoǃnabe ǁnaedigu tsî ǀuǀarus ǀawasǀkhab Namib ǀGowas dib hîna ge 1971 ǁî gurib ǃnâ ǃûihesa ǃkhaib ase ǂanheb xara ǃnuri. ǀUǀarusi xoa-ain tsî kai khoen hîna ǀaokhoesi ǃgaeǁarede Namib ǃnâ ge ǁgan hâ-î khoen ǀkha ge uhâ in di ǁgaeǂhoân ge ra ǁgau Khoekhoegowaba ra ǃhoa khoen ge ǀawas Namib disa ǃharu ge ǁaeb ǃnâ ge re sîsen u ǃkhaisa. Nē sîsen-us ge lo-aisase ǃgarob ǂûn, ǃgosasa ǃnaran (Acanthosicyos horridus) di hâs tsî hohes ai ge ǃgaoǃgaosa i. ǃNona ǃhoǁnahege a ai-isigu ge ra ǁapoǁapo tsî ra ǀhaoǀhao ǁnâ ǂâihodi tamas gara io mûnanaidi ǀawas Namib disa ǃoa hâde hîna ǂguro ǃurikhoen Europapa xu hân gere nē kaise a ǃnū ǀawas-hurib ǀkhab Namibiab dis ǃna ǃnarima ǁaeba ǃoa. Sida di ditsâs khoena ǀawas Namib dis ǀkha ǃgaeǁares ǃnâ da ge ra siǃnâ ǂgao, nē lkharib xa a xoasa ǀuǀarus ǃurikhoenxas hîna ǁnāba ge hâ tsî ǁnabara hohe huisen-uxuna gere sîsen u khoena xoaǁauǁau tsî ǂkhariǃgôasa di unusa.

[Thank you to Kenneth |Uiseb, Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, for assistance with the Khoekhoegowab translation of the abstract] 
 

New article in Conserveries Mémorielles: Revue Transdisciplinaire

Sian Sullivan

 Maps and memory, rights and relationships: articulations of global modernity and local dwelling in delineating land for a communal-area conservancy in north-west Namibia. Conserveries Mémorielles: Revue Transdisciplinaire 25, Special Issue ‘Disrupted Histories, Recovered Pasts | Histoires Perturbées, Passés Retrouvés’, edited by Sullivan, S., Baussant, M., Dodd, L., Otele, O. and Dos Santos, I. 

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Abstract:

Mapping new administrative domains for integrating conservation and development, and defining rights in terms of both new policy and the citizenry governed thereby, have been central to postcolonial neoliberal environmental governance programmes known as Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). Examples now abound of the complex, ambiguous and sometimes contested outcomes of CBNRM initiatives and processes. In this paper I draw on archival, oral history and ethnographic material for north-west Namibia, particularly in relation to indigenous Khoekhoegowab-speaking Damara / Nūkhoe and ǁUbu peoples, to explore two issues. First, I highlight the significance of historical colonial and apartheid contexts generating mapped reorganisations of land and human populations for memories of access and use that exceed these reorganisations. Second, I foreground a nexus of conceptual, constitutive and affective relationships with lands now bounded as CBNRM administrative units or ‘conservancies’ that have tended to be disrupted through both past events and as economising neoliberal governance approaches have taken hold in this context. Acknowledging disjunctions in conceptions and experiences of people-land relationships may assist with understanding who and what is amplified or diminished in contemporary globalising trajectories in neoliberal environmental governance. In particular, oral histories recording individual experiences in-depth, especially those of elderly people prompted by return to remembered places of past dwelling, can historicise and deepen recognition of complex cultural landscapes that today carry high conservation value.

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Keywords: maps, memory, affect, identity, rights, land, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), neoliberalism, neoliberal environmental governance, on-site oral history, cultural landscapes, colonial and postcolonial Namibia, Khoekhoegowab, Damara / Nūkhoen, ǁUbun
 

Also in French: Cartes et mémoire, droits et relations: Articulations de la modernité globale et des dynamiques locales dans la délimitation territoriale des aires de conservation communales au Nord-Ouest de la Namibie (trans. B. Bacle). 
 

Etosha-Kunene Histories Special Report

Elsemi Olwage, with Sian Sullivan, Ute Dieckmann and Selma Lendelvo

Etosha-Kunene Histories: a weave of prior work

Entangled and contested pasts, lands and ‘natures’ in post-colonial Namibia 

Etosha Kunene Histories Special Report June 2022, ISBN: 978-1-911126-21-8

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Executive Summary

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Abstract: This report presents a weave of prior work produced by the principal investigators of the Etosha-Kunene Histories project, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and the German Research Foundation. It brings together key points of convergence and thematic overlaps between their work and creates a generative and interdisciplinary dialogue on Etosha-Kunene’s complex and entangled pasts, lands and ‘natures’. Broadly speaking, this report explores the contributions of the three authors to understanding Etosha-Kunene’s overlapping colonial and social histories of settlement, land, conservation and indigeneity. In doing so it considers changing livelihoods and land-relations, and the diversity of resource use, management and knowledge practices which co-constitute the past and present of Etosha-Kunene’s ‘cultures’ and ‘natures’. The report thus reads across their work to provide insight into the historical processes, changing policy and legal mechanisms, and colonial and global discourses which have shaped Etosha-Kunene’s emerging socio-materialities, and contributed to hegemonic ways of imagining, valuing, and knowing ‘nature’. A focus here is on ‘African landscapes’ and dryland ecologies, and the ongoing and dialectical construction of cultural identities, ethnicity, and indigeneity. Their work argues for learning from locally-rooted and culturally-inflected land-relations, diverse tenure institutions, and indigenous and gendered knowledge systems and values: both for conservation praxis and for informing environmental and land management debates. Lastly, the report explores their contribution to decolonising environmental knowledge and heritage management practices through an ongoing engagement with and mapping of what is termed ‘relational ontologies’ and occluded social and cultural landscape histories.

Policy Report

Sian Sullivan

Cultural heritage and histories of the Northern Namib:

historical and oral history observations for the Draft Management Plan, Skeleton Coast National Park 2021/2022-2030/2031

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Future Pasts Working Paper Series 12, October 2021. ISBN: 978-1-911126-17-1

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Abstract: This report shares documented information for indigenous cultural heritage and histories associated with the Northern Namib, designated since 1971 as the Skeleton Coast National Park. The paper draws on two principal sources of information: 1) historical documents stretching back to the late 1800s; and 2) oral history research with now elderly people who have direct and familial memories of using and living in areas now within the Park boundary. The research shared herein affirms that localities and resources now included within the Park were used by local people in historical times, their access linked with the availability of valued foods, especially !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus) melons and marine foods such as mussels. Memories about these localities, resources and heritage concerns such as graves of family members remain alive for some individuals and their families today. These concerns retain cultural resonance in the contemporary moment, despite significant access constraints over the last several decades. Some suggestions are made for foregrounding an understanding of the Northern Namib as a remembered cultural landscape as well as an area of high conservation value, and for protecting and perhaps restoring some access to sites that may be considered of significant cultural heritage value. Such sites include graves of known ancestors and named and remembered former dwelling places. The material shared here may contribute to a diversified recognition of values for the Skeleton Coast National Park for the new Management Plan that will shape ecological and heritage conservation practice and visitor experiences over the next 10 years.

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Key words: Northern Namib; on-site oral history; cultural landscapes; Khoekhoegowab; !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus); Skeleton Coast National Park; Namibia