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15. ‘Walking through places': Exploring the former lifeworld of Haiǁom in Etosha

Chapter of: Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast: Conservation Histories, Policies and Practices in North-west Namibia(pp. 403–426)

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Metadata
Title15. ‘Walking through places'
SubtitleExploring the former lifeworld of Haiǁom in Etosha
ContributorUte Dieckmann(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0402.15
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0402/chapters/10.11647/obp.0402.15
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightUte Dieckmann
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-08-02
Long abstractThis chapter engages with differing conceptions of the land that has become Namibia’s ‘flagship park’ and premier tourist attraction. By tourists, Etosha might be perceived either as an untamed wilderness or a large zoo; for scientists, it might represent an excellent research opportunity to test zoological hypotheses; and for farmers on the border farms, it might be a source of nuisance, its wildlife causing trouble and––at times––economic loss. For Haiǁom, Etosha represents part of their former lifeworld; an ecology of which they were an integral part. Their ancestors lived across the region alongside other Khoekhoegowab- and San-speaking peoples before the major immigrations of Bantu speakers during the last 500 years of the second millennium. In the first half of the 20th century, they were mainly living from hunting and gathering, with some families keeping a few goats or cattle, combined with occasional seasonal work and temporary employment. Drawing on a cultural mapping project, combined with oral history and archival research, this chapter explores the lifeworld of Haiǁom in Etosha and their relations to the land, to other humans and to beyond-human inhabitants, prior to their eviction in the 1950s. Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concept of “meshwork” is drawn on as a suitable concept for capturing Haiǁom’s being-in-Etosha as being-in-relations. The picture emerging from the research is that of a dense relational web of land, kinship, humans, animals, plants and spirit beings, an integrated ecology and an almost forgotten past which should, in line with this publication’s aim, be acknowledged by and integrated into future nature conservation policies and practices.
Page rangepp. 403–426
Print length24 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Ute Dieckmann

(author)
Anthropologist at University of Cologne
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9640-6942
https://www.xoms-omis.org/

Ute Dieckmann is an anthropologist at the University of Cologne and currently German Principal Investigator for Etosha-Kunene Histories (www.etosha-kunene-histories.net), supported by the German Research Foundation and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has carried out long-term research in Namibia on colonialism, nature conservation and indigeneity. For many years, she has worked at the Legal Assistance Centre in Windhoek, doing research with and advocacy for marginalised and indigenous communities in Namibia and was coordinator of the Xoms |Omis Project (https://www.xoms-omis.org/). She has edited Mapping the Unmappable? Cartographic Explorations with Indigenous Peoples in Africa (2021) and co-edited Scraping the Pot? San in Namibia Two Decades After Independence (2014).

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