Ju/’hoansi
Preserving Traditional Culture in Namibia
The Nanofasa Conservation Trust in Namibia has gotten a significant amount of funding to help it set up a “Barefoot Academy” for the Ju/’hoansi. The organization’s 2014 Annual Report, dated March 3, 2015 and available on its website, stated as one of its goals for the coming year that it wanted to “set up [a] […]
Ju/’hoansi Confront Climate Change
The Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia is helping the Ju/’hoansi, formerly a hunting and gathering society, to cope effectively with the realities of global climate change. A news story a year ago described how the NNDFN emerged from its troubled beginnings to take up the climate change issue and how it has become an […]
Schools for San Kids
Bobo Tsamkxao #Oma, Chief of the Ju/’hoansi Traditional Authority, blamed teachers and school authorities for the failures of many Ju/’hoansi kids in their schools. He decried the fact that they did little to motivate the children to do their schoolwork. The chief spoke at a public meeting along with Anna Hipondoka, the Deputy Minister of […]
The President Visits the Ju/’hoansi
The President of Namibia, Hage Geingob, paid a one-day familiarization visit to Tsumkwe on May 22 and the Ju/’hoansi people attending a general public forum complained volubly. According to a news report last week in the New Era, a prominent Namibian daily newspaper owned by the government, the President listened to 45-year old Ngombe Ngombe […]
Ju/hoan Man Appointed to Government Position
Royal /Ui/o/oo, the only Ju/hoan person to be elected to the Parliament of Namibia, has been appointed to a position as deputy minister in the office of the Vice President. However, his detractors are unhappy with the appointment. According to an article last week in The New Era, a major newspaper in Namibia, critics claim […]
Campfire Stories of the Ju/’hoansi [journal article review]
Halloween is almost a month past but memories of ghost stories told around the open fire—along with the s’mores—will live in children’s memories for a lifetime. Polly Wiessner, an anthropologist who has studied the Ju/’hoansi since the early 1970s, decided to focus a research project on that subject: the importance of campfire stories for the […]
The Ju/’hoansi Address Global Climate Change
The Ju/’hoansi don’t worry about arguments from climate change deniers: they absorb the news, live with fickle rainfalls, and try to preserve their way of life. In fact, their society has adapted to uncertain water sources for millennia. They do not need to be convinced that adjusting to changing climate conditions is essential if they […]
The Peaceful Ju/’hoansi Mistreat their Dogs
James Suzman published an essay last week that raises a troubling question: why would a supposedly peaceful society such as the Ju/’hoansi treat animals cruelly? Suzman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times describes in some detail his observations about the San people, and particularly their uncaring and frequently hostile treatment of their dogs. The […]
New Dictionary for Ju/’hoansi Children
The University of KwaZulu-Natal Press has announced the publication of the Ju/’hoan Children’s Picture Dictionary, for 250 South African rands (U.S. $22.53), by Tsemkgao Fanie Cwi and Kerry Jones. The book will probably make important contributions to Ju/’hoansi educational programs. According to the announcement of the book on the website of the press, the wire […]
Ju/’hoansi Community Forest Threatened
The government of Namibia established the Nyae Nyae Community Forest for the Ju/’hoansi earlier this year and the land is already threatened by illegal grazing. According to a report last week in the daily newspaper The Namibian, Xoallan /Ai!Ae, the chair of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, went to the national capital, Windhoek, to plead with […]
