The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has announced that the John Marshall archive of Ju/’hoansi film and video has been added to the Memory of the World Register. His recent decision, following a nomination by a panel of experts, adds 35 documents, collections and archives to the UNESCO listing, which… Continue reading…
Although the government of Namibia has removed the Herero cattle that invaded the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in May, the Ju/’hoansi still have difficulties with the outsiders who remain on their property. Juhoan requests for assistance have still not been met. Dr. Megan Biesele, Director of the Kalahari Peoples Fund and… Continue reading…
Actions, reactions, and heated commentaries from many points of view have filled the African press in recent weeks about the invasion of the Ju/’hoansi-owned Nyae Nyae Conservancy. The difficulties began in early May when a group of Herero herders from Gam, a farming community located south of the Nyae Nyae… Continue reading…
Last week’s Science Times carried an article explaining why the Ju/’hoansi are so enthusiastic about giving gifts. It’s a question of survival. A New York Times reporter interviewed Pauline (Polly) Wiessner, an anthropology professor at the University of Utah, whose published scholarship has included works on gift giving in the… Continue reading…
Herero herders continue to move their cattle illegally onto the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, the Ju/’hoansi reserve in northeast Namibia, but the government appears to be responding fairly to the situation. Unlike Botswana, which continues to persecute the G/wi that want to live on their traditional lands in the Central Kalahari… Continue reading…
A group of Herero families and their livestock have invaded the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, a major refuge for the Ju/’hoansi people that the government of Namibia created to protect them. Five Herero-speaking families from Gam, outside the reserve, cut the veterinary fence that surrounds it and moved onto the Ju/’hoansi… Continue reading…
The Ju/’hoansi people of Tsumkwe and neighboring villages in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia are the subjects of a photo set that has been loaded into flickr over the past week. The photographer, Izla Kaya, includes numerous charming portraits of people of all ages. Many of the people shots are… Continue reading…
Over the past 40 years, anthropologists who study hunter-gatherers, especially the Ju/’hoansi, have vigorously debated various theories about the nature of those societies. In a recent issue of the journal Anthropos, Mathias Guenther, a scholar who has done research on the San people of western Botswana, reviews the history and… Continue reading…
San storytellers seem to have inexhaustible sources for their stories and to have endless variations of their tales. But oral persuasion is also an essential part of their culture. Mathias Guenther, in a recent journal article, bases his examination of San rhetoric primarily on the Naro people, but he includes… Continue reading…
Confident attitudes of Ju/’hoansi women may help protect them against HIV/AIDS, but several trends in rural Namibia and Botswana threaten their future safety. Ida Susser, who has taken numerous research trip with Richard B. Lee to the two countries since 1996 to investigate the ways the disease affects the Ju/’hoansi,… Continue reading…
