Spotlight on Students: Marginalized Cultures

The following post is dedicated to the work of one of my Anth/Soc 205 students.  Students were tasked with exploring a marginalized culture outside of the United States in order to understand the racism and prejudice lodged against other cultures.  The following is one example of exemplary work.

 

Kung San tribal people.  (Image Source: Documentary Educational Resources)

The !Kung of Africa

By: April Ofria

This essay will look at the !Kung tribe of Africa. It will cover their past, present, and their discordant yet hopeful future. Discussions will focus on their movement across Africa, their culture and religion, and their survival as hunter-gatherers, to their diaspora and modernization. Typographical locations of the !Kung are spread throughout southern Africa, but this piece will be focusing on the !Kung of Namibia and Botswana, encompassing the Kalahari Desert. The !Kung San can be traced back to the beginning of what is considered modern man, to when it is believed man left East Africa to populate the world over 60,000 years ago (Ghose, 2013). Their antediluvian ‘click language’ is still spoken today and the terminology of kinship and social organization that they use in their dialect are similar to that of the Iroquois as well as many other European systems (Schwimmer 2003). Often referred to as Bushmen, the !Kung San are not one but several tribes. Each tribe has its own dialect, with each tribe calling themselves one name and calling other tribes by another. There are derogatory connotations with both ethnonyms most commonly used to refer to the people of the Kalahari Desert: San and Bushmen. San is a term referred to them by neighboring tribes, while Bushmen is a term used by Boers, the Dutch that came to the area to stay around 300 years ago (Wilmsen, 2005). The !Kung use San and Bushmen often when referring to themselves, albeit it is when they are being interviewed by outsiders. The !Kung of the Kalahari Desert call themselves Ju/’hoansi which means ‘people’ (Andersen, Carter 2015). !Kung also refers to the language they speak, which is the term that will be used in this paper moving forward.

Indigenous to East Africa, the !Kung have been driven south in aggregation with other tribes over the last few centuries. There are around 50,000 !Kung left in Africa, yet under 1000 continue to maintain the hunter-gatherer way of life, as reported by the organization Cultural Survival in 2002. Cultural Survival is a charity that attempt to educate and raise money to help support and protect indigenous people. The !Kung that are left in Africa are slowly being absorb into modern culture. Their hunter-gatherer customs are not only frowned upon by fellow tribes, but by the regional government as well, as reported on Integrated Regional Information Networks, covering sub-Saharan Africa. Due to the forced intermixing of tribes that has taken place due to Dutch accretion, cultures are being meshed, creating new elements and dialects. Xhosa and Zulu are two that have come from the forced enculturation between the Bantu and the !Kung, respectively (Carr 2012).

The !Kung are a people that have been traditionally looked upon as simple and naïve. Contemporary society witnessed them for the first time in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, when a tribesman came upon a soda bottle that had fallen from the sky. What people failed to realize or understand is the perfect symbiosis the !Kung have had with the Earth, a life so in balance that advancement for survival was not essential nor sought. Their geographic location and their hunter-gatherer culture kept the !Kung and the basic elements of who they are untouched by society for millennia. The need to rely on each other kept their society egalitarian, social, and giving, and their nomadic practices keeping birth rates down and families close-knit. This caused “The Ju/’hoansi [to] value[d] the sexes nearly equally” (Draper, 1992).

As diverse as the !Kung themselves, religion can vary between communities making it difficult to describe one belief system. They do not fear the unknown or things of a spiritual nature. Their fears are rational, founded in experiences, and are linked to venomous snakes and large predators (Heinz 1978). A mainstay seems to be cycles of the moon; what was once considered worship of the moon is now understood to be practical applications of the moon’s cycles as a calendar and time piece (Wilmsen 2005). Death is rationalized with the necessity to eat. Animals must die so they can eat, in turn “human death is rationalized as the caprice of the administrator [giver of life] and justified on the grounds that he eats the dead, whose spirits then remain with him” (Wilmsen 2005). They ultimately believe that men control their own destiny.

The 16th century was marked by European exploration, and the Dutch migration to Africa. As with the European colonization of America and what it did to the Native American, so it did to Africa and the !Kung. As the Dutch moved across Africa establishing pastoral crofts, Native Africans of various tribes were amassed together with less and less land between them, causing assimilation as well as death, effectively beginning the end for the !Kung’s way of life as they have been dispossessed and hunted for fun since (Jenkins 1997). With the mixing of Khoi and San hundreds of years ago, they now are combined as the Khoisan and herding begins. With the mix of Bantu, another African tribe, farming begins (Wilmsen 2005). A sedentary lifestyle starts to take hold in the !Kung’s culture.

The 1970s brought the Department of Nature and Wildlife Conservation, which identified !Kung lands as protected wildlife reserves. By the late 1980s, the !Kung were thought to be extinct and the hunter-gatherer traditions gone with them. The end of apartheid came for southern Africa in 1994, and with that an unforeseen turn of events. The !Kung that had blended in with to the rural landscape of Africa for safety now allowed themselves to be known. Once diamonds were discovered on the reserves, the !Kung were effectively relieved of 90 percent of their indigenous lands (South African History, web). Due to the displacement the !Kung have experienced, identification is difficult. They are recognized by three characteristics: first and foremost is self-identification, then the speaking of ‘click language,’ and a history of hunting and gathering (Cultural Survival). Less than 5 percent of the !Kung forage due to lack of land and resources (Wilmsen 1996). They have been forced into a dependent life in government communities with deliveries of government maize and oil to help supplement their diet (Draper, 1992).

The last 30 years have changed them dramatically. The older !Kung men and women reminisce about the past and how things used to be. The lack of respect the younger generation has for their way of life is brought up, as with many cultures. Stories of how things used to be are told to outsiders. The Bantu’s contribution to the !Kung culture is strong, what once was an egalitarian society is now patriarchal. Women do the ‘woman’s work’ and instances of alcohol abuse and domestic violence are becoming prominent (Draper, 1992). Farming takes up little time in the day and the energy that was once used for hunting and gathering sits idle. In her piece, !Kung Women Cope with Men, Draper interviews a !Kung man named Gau, who tells a story of a young man who beats his wife and describes the ‘old days,’ before Bantu influence, before !Kung and Bantu were forced to occupy the same land. A young man full of anger would not have been given a wife, and if he beat his wife, her “kinsmen would come from far away, and go at him with spears” (Draper 48). Another danger to the !Kung is AIDS. 19.5 percent of people Namibia and 36 percent of people in Botswana have HIV (Cultural Survival 2002). Without a formal written language or education, the Industrial Revolution in Africa is having a disastrous effect on the !Kung. They have in effect been ejected from their lands and many live in refugee camps. The Wildlife reserve has stated that the ‘Bushmen threaten the ecology,’ and has banned hunting as well, arresting any !Kung for poaching on their own lands (New World Encyclopedia 2013).

While Africa goes through its age of industrial development, as many indigenous people have had to do in order to survive, they are having to give up everything that has kept them the !Kung, a people thriving comfortably in the desert to a sedentary lifestyle that has changed everything from reproduction to family dynamics. The !Kung are now considered uneducated and poor when compared to today’s standards and are judged accordingly. With the spread of colonialism, they have gone from being “resourceful to being dependent” (IRIN 2004). In that same news report, the Botswana government who control that region states, "Culture is not static, all of us have a culture and a past. We must treasure these cultural values that help us live prosperously and discard those that retard progress." As shown with these statements, their own government is pushing them into a new era, encouraging the !Kung to leave behind their ancient ways and adopt a lifestyle that goes along with the administration’s plan to expand and revolutionize Africa into a new epoch of industry and production.

That is not where the story ends for the !Kung as they continue to fight for what is theirs. Their government claims ecological protection, while fracking and mining continue on their ancestral lands and hunting permits are issued for the wealthy. The dichotomy of Botswana’s government has not gone unnoticed by the UN and others have joined the battle to fight for the !Kung’s aboriginal homelands. In 2004, Iman Bowie quit the DeBeers campaign, citing the treatment of the ‘Aboriginal Bushman,’ and joining the campaign, “Bushmen aren’t Forever,” a paronomasia on the DeBeers diamond slogan, “Diamonds are Forever” (African Success 2007). In 2006 the High Court of Batswana ruled that “Bushmen removed from the reserve have the right to return and live there,” stating that the “Bushmen’s constitutional rights are being violated” (Survivor International 2014). In 2011, they succeeded in receiving water rights on the land, to access water and to bore new wells (Survivor International 2014). As recently as 2014 the UN has condemned Botswana’s government for continuing the persecution of its indigenous populous. Charities have taken hold for the Ju/'hoansi, and education is becoming a priority among the indigenous tribes, as well as other adoptions of modern culture such as infrastructure and hospitals (Ju/’hoansi Fund, web). The President of Botswana, Ian Khama, continues to defy government orders. In his state of the nation address, Khama reiterated the need to “ “facilitate [the Bushmen’s] transition from hunting to photographic tourism,” ” clearly defining his reasoning for the treatment of the !Kung and outlining his intentions for the land they live on (Survival International). The !Kung have made it clear they were meant for the land and will die trying to keep it (Cultural Survival).

This text has described the !Kung of Africa. From the beginning of Hsomo sapiens, the !Kung are traced from 60,000 years ago to today. What once where hunter-gatherers are now farmers and herders. The !Kung are losing the way they have lived for a millennia. The effects of diaspora, apartheid, modernization, and the end of apartheid contributing to the chaos in the region, we may lose the !Kung altogether. As they struggle to hold onto their culture and the outcome seems grim. Every day is a struggle for existence and the !Kung continue to fight. The Earth is losing its oldest friend as the !Kung disappear into the folds of history.

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