Our film
is now out!
Created from oral history and heritage mapping research through the Future Pasts and Etosha-Kunene Histories projects, it's been quite a journey itself to complete this film. Our research process was disrupted by COVID-19, but since 2022 we've been able to work on the translations and content shared with us by three elders whose stories and histories form the focus of the film.
They are:
Our journeys focused on the three areas of north-west Namibia shown in this map. Franz, Ruben and Julia dwelled in and moved through these areas when they were younger, before being constrained to live in the Hoanib Valley settlements of Sesfontein and Kowareb.
As we were making the film we also shared it through several screenings with the Sesfontein community, including the Nami-Daman Traditional Authority and the Hoanib Cultural Group. These screenings helped make sure the detail in the film is accurate and appropriately conveyed.
The short film below of one of these screenings provides some insight into this process. It also includes feedback from Franz, Ruben and Julia about what the film means to them.
Three Journeys
Franz |Haen ǁHoëb remembers living in areas that are now part of the Skeleton Coast National Park. With his parents and grand-parents they harvested !nara melons (from the near-endemic cucurbit plant Acanthosicyos horridus) in the Hoanib and !Uniab rivers. Franz's journey can be viewed here:
Travelling into the far west of the Palmwag Tourism Concession and the Skeleton Coast National Park with Franz and others, enabled us to document some of the prior mobilities of people through these challenging desert landscapes. These mobilities enabled people to access different food across this large area.
For example, this image shows routes people took between !nara melons at the !Uniab river mouth and the area of Auses in the Hoanib river, via inland springs such as Kai-as and Hûnkab.
Key plant foods and their localities in the western part of the Hoanib river valley are shown in the image below, including !nara melons in the west, and the fruits of xoris (Salvadora persica) and grass seeds called ǂares (Setaria verticillata) closer to Sesfontein. These foods could be gathered in large quantities and stored, meaning that they formed staple foods for people living in these areas.
Unfortunately people were discouraged from travelling westwards from Sesfontein from the 1950s onwards, when mines began to be opened along the Skeleton Coast, making this a restricted area. This meant that people could no longer access important foods in this western area, although some individuals continued to travel there to harvest !nara and other foods.
Ruben !Nagu (Sauneib) Sanib previously lived in a land area he knew as ǂKhari (small) Hurubes, now forming the northern mountainous part of the Palmwag Tourism Concession. His ancestors once moved through this area from a mountain they knew as ǁKhao-as, positioned at the confluence of the !Uniab and Aub (ǂGaob) rivers, in the southern part of the concession.
In the screenshot for Ruben's journey film shared below, he stands in front of ǁKhao-as mountain. It is from this mountain that ǁKhao-a Dama now based in Sesfontein derive their lineage identity, even though they can no longer access the area of ǁKhao-as mountain.
The map below shows some of the dwelling places people once lived in and moved through with their livestock and to gather important foods in this area, part of which is now the Palmwag Tourism Concession. These localities, their names and histories have been reconstructed through 'on-site oral history' with elderly people who remember these former dwelling places.
One of the places Ruben took us to was the grave of his grand-father Aukhoeb Ganuseb, who was buried near a settlement called Soaub, visible at the bottom of the map above. People were cleared from this settlement in the mid-1950s, when it became the commercial farm known as Rooiplatz, inhabited by settler farmers. Today this farm is where Desert Rhino Camp is located, a high-end lodge run by Wilderness Safaris and focusing on exclusive black rhino (Diceros bicornis bicornis) tourism.
Indeed, multiple graves of known and remembered ancestors are located throughout this area, some of which are shown by the purple markers on this map:
Julia !Nâuna Tauros grew-up in the Puros area on the Hoaruseb River where her family had lived for several generations. These histories led to this Damara lineage now living in Sesfontein becoming known as 'Puros Dama'.
Puros Dama were additionally connected with Damara/ǂNūkhoen known as !Narenin, who lived in and moved through the dryland landscape north-west of Sesfontein, harvesting !nara at springs such as Ganias and Sarusa, and in the Hoaruseb river. The map below indicates some of the broad landscapes associated with different Khoekhoegowab-speaking peoples in north-west Namibia whose histories are often marginalised in present circumstances.
Although Julia had not been back to Puros since the 1960s her recall of names for the mountains and other places in the area was astonishing. She was especially happy to see again the daweb (Tamarix usneoides) trees in the Hoaruseb river. We were also able to visit graves of her maternal ancestors, which she and her mother had been telling me about since the 1990s.
For a short (4 minute) trailer for Lands That History Forgot see here:
Collaboration
A project such as this relies on multiple collaborators. We could not have made Lands That History Forgot without the work of two key collaborators from Sesfontein.
Welhemina Suro Ganuses worked on the oral history interview transcriptions in Khoekhoegowab, and translations from Khoekhoegowab to English. We worked on interpretations of this material together, as well as iteratively with Franz, Ruben and Julia. All of the journeys were guided by Filemon |Nuab, a ‘Rhino Ranger’ based in Sesfontein whose knowledge of the north- west Namibian landscape is renowned.
Our field research also benefitted from oversight by the Nami-Daman Traditional Authority and the Sesfontein Conservancy, for which we are grateful.
Last but definitely not least, our wonderful film-maker Oliver Halsey was essential for the whole process. Oliver is pictured here with Julia and Filemon. We have several more films on the way, so watch this space! For more information about Oliver's work, see his website here.
Feedback
We've already received some powerful feedback about Lands That History Forgot.
Thanks once again for the film. It is so nice to get that history back. It is nice to know the history of this whole area. I really like it. And meaningful that Ruben, Franz and Julia can remember everything from those old days. It is so encouraging to the new generation to know how they were raised in those days, surviving from field food. In those years there were no cars, no hospital – people were just walking around the whole area. Really good that history can repeat itself if we know what was going on before the current generation. We need those type of films for our new generation. It is so good to know where people were living in the old days. And the passion they had for wildlife and conservation. It's great!
Kapoi Kasaona, manager Etendeka Mountain Camp, 10.2.2024.
My reactions were very emotional as Franz, Ruben and Julia took us to ancestral graves, describing past journeys to find and revisit places of water, special plants, seeds stored by ants and honey. It fills you with wonder how the memories of the elders are so vivid; how they still know that vast landscape so well. The emotions they feel as they revisit the graves of grandparents; how these places and family members remain so part of who they are, of who gave them the knowledge and skills to have full lives - it's all very moving! Julia's journey back to Puros was especially touching: grim in recounting the deprivation of forced displacement, joyous in returning and being greeted so happily by the community; uplifting as she remembered exactly where the family gravesite was and was able to revisit it. Julia's precise memory of the nearby mountains, of ancestral and special places for honey harvest and her happy dance at the film's end was just perfect!I
Congratulations for producing such a powerful piece and it will most certainly become much valued by the people of the region and Namibia. Doubtless it will be embraced by the communities in the region and make important national contributions to through the museum, the university, school curricula and beyond. It could also form the core of an international, broad-reach public documentary project.
Art Hoole, conservation researcher & Ehi-Rovipuka Conservancy specialist, 11.4.2024
Congratulations!!! I viewed the clip and, again, thought: so crucial, and convincing, and most beautiful.Thank you so much for doing all this, if I may say so. Centering your partners and their memorialisations and texts in this way is impressive!
Dag Henrichsen, archivist, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 15.12.2023
Would you like to share your views about the film?
To do so, please email futurepastscontact@gmail.com or etoshakunenehistories@gmail.com
We welcome your feedback!
Further information
The research on which Lands That History Forgot is based has been drawn on in the following recent articles, book chapters and films (listed in reverse chronological order):
Sullivan, S. and Ganuses, W.S. in press 2024. Cultural heritage and histories of the Northern Namib / Skeleton Coast National Park, Ch.12
Sullivan, S. in press 2024. Historicising the Palmwag Tourism Concession, north-west Namibia, Ch.13
Sullivan, S., Dieckmann, U. and Lendelvo, S. in press 2024 Etosha-Kunene, from ‘precolonial’ to German colonial times, Ch.1
in Sullivan, S., Dieckmann, U. and Lendelvo, S. (eds.) Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast: Conservation Histories, Policies and Practices in North-west Namibia. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
Sullivan, S. and Ganuses, W.S. 2022. !Nara harvesters of the northern Namib: A cultural history through three photographed encounters. Journal of the Namibian Scientific Society 69: 115-139, Special Issue “Gobabeb@60”, edited by Scott Turner.
Sullivan, S. 2022. 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 | 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). 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.
Sullivan, S. and Ganuses, W.S. 2021. Densities of meaning in west Namibian landscapes: Genealogies, ancestral agencies, and healing, pp. 139-190 in Dieckmann, U. (ed.) Mapping the Unmappable? Cartographic Explorations with Indigenous Peoples in Africa. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Future Pasts 2020. The Music Returns to Kai-as (film: 53mins and 30mins), plus blog: Sullivan, S. 2021 The Music Returns to Kai-as: A Film by Future Pasts. Future Pasts Blog 28 March 2021.
Sullivan, S. and Ganuses, W.S. 2020. Understanding Damara / ǂNūkhoen and ǁUbun indigeneity and marginalisation in Namibia, pp. 283-324 in Odendaal, W. and Werner, W. (eds.) ‘Neither Here Nor There’: Indigeneity, Marginalisation and Land Rights in Post-independence Namibia. Windhoek: Land, Environment and Development Project, Legal Assistance Centre.
Our title "Lands That History Forgot" evokes a book influential in our research about peoples' past mobilities and lifeworlds in west Namibia: namely, archaeologist John Kinahan's "Pastoral Nomads of The Central Namib Desert: The People History Forgot".
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