Tracking Indigenous Heritage

In Living Museums and Cultural Villages, the Ju/’hoansi San of north-eastern Namibia handle their Intangible Cultural Heritage as a basis for self-determination and as a strategy to achieve their claims for indigenous rights. On a regular basis, they perform their ‘traditional’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle for tourists as a means of generating income, while their children playfully practice and re-enact it themselves. After centuries of discrimination and marginalisation, the Ju/’hoansi are moving towards a new position inside the nation state.

Salomé Ritterband, MA, studied Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and is currently working at the Weltmuseum Wien.