Presentation short abstract

This paper highlights the basket weaving and wild food harvesting practices of Mayeyi women which sustain ancestral knowledge and cultivate food sovereignty and ecological justice within contested conservation landscapes of north-eastern Namibia.

Presentation long abstract

This paper explores the wild foodways of the Mayeyi, a riverine people of northern Botswana and Namibia that historically resided across the Okavango-Kwando wetlands. Building on earlier work tracing the slow, intergenerational unmaking of Mayeyi multispecies relations through colonialism and contemporary conservation agendas, this research turns to the creative, embodied practices through which Mayeyi women continue to remember and sustain their wild foodways. Focusing on basket weaving as a modality of memory and resilience, the study documents the food baskets of the Mayeyi and their intimate entanglement with wild food species. Through participatory harvesting, dyeing, weaving and storytelling, baskets emerge not only as commodified tourist artefacts but as living repositories of ecological knowledge, ancestral memory, and everyday joy. These practices highlight the ways in which the Mayeyi cultivate food sovereignty within regulated conservation landscapes where access to wild species is restricted or criminalised. Attending to moments of collective harvesting and preparation, the paper shows how wild foods and basket making generate spaces of relationality that exceed economic valuations and open up futures rooted in restorative ecological justice.