Paper short abstract:

This paper will take Haiǁom’s former being-in-relations in the Etosha National Park in Namibia as a case study to explore what could be gained by taking relational onto-epistemologies as a role model in conservation and beyond.

Paper long abstract:

The south-eastern area of today’s Etosha National Park in Namibia has been inhabited since time immemorial by Haiǁom, a group of (former) hunter-gatherers. Etosha was proclaimed as a game reserve in 1907. Haiǁom were still allowed to live in the area until they were expelled in the 1950s due to then-dominant ideas of fortress conservation and the need for labour outside the protected area. In recent years, Haiǁom have been provided with several resettlement farms by the Namibian government, which might be understood as compensation for the land dispossession they experienced due to colonial nature conservation efforts.

In this paper, I will explore the various relationships of Haiǁom in Etosha before their eviction. Haiǁom (both collectively and individually) maintained manifold relationships with the land, specific areas and places, with human and beyond-the-human beings - e.g. animals and spiritual beings - in Etosha. I will then assess the impacts of land dispossession on Haiǁom, reading it less as resource dispossession but rather as a relationship deprivation that cannot be simply be compensated with resettlement decades after relocation.

Finally, I will take Haiǁom’s being-in-relations as the point of departure to discuss what could be gained by taking indigenous onto-epistemologies seriously, promoting thereby some sort of ‘relational turn’ (in the sense of a turn to relations) in conservation and beyond.