Paper short abstract:

The Hadza of Tanzania as a hunting and gathering society engages with their physical surroundings on a daily basis. The human-nonhuman conviviality constitutes an ecology of inter-species relationships, connectedness, and kinship. The paper explores ethnographically the bioregional conviviality.

Paper long abstract:

The hunting and gathering Hadza of Tanzania are indigenous to the area they live in. Encircling the area, except to the south, there are National Parks with nature conservation and wildlife protection initiatives and legislation in place. The parks have been implemented in order to protect biodiversity, conserve forests, and lessen the destructive force of humans on the ecology of life. Only four percent of Earth’s population is considered indigenous, yet they steward 82% of the planet’s biodiversity and more than 60% of the world’s remaining forests. The conservation outcomes on indigenous lands fully compete with or even surpass the formalized conservation efforts.

What seems to lie behind this success is entangled conviviality. The human and nonhuman kinship ecologies produce more-than-human bioregional communities. In other words, this relates to the realm of worldview, connectedness, and relationships. In this paper, we dive into the case of the Hadza to learn of conviviality in a bioregional community that is characterized by intimate knowledge (eg. reflected linguistically, see Blench 2013), cosmological and ritual understanding, everyday engagement, and kinship care. The paper introduces ethnographic explorations into cosmology and ritual to expand on the entangled conviviality and kinship ecology of the Hadza towards their land.