Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights the adaptability and resilience of the Mayeyi, a riverine people of Namibia, in adopting new foodways of cattle farming while maintaining revered elements of their traditional foodways of fishing and foraging despite conservation policies that restrict and criminalise access.

Paper long abstract:

Among rural communities foodways are shaped by the landscape and its assemblage of species rendering them vulnerable to development and conservation interventions that prioritise commercially lucrative landscapes and high-value species over food related human-nonhuman entanglements. This is especially true in the landscapes of southern Africa where rural communities are often subject to policies and interventions that restrict and criminalise access to ancestral areas and revered species in the name of biodiversity conservation diminishing traditional foodways over time through a process of slow violence. Drawing on oral accounts, interviews and observation of food-related practices, this paper explores the foodways of the Mayeyi, a riverine people of northern Botswana and Namibia that historically resided across the Okavango-Kwando wetlands. Formerly fishers, hunters, foragers and agriculturists the traditional foodways of the Mayeyi have been systemically eroded since the early 1900s through successive resettlements and unwanted species control in aid of colonial cattle ranching and the creation of national parks, hunting and fishing regulations and no-settlement zones to bolster wildlife populations for trophy hunting and tourism. In response the Mayeyi have adapted to dryland agropastoralism adopting cattle farming and rainfed agricultural practices while maintaining certain cultural, social and economic practices related to fishing and the harvesting of riverine plants for consumption. The paper highlights the resistance and resilience of the Mayeyi in maintaining revered elements of their traditional foodways despite issues of access and points the way towards possibilities for decolonising conservation approaches through elevating traditional foodways.