Local indigenous clans from across Venda, in the Limpopo
province of South Africa, are joined by allies from Kenya, Ghana and
Benin, to explore the use of eco-cultural maps and calendars, also known
as ‘talking tools’, to revive traditional culture, seed diversity, and
protect Sacred Natural Sites. The workshop is being hosted by local
partner, The Mupo Foundation.
Known as “The Land of Myth and Legend”, Venda is home to a network of Sacred Natural Sites known as Ziwfho.
From forests to springs and waterfalls, these sites have traditionally
been protected and revered by custodian clans of the VhaVenda people. In
recent years the onset of tourism and development projects, and the
threat of coal mining in the region, pose a threat to these sites. The
Mupo Foundation is working with the local clans and Dzomo la Mupo, local
community-based organisation, for the protection of Venda’s Sacred
Natural Sites and the rights of their custodian clans.
The Mupo Foundation held its first eco-cultural mapping workshop in 2009 – documented in the highly popular video “Reviving our Culture, Mapping our Future”
– when indigenous leaders from the Colombian Amazon shared their
knowledge and experience in using this innovative and participatory
means of understanding landscape and culture, past and present.
Eco-cultural maps are created by the community through a simple
process using paper and coloured pens. The elders, and those who hold
the most traditional knowledge within the community, take a leading role
in the process, and everyone gets involved as a series of ‘maps’ are
drawn. The first reflects the past, the customary laws and ecological
integrity of the landscape. The second, the map of the present, draws
out the transformations and changes suffered by the landscape and the
people. The final map, of the future, is where the communities
envision how they can ensure a resilient, bio-diverse and culturally
vibrant future. Eco-cultural calendars compliment the maps. These are
cyclical charts showing the cosmos, the climate, the breeding cycles of
animals and fish, fruiting trees and shrubs, the time for planting or
harvest, and the rituals for the different seasons.
The important character of theses “talking tools” – as they have come
to be known – is that the communities continue to use them to deepen
their own research into their cultures which have been eroded through
the colonial and post colonial processes. They are tools that enable
communities to revive ancestral knowledge and practices, analyse the
challenges of the present, and develop a common vision of how to rebuild
their future now.
At this latest workshop, held just outside the town of Thohoyandou in
Venda, local clans will focus on their Sacred Natural Sites, using maps
of the future as a tool to define their governance plans. Two clans
will develop also develop calendars around traditional seed varieties,
whilst a further clan is concerned especially with its river and the
growing threat to water security.
They will be joined by allies from Kenya, Ghana and Benin – members of the African Biodiversity Network
– who will be learning from the process how to better support local
communities in their own countries to protect their Sacred Natural
Sites.
In the words of one Makhadzi, a woman elder from Venda, “The
seeds of our knowledge and life are still with us and Nature is still
alive. These maps are our life-plans, they have emerged from us. After
understanding the fragmentation of our present we are here to build a
common shared future. Let’s transform the present with hope and guidance
from our ancestors.”
Find out more:
- More on eco-mapping in Venda
- Watch “Reviving our Culture, Mapping our Future” – a film about eco-cultural mapping in Venda, South Africa – http://vimeo.com/9831187.
No comments:
Post a Comment