!Nara Harvesters of the Northern Namib: a Cultural History through Three Photographed Encounters

Abstract

We report on Indigenous cultural heritage and histories associated with the northern Namib desert, designated since 1971 as the Skeleton Coast National Park. Review of historical documents and oral histories from elderly people with direct and familial memories of accessing and living in the northern Namib show how places and resources were used here by Khoekhoegowab-speaking peoples in the past. A focus of this use was the availability of valued foods, especially melons of the !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus). Three photographed encounters provide focus for a narrative connecting memories about the northern Namib that stretch back to the first European colonial journeys into this remote area of north-west Namibia. In ‘repeopling’ the northern Namib, we aim to also ‘rehumanise’ documented colonial encounters that objectified and diminished the peoples who knew, accessed and dwelled in this now protected area.