Titus and Stephen Presenting the Namunyak App
The aim of the Namunyak App was to co-design a tool with and for the Samburu community to allow them to participate and contribute to the decision-making processes regarding their lands. In this video you will meet Titus and Stephen who will be talking about the project, how the app would benefit their community and, hopefully, they would captivate you with their enthusiasm.
For more information regarding the project, please read an interview done with our team: https://earthobservations.org/geo_blog_obs.php?id=519. You will find a small biography of each team member as well as the story of the project.
Song: Ayee by Laiso Boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZdkraHVvwc
Welcome to my World: This is Sierra Leone!
LCMO – Introduction to VIMA project
This video has been produced by LCMO for the introduction of their VIMA project and a news clip for the January to March VIMA activities.
Stop Illegal Lion Killing Campaign – WASIMA
The Expedition Earth team visited Mpimbwe on April 20th and spent over 9 hours with Stop Illegal Lion Killing Campaign team and the Sukuma community in the south of Katavi National park! The LCMO staff and locals in Katavi were grateful to host you! The Sukuma elders at Kashishi reported no new lion dancer within their village boundaries which is great news. The video above shed some lights on activities that took place on that day. Enjoy the video and don’t forget to subscribe for more news and updates.
A special Mpimbwe Sukuma women dance held during stop illegal lion killing outreaches in June 2017
One of the Sukuma traditional dances led by a elder woman called Manju who sings and holds a cow tail as she dances. 12 drums a hit to produce a very sweet music sound.
Bayaka Conservation
This video showcases voices from indigenous Bayaka communities in the Central African Republic on key conservation issues. They address the suffering caused them both by a “fortress conservation” model that excludes their participation and a decline in wild game populations caused by outside commercial forces. They emerge not only as passionate about conservation, but fully capable of developing practical strategies to achieve conservation goals.
The Music Returns to Kai-as
“The Music Returns to Kai-as” is an outcome of oral history research in north-west Namibia with families now living in a settlement called Sesfontein. They have formed the Hoanib Cultural Group, named after the ephemeral river flowing through the spectacular landscapes of this dryland area.
In this research, supported by the AHRC project “Future Pasts” (www.futurepasts.net), two things came into focus. One was that elderly people often spoke of places in the wider landscape from which they had been removed, but that continued to be important to them. The second was that people recalled – with great feeling – gathering to play music and dance together at these former dwelling places.
A key place in this regard is ‘Kai-as’. Now in an area to which access is restricted to protect its tourism and conservation value, we worked closely with a number of organisations managing the area to permit the Hoanib Cultural Group to return to Kai-as to play – once again – their ‘|gaidi‘ praise songs and ‘arudi‘ healing dances there.
In editing the footage from this ‘Kai-as Festival’ of May 2019, we added subtitles in English as pointers towards what is happening. Intended to convey meaning for diverse public, as well as specialist, audiences, we nonetheless sought to avoid bringing an overly authoritative ‘master narrative’ to the material shared in the film.
Mangombe knowledge
Nature conservation in Cameroon is exclusionary, rejecting the rights, values, and knowledge of indigenous and local people. The Baka are indigenous hunter-gatherers, maintaining an integral relationship with the forest for both their daily survival and long-term transmission of their biocultural heritage. Contrary to the potential to be the best partners of conservation efforts, Baka communities are instead involved most often only as porters to carry equipment. Mystified by their exclusion, Mangombe tells us in this video how “We are weeping with our knowledge of the forest”.
Credit: Mangombe Felix (speaking)
Investigating lemur hunting in south-east Madagascar – MOSA Jean Fidèle
Ecologist-Translator MOSA Jean Fidèle talks about his work on a research project that investigates lemur hunting by people living in Tsitongambarika Protected Area, south-east Madagascar. This research combines ecological methods to study the effect of hunting on lemur demography and behaviour with a social study to understand the drivers of lemur hunting by local people.
