Tracking Indigenous Heritage

Book excerpt: "Tracking Indigenous Heritage" describes the expierences of the Ju/'hoansi of north-eastern Namibia, who perform their 'traditional' hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a means of generating income. Being constantly concerned with their Intangible Cultural Heritage, they experimentally re-interpret it for the creation of specific staged touristic performances. The children grow up with the regular enactment of traditional culture and playfully practice and r-enact it themselves. After Ju/'hoansi are moving towards a new position inside the nation state. In Living Museums and Cultural Villages located in protected nature conservancies in the Kalahari Desert, the Ju/'hoansi handle their cultural heritage as a basis for self-determination and as a strategy to achieve their claims for indigenous rights.