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Abstract
This paper focuses on our research in Maun village, near Okavango Delta, a World Heritage Site (OD-WHS), Botswana. We hoped to illuminate the presence and strength of ‘dormant’ community cultural identities, and to learn how they are constituted in cultural values and tied to landscapes that have become re-branded as nature-tourism areas. To unveil these ‘dormant’ cultural values, we conducted ethnographic interviews among the Maun village traditional leaders, Dikgosi (Chiefs), who are cultural custodians of communal heritage, to identify and re-acknowledge cultural and heritage values from communal memory. The aim was to create a balance between the nature tourism identity and the more fluid socio-cultural identities of people. Our results show that Maun village has communal cultural values that can complement the gateway tourism image. This work provides a model for other nature-tourism gateway communities who wish to salvage and safeguard the cultural heritage identities connected to their particular landscapes.
Acknowledgements
Our gratitude goes to Batawana Tribal Authority, in particular Kgosi Kealetile Moremi's office and Kgosi Charles Letsholathebe for putting us in touch with the various Dikgosi and village elders to interview. We thank all Dikgosi and elders that we interviewed for their time and patience in providing information and travelling around the Maun village surveying features and landscapes. Of particular mention are: O. Ledimo, R. Matlhare, R. Marumo, C. Lelatlhego, T. Lekang, K.G. Ramokwena, J. Sedumedi, M. Bendu, P.B Ledimo, P. Makwati, P. Shashe, R.K. Rabosigo, M. Moeti, M. Setlhare, M. Mhapha, B. Majatsie, K.R. Segole, M. Dithapo, L. Mogalakwe and elders T. Monwela and K. Diako. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments that enhanced the quality of the manuscript. Our gratitude also goes to the journal editors, Carol McDavid and Suzie Thomas, for their patient guidance in incorporating comments that improved the manuscript. We thank the University of Botswana (Okavango Research Institute), and the Government of Botswana's Ministry of Education Skills and Development for research funding.
ORCID
Susan Osireditse Keitumetse http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8669-1049
Notes on contributors
Susan O. Keitumetse's background is in archaeology and environmental sciences, which she combined with cultural heritage studies to write a PhD thesis on archaeological heritage and sustainable development at the University of Cambridge, U.K., (2005). Her work is focused on strengthening the links between natural environment, cultural heritage and sustainable development. She works for the University of Botswana's Okavango Research Institute in Maun, Botswana, as a research scholar in cultural heritage tourism. Susan Keitumetse has undertaken fellowships on cultural heritage and environment at the Smithsonian Institution (Oct. 2005–April 2006) and Brown University (April–December 2009); she has consulted for U.N.E.S.C.O. on intangible cultural heritage in Uganda, Lesotho and Swaziland (2011), and has been a board member of the Botswana Tourism Organisation (2007–2013). She is the associate editor of the journal Environment, Development and Sustainability, published by Springer.
Michelle G. Pampiri is an undergraduate student of BA Humanities (Archaeology and Environmental Science) at the University of Botswana, Gaborone campus. Under Susan Keitumetse's supervision she participated in the research on inventorying Maun cultural heritage while attending a course on ‘Introduction to Wetlands Research’ at the Okavango Research Institute.
Notes
1 Our research has both policy and research purposes. Thus it is important to include the names of leaders and place-names in publications.
2 Article 40, Part IV (4) (CitationDTRP 2013).
3 Article 40, Part IV (4) (CitationDCC 2013).
4 Part III, section 1.10 (CitationDCC 2013)