Women’s History Month Lecture – The Ways of the Ancestors: Using Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Namibia

Speaker – Kellen Gilbert, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Southeastern

Today residents of a Namibian conservancy (post-independence resettlement areas) are trying to make a living herding cattle and goats—their traditional pattern of subsistence.   Prolonged drought in the region has affected not only their livelihood but also their spiritual and cultural lives. Dr. Gilbert, an anthropologist, will examine how Herero women are going back to the ways of their ancestors using traditional ecological knowledge to adapt.