Anthropology Colloquium Series with guest speaker Dr. Jennifer Hays

Support offered to Indigenous communities – particularly in the Global South – is often based on assumptions about what they are lacking; the focus is on poverty, low rates of education, lack of jobs, low levels of participation in government institutions, and other problems. These problems certainly do exist – but what happens when we turn that assumption around and ask people what they do know, can do, and value about themselves and their knowledge, skills, culture, and identity? This presentation describes a participatory research project in Namibia conducted in 2024. The Nyae Nyae Community Asset Mapping Project was an extensive survey of the Ju/’hoansi of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy. Conducted over 6 months, it consisted of day- long community interviews in each of the 36 villages, and an individual survey carried out by a team of four local youth. This study, commissioned by the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, revealed that people almost unanimously consider their traditional knowledge, skills, culture, and resources to be by far their most important ‘assets’, and that these are highly valuable to them – culturally, spiritually, economically, and in terms of survival. This presentation will present the survey and some of the results, and discuss the implications of these findings – for development projects, government policy, legal cases, and for the community themselves.

Event: “We are people that know how to survive from the bush: Initial results from a participatory Community Asset Mapping Project” Anthropology Colloquium Series with guest speaker Dr. Jennifer Hays

Date: Thursday, March 5th, 2026

Time: 2:00-4:00pm AKST

Location: Bunnell 302 & via Zoom

Zoom Link: https://alaska.zoom.us/j/85621726233

About the Speaker

Jennifer Hays is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Tromsø (UiT) – the Arctic University of Norway. She has been working with hunter-gatherer San populations in southern Africa since 1998, as a researcher, and as a consultant for governmental bodies and local and international NGOs. She also works as a consultant for UN bodies on global human rights issues. A primary focus has been on issues relating to education, language, Indigenous knowledge, including the impact of formal education on San lifeways, and on their own efforts to attain educational self-determination. Her book Owners of Learning (Basler Afrika, 2016) traces a community-based education project with the Ju/’hoansi in Namibia, the Nyae Nyae Village Schools, over 25 years. More recently she has sought to connect hunter gatherers worldwide, and their educational struggles, to broader global concerns, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and food security. She is a board member of the International Society of Hunter-Gatherer Research (ISHGR) and of the Kalahari Peoples’ Fund. She is a founding member of the Hunter Gatherer Education Research and Advocacy Group (HG-Edu), and a member of the FAO Global Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems. A list of publications can be found on her UiT Website.

UAF Department of AnthropologyThe UAF Department of Anthropology explores human diversity across time and space, with strengths in Arctic and northern research, archaeology, cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and museum studies. Faculty, students and staff engage in hands-on research that connects Alaska to global anthropological questions.

Donations help support student research, fieldwork, collections-based learning and public programs. Gifts of any size directly strengthen educational opportunities and advance anthropological research at UAF.

https://engage.alaska.edu/donation-with-cart?fid=a3rw%2fp8k1b8%3d&fdesc=GqDJsgS%2fXgkX9UZU0%2fqt%2bIMZM7iGSbGI6eyt987lnPo%3d

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher University of Alaska Anthropology Department