The Team: Daniel Salau Rogei, John Van Dyk, Adrian Eisenhower
Daniel Salau Rogei
This was a timely trip for me coming just immediately after my college graduation. It is such an opportunity to put into use in the field my skills and knowledge regarding community development and business administration which I majored in. In addition, I feel my experience working with indigenous peoples’ advocacy shall be greatly enhanced in this exposure to real life situations of indigenous peoples in a such big geographical coverage.
I am privileged to be part of this team and I believe it will also be welcomed by indigenous peoples to have one of their own involved in this survey. My role in this trip will be to conduct a survey in form of a questionnaire, observation and interviews so as to obtain a qualitative analysis of indigenous peoples in these communities. I will all be involved in carrying out an assessment of indigenous peoples’ development situations and the possible opportunities that are available to them in entrepreneurship development.
The outcome of this process is to bring to the fore disaggregated data and up to date information on the situation of indigenous peoples of Africa. This will be particularly important in assessing the gains made in many years of advocacy, emerging challenges, and to strategize on possible interventions. I am so delighted to be part of this process and I can’t thank Tribal Link Foundation enough for this timely exercise.
John Van Dyk
I received my Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geography and Environmental Studies at California State University, Fullerton. I have traveled the world extensively and visited many indigenous communities. I first visited Africa in 2002 for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. After the Summit I traveled with two Maasai, Daniel Salau and Ole Mulo to Kenya to visit their community in the Rift Valley. Thus began my interest in working with the indigenous communities of Africa. I continued to visit and work in Africa over the next eight years. As a member of Tribal Link’s Advisory Board, I have had the opportunity to contribute to the development of this project.
Through Tribal Link Foundation and the help of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) this project has come to life. I am pleased to be the coordinator for this project and to work tirelessly to organize the filming and documenting of Indigenous Voices across Africa. I currently reside in San Diego, California where I am pursuing my dream of riding the perfect wave.
Adrian Eisenhower
How I became to be apart of the Indigenous Voices Program is really a matter of forces beyond my control. I have been guided to Africa, it would seem, by currents that I do not claim to understand.
My role on this passage is to relay that which we encounter through literary and visual means. That I am a student and teacher of the arts has, I hope, prepared me for this assignment. I have also a personal interest in preserving life and I believe that knowledge held by indigenous peoples, particularly concerning how to coexist with ecosystems, can inform how nations choose to develop.
As I write this, oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and I have to believe that today’s governing ideologies are somehow misguided. Regeneration has historically been critical to any specie and humans practice behavior that will be a burden upon generations to come. I will risk sounding alarmist by stating that the survival of indigenous communities as well as other global communities may depend on changing our present-day trajectory. Perhaps by looking toward indigenous peoples as models of behavior, we can advance in some type of harmonic way.
Tribal Link’s Indigenous Voices program highlights the stories of indigenous peoples worldwide. An initial cluster of consultations will be conducted in countries throughout southern & east Africa.
Our goal is to outreach these stories to a wider audience. It is important to hear about the needs and concerns of indigenous peoples in order to better support their efforts to preserve their communities and their cultures. Indigenous Voices began with informal interviews with participants in our Project Access program who were funded to attend the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues each Spring at UN Headquarters in New York. We are now broadening the circle to begin to interview indigenous representatives of communities worldwide by traveling directly to their communities.
This afternoon, we convened with KURU, a network of indigenous trusts representing the San people of Botswana. This was our first contact with the indigenous peoples of Botswana, a meeting coordinated through IPACC. Our initial reception was quite positive. The three representatives with whom we spoke were more than receptive to our project. The coordinating director of the KOMKU Trust, a man named Xharae Xhase, fielded some of our questions. He spoke with seamless English and was erudite. Although his education ended at secondary school, he has seemingly been forged through of a curriculum of marginalization. As he is San, he offered great insight into the present-day condition of his community. When asked what the major problems were that his community faced, his reply was concise. He sited the following as the plagues of his people: lack of education, lack of resources (land, money, property), gradual erosion of culture and lack of employment opportunities.