Rethinking Africa: Indigenous Women Re-interpret southern Africa’s pasts

This book critically opens new pathways for de-colonial scholarship and the reclamation of indigenous self-definition by women scholars. Indigenous peoples around the world are often socially egalitarian and gender equal, matricentric, matrifocal, matrilineal, less violent, beyond heteronormative, ecologically sensitive, and with feminine or two-gender deities or spirits, and more. Bernedette Muthien has contributed to several publications over the years, while June Bam has made numerous key contributions in the field of rethinking and rewriting the African past more generally. In this book, indigenous women write their own herstory, define their own contemporary cultural and socio-economic conditions, and ideate future visions based on their lived realities. All chapters herstoricise the accepted 'histories' and theories of how we have come to understand the African past, how to problematise and rethink that discourse, and provide new and different herstorical lenses, philosophies, epistemologies, methodologies and interpretations. In a first of its kind in Africa and the world, this collection of essays is written by, with and for indigenous southern African women from matricentric societies. Contents Foreword / Lungisile Ntsebeza -- I've come to take you home : a tribute to Sarah Baartman / Diana Ferrus -- Introduction / June Bam and Bernedette Muthien -- 1. Writing ourselves back into history : the liberating narrative of who we are / Sylvia Vollenhoven -- 2. Rematriation : reclaiming indigenous matricentric egalitarianism / Bernedette Muthien -- green kalahari / Bernedette Muthien -- 3. Gendering social science : Ukubuiswa of maternal legacies of knowledge for balanced social science studies in South Africa / Babalwa Magoqwana -- 4. Feminism-cide and epistemicide of Cape herstoriography through the lens of the ecology of indigenous plants / June Bam -- The bones / Diana Ferrus -- Camissa / Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger -- call to art / Shelley Barry -- 5. Valuing the increased and invisible workload : indigenous women, labour and the COVID-19 pandemic / Sharon Groenmeyer -- 6. Decolonising the representation of indigenous women at the Cape during Covid-19 / June Bam and Robyn Humphreys -- 7. Repositioning !uiki Ilnaosa/aia/ / gertrude fester-wicomb -- 8. Ancestral letter to unborn descendants / Sarah Malotane Henkeman -- 9. The falling sky : some notes about originary peoples in Brazil / Ana Lígia Leite e Aguiar -- Conclusion / June Bam and Bernedette Muthien -- one & many / Bernedette Muthien.