In this paper I draw on my findings and those of historical and recent Khoisan ethnography to attempt to explain how these southern African ‘Khoi’ and San peoples relate to wind and how the environmental phenomenon has informed their epistemology and ontology. I begin by fleshing out the knowledge and experience of wind among these past and recent hunter-gatherers and, pointing to continuity in wind relationships and the ideas that stem from them, I go on to demonstrate how wind weaves into Khoisan understandings of the body and illness. Despite extensive interest in Bushman healing, anthropologists have overwhelmingly concentrated on the ‘trance’ healing dance. My findings suggest this partiality has obscured the wider healing context in which the dance operates. Exploring the wider context, including massage, ‘medicinal cuts’, and witchcraft, reveals that the ‘potency’ conceived as central to the healing dance is, in certain contexts, equivalent to overlapping ideas of wind, arrows, and smell. Examination of the ethnography reveals that a number of the associations I make between wind and potency have been partially recognized in specific Khoisan contexts but, because comparative studies of Khoisan are difficult and unpopular, these similarities have gone largely unnoticed.

Article

The thesis explores the relationship of contemporary Namibian Khoisan healing practice and ideas, to a history of Khoisan healing from an indeterminable pre-colonial past to the present. My focus is one principally of ideas and understanding as opposed to practice, because of a perceived need to highlight, and to some extent attempt to redress, a very partial historical and contemporary literature on Khoisan healing.

Theses & Dissertations