Join us this episode to hear about about stealing fire from ostriches and shapewear made from ostrich egg shells!
Kileni Fernando is the inaugural San Visiting Fellow at the Pitt Rivers Museum, co-sponsored by the Africa Oxford (AfOx) Initiative and developed in association with the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre. She is a !Xung-speaking San woman from Namibia, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree with the Open University of Tanzania.
Since 2017 Kileni has acted as a voice for the San as a development consultant for the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre on the West Coast of South Africa. She is a co-founding member of an indigenous San youth organisation called Ana-Djeh San Trust (AST). Kileni has completed several courses on marginalization & inequality, as well as a diploma in legal history. She has also volunteered as a community facilitator for the Women’s Leadership Centre (Windhoek, Namibia) on the project “Speaking for ourselves, Voices of the San Young Women”.
In this episode, listen to some of the work she has been doing with the Making the Museum project to improve the categorisation of San materials within the museum database and change the understanding and presentation of San collections within the museum.
Find out more about Kileni and her work at https://www.afox.ox.ac.uk/person/kileni-fernando.
For more about the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre: https://www.khwattu.org/
For information about the AfOx Initiative and the AfOx fellowship programme: https://www.afox.ox.ac.uk/
Want to follow along when we’re talking about collections items? This episode features the following items from the Pitt Rivers collection (in order of appearance):
Denise Gross collection rock art rubbings (not yet individually catalogued - link to the YouTube channel for videos of these items below)
Ostrich eggshell water carrier (accession no. 2004.142.1110)
Ostrich eggshell water carrier (accession no. 1970.11.1)
Ostrich eggshell waist beads (accession no. 1886.1.492.1)
Tortoise shell powder carrier (accession no. 1990.25.1)
You can also see these conversations in video on the Making the Museum playlist on our YouTube channel: Making the Museum playlist - Pitt Rivers Museum YouTube channel
This episode features music from the Kalahari San community, featuring a gut pluriarc and 3 men’s voices, kindly provided (with permission of the copyright holder) by Dr Chris Low of the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre, recorded by Megan Biesele and Nicholas England. Copyright Megan Biesele and Nicholas England.
You will hear from (in order of appearance):
Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Martin (she/her) – Research Project Officer, Making the Museum project
Dr. Beth Hodgett (they/them) – Postdoctoral Researcher, Making the Museum project
Kileni Fernando (she/her) –AfOx Fellow and !Khwa ttu Heritage Centre consultant
Dr. Christopher Morton (he/him) – Principal Investigator, Making the Museum project
