Our Ocean Is Sacred, You Can't Mine Heaven
- McGarry, Dylan K, McConnachie, Boudina E
- Authors: McGarry, Dylan K , McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2025
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480205 , vital:78406 , ISBN 9781003381846 , https://doi.org/10.4324/978100338184
- Description: ‘Our Ocean Is Sacred, You Can’t Mine Heaven’ was a ground-breaking South African public storytelling initiative that not only emphasised the intrinsic and cultural value of the ocean but also served as a living-customary lore/law classroom. This exhibition challenged conventional archiving, promoting diversity, sovereignty and evolving ‘meaning-making,’ fostering inclusivity and justice-oriented documentation in ocean knowledge. The authors worked alongside Indigenous coastal communities and Small-Scale Fishers (SSF), who were aligned with movements defending the ocean against unchecked Blue Economy expansion in South Africa. The chapter delves into how artist-led practices, strategically embedded with legal research, played a pivotal role in a recent court ruling favouring Indigenous and SSF applicants. This victory renewed attention on ocean heritages in legal processes, highlighting the potential for expanding evidence ‘an-archives.’ The collaboration with coastal communities and SSF against unbridled ocean development used art to secure a court win, reshaping South African law and challenging norms in ocean development. This chapter explores art’s role in legal innovation, contributing to the ongoing struggle for justice and the decolonisation of blue economy narratives and processes in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2025
- Authors: McGarry, Dylan K , McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2025
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480205 , vital:78406 , ISBN 9781003381846 , https://doi.org/10.4324/978100338184
- Description: ‘Our Ocean Is Sacred, You Can’t Mine Heaven’ was a ground-breaking South African public storytelling initiative that not only emphasised the intrinsic and cultural value of the ocean but also served as a living-customary lore/law classroom. This exhibition challenged conventional archiving, promoting diversity, sovereignty and evolving ‘meaning-making,’ fostering inclusivity and justice-oriented documentation in ocean knowledge. The authors worked alongside Indigenous coastal communities and Small-Scale Fishers (SSF), who were aligned with movements defending the ocean against unchecked Blue Economy expansion in South Africa. The chapter delves into how artist-led practices, strategically embedded with legal research, played a pivotal role in a recent court ruling favouring Indigenous and SSF applicants. This victory renewed attention on ocean heritages in legal processes, highlighting the potential for expanding evidence ‘an-archives.’ The collaboration with coastal communities and SSF against unbridled ocean development used art to secure a court win, reshaping South African law and challenging norms in ocean development. This chapter explores art’s role in legal innovation, contributing to the ongoing struggle for justice and the decolonisation of blue economy narratives and processes in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2025
Shifting from Development to Empowerment Through Eco-Creative Knowledge Transmission
- McConnachie, Boudina E, Porri, Francesca, Wynberg, Rachel
- Authors: McConnachie, Boudina E , Porri, Francesca , Wynberg, Rachel
- Date: 2025
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480246 , vital:78410 , ISBN 9781003289838 , https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003289838
- Description: Conventional definitions of development can be linked to socio-economic and cultural impositions of the Global North on developing societies. These development frameworks were inherited from the colonial system, which devalued local ways of knowing, being, and developing and continues to do so. Through a transdisciplinary or Boundary Crossing environmental case study that interrogates the use of heritage skills and knowledge for nature-based solutions relating to coastal shore regeneration, this chapter reflects on experiences of knowledge co-creation in the rural Eastern Cape Province setting of South Africa. Through the lens of African Musical Arts, which includes song and dance, storytelling, heritage skills, soundscapes, and more, this research seeks to shift the project perceptions of the scientists, engaged scholars, pracademics, practitioners and community researchers involved, from simple to multi-dimensional viewpoints. Using Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) as catalysts, our goal is to emancipate transmission of knowledge from a developmental to an empowerment framework. Using the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of the authors, this chapter allows for a holistic examination of the development of an Audio Postcards exhibition, while interrogating the project centred on African theories, ecologies, and knowledge development.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2025
- Authors: McConnachie, Boudina E , Porri, Francesca , Wynberg, Rachel
- Date: 2025
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480246 , vital:78410 , ISBN 9781003289838 , https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003289838
- Description: Conventional definitions of development can be linked to socio-economic and cultural impositions of the Global North on developing societies. These development frameworks were inherited from the colonial system, which devalued local ways of knowing, being, and developing and continues to do so. Through a transdisciplinary or Boundary Crossing environmental case study that interrogates the use of heritage skills and knowledge for nature-based solutions relating to coastal shore regeneration, this chapter reflects on experiences of knowledge co-creation in the rural Eastern Cape Province setting of South Africa. Through the lens of African Musical Arts, which includes song and dance, storytelling, heritage skills, soundscapes, and more, this research seeks to shift the project perceptions of the scientists, engaged scholars, pracademics, practitioners and community researchers involved, from simple to multi-dimensional viewpoints. Using Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) as catalysts, our goal is to emancipate transmission of knowledge from a developmental to an empowerment framework. Using the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of the authors, this chapter allows for a holistic examination of the development of an Audio Postcards exhibition, while interrogating the project centred on African theories, ecologies, and knowledge development.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2025
Reshaping our musical values: decolonising teaching and curricular frameworks in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480216 , vital:78407 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2021.1930090"
- Description: Musical ideals set by European standards and values, entrenched through colonial oppression and promoted by the continued veneration of Western culture need to be re-evaluated. This short essay in an alternative format of a critical report records the development and implementation of an African instrumental music studies course at Rhodes University, introduced to re-value and promote African ways of making and interacting with music. As a result of in-depth research with regard to the ailing Indigenous African Music (IAM) syllabus in the South African national school music curriculum, this university-level course has been designed to generate future teachers and culture-bearers who will possess a deeper understanding of, and feeling for, Indigenous African musics and who, as a result, will be able to engage with African musics through teaching and learning. Highlighting the crisis in South African music education decolonisation, this paper will also present other proposed solutions to this problem.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480216 , vital:78407 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2021.1930090"
- Description: Musical ideals set by European standards and values, entrenched through colonial oppression and promoted by the continued veneration of Western culture need to be re-evaluated. This short essay in an alternative format of a critical report records the development and implementation of an African instrumental music studies course at Rhodes University, introduced to re-value and promote African ways of making and interacting with music. As a result of in-depth research with regard to the ailing Indigenous African Music (IAM) syllabus in the South African national school music curriculum, this university-level course has been designed to generate future teachers and culture-bearers who will possess a deeper understanding of, and feeling for, Indigenous African musics and who, as a result, will be able to engage with African musics through teaching and learning. Highlighting the crisis in South African music education decolonisation, this paper will also present other proposed solutions to this problem.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
Rethinking the decolonial moment through collaborative practices at the International Library of African Music (ILAM), South Africa
- Watkins, Lee W, Madiba, Elijah M, McConnachie, Boudina E
- Authors: Watkins, Lee W , Madiba, Elijah M , McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480227 , vital:78409 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2021.1938628"
- Description: Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving end of widespread criticisms because most of its collections were acquired through the colonial privilege of its founder, Hugh Tracey. Tracey recorded music and collected musical instruments in many countries of sub-Sahara Africa without following the rigorous ethical practices which are a necessary requirement for collectors these days. Since its establishment in 1954 until the early 2000s, moreover, ILAM had largely been inaccessible to black South Africans who comprise the majority of the population. Its presence, therefore, is complicated by a racist past associated with apartheid and a colonial past characterised by the misappropriation of the colonised's resources. In view of this history, ILAM had to shape a new reality which fell in line with calls and demands for decolonised practices such that the archive became an agent for transformation on numerous fronts. This series of articles describes the efforts undertaken by ILAM so that it could develop and implement policies which would place it at the vanguard of ethical archival practices on the continent. It is argued that the decolonial could be realised only through collaboration with entities which shared our interests in participatory and transformed archival practices.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Watkins, Lee W , Madiba, Elijah M , McConnachie, Boudina E
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480227 , vital:78409 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2021.1938628"
- Description: Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving end of widespread criticisms because most of its collections were acquired through the colonial privilege of its founder, Hugh Tracey. Tracey recorded music and collected musical instruments in many countries of sub-Sahara Africa without following the rigorous ethical practices which are a necessary requirement for collectors these days. Since its establishment in 1954 until the early 2000s, moreover, ILAM had largely been inaccessible to black South Africans who comprise the majority of the population. Its presence, therefore, is complicated by a racist past associated with apartheid and a colonial past characterised by the misappropriation of the colonised's resources. In view of this history, ILAM had to shape a new reality which fell in line with calls and demands for decolonised practices such that the archive became an agent for transformation on numerous fronts. This series of articles describes the efforts undertaken by ILAM so that it could develop and implement policies which would place it at the vanguard of ethical archival practices on the continent. It is argued that the decolonial could be realised only through collaboration with entities which shared our interests in participatory and transformed archival practices.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
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