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Jessica Lindiwe Draper,
Robyn Nicolay & Sindiso Nkuna
Biography
Dr Jessica Lindiwe Draper (who will present on behalf of the team), Dr Robyn Nicolay and Dr Sindiso Nkuna are researchers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal whose complementary expertise in visual arts, grassland ecology and sustainable land-use systems informs their collaborative project, Children, and their role in rangeland and livestock stewardship in a KwaZulu-Natal communal rangeland, South Africa. The project investigates how children participate in, learn and contribute to livestock and rangeland stewardship, with particular attention to the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). The research employs a practice-led Photovoice methodology to develop a counter-archive grounded in participants’ embodied experiences and knowledge. The project brings together creative and ecological methodologies to explore how knowledge is produced, shared and enacted in everyday life, and how research can contribute to meaningful change for participants and their communities. Dr Draper is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and a practice-led researcher specialising in visual methodologies. Dr Nicolay researches fire, grazing and land-use histories in southern African grasslands, while Dr Nkuna is a grassland ecologist whose research focuses on sustainable rangeland management and ecological processes.
Visualising a matrilineal knowledge system: Children, livestock, and photovoice as artivist practice
This paper presents an in-process collaboration between the School of Art and the School of Agriculture & Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The project uses a practice-led Photovoice approach to develop a counter-archive grounded in embodied and intergenerational Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). Focussing on the communal rangelands of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, this research engages questions of climate justice, gendered labour, and ecological knowledge. Although women-headed households play a central role in sustaining pastoral livelihoods, their expertise is often excluded from formal policy and development frameworks. In response, we give children (many of whom are involved in daily livestock care) cameras and ask them to produce photographic narratives of their environments, specifically their daily care of livestock and life with their grandmothers. These images, and the stories they record, present the opportunity to make visible the knowledge women use to manage land and animals. Ultimately, we will bring this knowledge into public discussion through exhibitions. The children are positioned as active knowledge-holders, documenting the health, movement, and socio-cultural significance of livestock, revealing forms of inherent ecological knowledge embedded in everyday practice but rarely captured through conventional research. Photovoice is used as an artivist strategy to bridge the gap between formal accounts of land, ownership and access and the more complex realities shaped by ancestry, gender, and care. We argue that working through children’s perspectives generates indirect but powerful accounts of pastoral life that foreground intergenerational knowledge transmission. Sharing these visual narratives through public exhibitions creates a space for dialogue between participants, policymakers, and stakeholders. The paper argues that acknowledging children as mediators of knowledge offers an experimental method for rethinking how knowledge is accessed, represented, and mobilised toward more just and sustainable futures of pastoral livelihoods.