The !Kung, or ?X? as it is also spelled in English, also called the Ju??hoansi, are a people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the ?Kung language, noted for using click consonants, generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family. Therefore, in pronouncing "Kung" one makes a click sound before the consonant, often represented in texts as an exclamation mark.

They also speak Portuguese in Angola and Afrikaans and English in Namibia. Historically, the ?Kung people lived in semi-permanent villages of about 10-30 people usually located around a system of water. Once the water and resources around the village are depleted then the tribe relocates to a more resource rich area. They live in a hunting and gathering lifestyle with the men responsible for providing meat, making tools, and maintaining a supply of poison tipped arrows and spears. The women provide for most of the food by spending between two and three days per week foraging for roots, nuts and berries in the Kalahari Desert.

Mythology

The ?Kung people of southern Africa are both animistic and animatistic; they believe in both personifications and impersonal forces. They believe in a god named Prishiboro, whose wife was an elephant. His older brother tricked him into killing her and, later, into eating her flesh. Her herd tried to kill Prishiboro in revenge, but his brother defeated them.

?Kung people also have many taboos concerning the dead as they believe that the ghosts of the deceased would cause them injury or death. It is against the rules to even say a name of someone dead, once an annual ceremony to release the spirits of the dead has been performed.

The ?Kung practice shamanism in order to communicate with the spirit world, and to cure what they call Star Sickness. The communication with the spirit world is done by a shaman entering a trance state and running through a fire, thereby chasing away bad spirits. Star Sickness is cured by laying hands on the diseased.

Anthropology

The !Kung consider the earth the first mother of all people in the tribe.

!Kung women give birth with the earth as primary midwife (a form of Unassisted childbirth) walking away from the village camp as far as a mile during labor and birthing the child alone, delivering it into a small leaf-lined hole dug into the warm sand. The child's cord is not clamped or cut (a form of Lotus birth or Umbilical nonseverance, and the placenta is delivered and put next to the child, as guardian. Shortly thereafter, the baby-placenta is lightly covered with another large leaf, and the new mother walks a short way to verbally alert the older women of the completed birth, at which time they join the mother and child in a ritual welcoming. If a laboring woman is delayed in returning a sign to the village that she has given birth, the older women will come looking for her to assist, however, it is said to be a rare occurrence. Shostak, Marjorie "Nisa: The Life and Words of !Kung woman, ISBN 0674004329, pp. 77-81, 2nd edition 2006, Harvard University Press,

!Kung women often share an intimate sociability and spend many hours together discussing their lives, enjoying each other's company and children. In the short documentary film "A Group of Women" !Kung women rest, talk and nurse their babies while lying in the shade of a baobab tree. This film is a good illustration of "collective mothering" in which several women support each other and share the nurturing role. Documentary Film: "A Group of Women" (from the San (Ju/Wasi) Series, John Marshal, 1961, available through Documentary Educational Resources

Use of Kinship Terms

The ?Kung classify everyone who bears the same name as close kinsmen as if they were relatives proper. If a ?Kung man's sister is called Kxaru (a female name), then all women named Kxaru are his "sisters." A ?Kung man may not sit too close to his sisters or tell sexual jokes in their presence, and of course he cannot marry them. The same rules apply to his sisters' namesakes. Such customs identify "true" and not merely metaphorical kinship ? at least as the ?Kung see it. The ?Kung believe that all namesakes are descended from the same original namesake ancestor, and in effect they treat the status of namesake as a genealogical position, like father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter.

References

Bibliography

• Katz, Richard: Boiling Energy, Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung (1982). Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
• Lee, Richard B.: Subsustence Ecology of ?Kung Bushmen (1965), PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
• Lee, Richard B.: The ?Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (1979), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Lee, Richard B.: The Dobe Ju??hoansi (2003), 3rd ed., Thomson Learning/Wadsworth.
• Shostak, Marjorie: Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, (2006 special edition) Boston: Harvard University Press.

Links

Documentary Educational Resources [1] film library

African mythologyEthnic groups in AngolaEthnic groups in NamibiaEthnic groups in BotswanaEthnic groups in South Africa

!Kung