Location: Ethiopia, South Omo Valley, Kola Keji
Credit: Simon Bunchuay-Peth
Initiative: Belmont Forum CRAs (CCH 2023)
Project: Cultural Heritage in Motion (CuHeMo)
Story: The scene is a living archive of mobile cultural heritage. The knowledge of where to dig, how deep, at which bend in the riverbed, in which season: this is not written down anywhere. It is held by the community, transmitted across generations, and embedded in the movement patterns of pastoralists who have survived in this landscape for centuries. It is, in every sense, indigenous knowledge in action.
But the system is under pressure. Droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe. The river runs for fewer months each year. The neighbouring sugar cane plantations draw water from the same catchment area. And the territorial boundaries that once gave pastoralists flexible access to multiple water sources are hardening, limiting the mobility that made this system resilient. What looks like a quiet rural scene is, in fact, a community in the middle of a daily survival practice that is growing harder every year.
This photograph was taken during fieldwork for CuHeMo (Cultural Heritage in Motion), a transdisciplinary research project funded under the Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Action on Climate and Cultural Heritage, examining how indigenous mobile communities navigate the intersection of climate change, cultural heritage, and shrinking resources.