Claim to the Country

2009 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

A Library Journal Editor s Pick In the 1870s, facing cultural extinction and the deathof their language, several San men and women told theirstories to two pioneering colonial scholars at the Cape, Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. The narratives of these San(or Bushmen) were of the land, the rain, the history of the firstpeople, and the origin of the moon and stars. These narrativeswere faithfully recorded and translated by Bleek and Lloyd, creatingan archive of more than 13,000 pages including drawings, notebooks, maps, and photographs. Now residing in three maininstitutionsthe University of Cape Town, the South AfricanMuseum, and the National Library of South Africathisarchive has recently been entered into UNESCO s Memory of the World Register.

Lavishly illustrated, "Claim to the Country: The Archiveof Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek," created, compiled, andintroduced by Pippa Skotnes, presents in book form and on anaccompanying DVD all the notebook pages and drawings thatcomprise this remarkable archive. Contextualizing essays bywell-known scholars, such as Nigel Penn, Eustacia Riley, andAnthony Traill, and a searchable index for all the narrativesand contributors are included.

Through this remarkable collection, we can better understandwhat it means that the people who lived in southern Africalong before any new arrivals settled the country no longersurvive through their language or culture of intellectual traditions, but only as text on a page. The Bleek-Lloyd archive is theSan s surviving claim to the country."