Land, Memory, and Justice in Namaqualand

Sima Luipert, technical committee member of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association, and Anne Schroeter of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights bring together lived experience grounded in community struggles and legal advocacy for Indigenous rights and accountability. Rather than treating colonialism as history, they ask how its structures shape climate politics today and the global demand for "green" resources.

As Europe pursues renewable energy, large-scale green hydrogen projects in Namibia are increasingly framed as symbols of a sustainable future. For Nama communities in Namaqualand, their ancestral territory in the south of the country, these projects raise familiar questions about land, participation, memory, and justice. Where Germany's colonial past and its present-day energy interests overlap, they risk becoming a new form of extraction, one that reproduces colonial power relations. 

This event accompanies the exhibition Fractured Lifeworlds: Ovaherero and Nama Claims for Intergenerational Justice, the result of five years of research by Forensis and Forensic Architecture in partnership with ECCHR, the NTLA, and further partners across Germany and Namibia. The public program for Fractured Lifeworlds is kindly supported in part by medico international and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.