Una Rooi
Katriena ǀUna Kassie Rooi was one of the last eight speakers of
Aged five, she was taken to Johannesburg as part of the 'Bushman' display at the British Empire Exhibition. At this time she was separated from her parents and raised by her grandparents. ǂHan Kassie, her grandfather, featured prominently in the photographs of the Empire Exhibition. Her time with her grandparents helped deepen her knowledge of traditional mythology and beliefs of the Nǁnǂe culture and language, which were in the process of dying out. She later travelled to Durban and Cape Town. Her people lost their land and all their possessions in 1937 and lived for decades in poverty and obscurity.[4]
Crawhall also recalls that: "When the ǂKhomani people made their first book about their culture and heritage, Enter the Light, we asked Ouma |Una to give the book a title that summarised their experience of freedom, oppression, dispossession, violence, poverty, democracy and restitution. Ouma ǀUna was not one to nurse a grudge, her heart always sought peace and reconciliation. She called the book after a Nǀuu saying: i hunike xu a ǁga, i ke hunike ǀʼe a qǃuruke (We all came out of that darkness, and we together enter into the light)."[6]
On language death, Rooi observed: "If a person who speaks our language dies then our language also dies. When you cover him with sand the language is not like a plant that grows again."[7]
External links
- Ouma /Una Rooi - video clip, "The last speakers"
- The Sounds of N/uu Archived 2016-12-08 at the Wayback Machine
- N/u, South Africa
References
- ^ "The Sounds of N/uu". Archived from the original on 2016-12-08. Retrieved 2012-03-21.
- ^ N/u, South Africa
- ^ Nigel Crawhall's Facebook page, 3 March 2012
- ^ Nigel Crawhall's Facebook page, 3 March 2012
- ^ Nigel Crawhall's Facebook page, 3 March 2012
- ^ Nigel Crawhall's Facebook page, 3 March 2012
- ^ Ouma |Una Rooi - video clip, "The last speakers"