ABSTRACT
In the world envisioned by Nature Conservation, Bushmen would be allowed to remain, provided that they "hunted and gathered traditionally." The Bushmen, more than any other human grouping in the annals of academic endeavor, have been made a scientific commodity. In Namibia most Bushmen are to be found in the region known to the white colonizers and some blacks as the Omaheke, a vast, flat, seemingly monotonous, stoneless expanse covering northeastern Namibia. The Bushmen were remarkably inarticulate, perhaps the most damning evidence of their powerlessness. Reigning settler ideology, supported by science, at that time defined Bushmen as "untamable" and believed it was only a matter of time before Bushmen inevitably became extinct. The crass use of names and icons to sustain the symbolic dominance of Bushmen is a phenomenon worthy of further analysis. The role of scientists as popularizers of the Bushmen stereotype is complex and controversial.
