disruptive dreamers: A Conversation with Yvette le Fleur

As a young girl growing up in the Olifants River in the province of the Western Cape in South Africa, Yvette le Fleur always knew who she was. Born into the Griqua Nation, a group descended from the indigenous Khoe people of southern Africa, she was told that her ancestors were some of the first to traverse the land, devising customs, practices, and ways of living synced to the biomes that surrounded them. Guided by a rich cosmology and spirituality, they prophesized about the future, leaving behind a roadmap of predictions that would come to materialize for their successors. Like a number of indigenous communities around the world, the Griqua have been at the frontlines of colonialism, land seizure, and extraction, surviving systems that sought to exterminate them.

Galvanized by what le Fleur refers to as “Griqua Consciousness," an 18th-century precursor to the anti-colonial movements that would sweep the continent over two hundred years later, the Griqua Nation were able to retain a connection to their ancestral heritage despite the erasure of their languages, and the imposition of colonial racial identities and constructs. Yet in spite of surviving the violence of land and cultural dispossession, it is the loss indigenous ecological knowledge systems that remains a priority for le Fleur who studied environmental anthropology in university.

In the run-up to our recent New Moon Call, we talked to le Fleur about the connection between the emergence of the Griqua Nation as a response to colonialism, San and Khoe revivalist communities, land dispossession and the connection to ecological restoration, and her work as a project coordinator for the Indigenous Peoples’ of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC).

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. The article was originally published on LinkedIn on June 26, 2025.

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Project Biome (PB): Thank you so much for speaking to us Yvette.

Yvette le Fleur (YLF): Thank you for having me.

PB: At Project Biome, we're currently exploring questions around indigeneity and indigenous knowledge systems in South Africa and abroad. For the sake of our non-South African audience, could you briefly explain who the Griqua Nation is and the historical context in which they arose as a people in South Africa?

YLF: When you start any conversation about indigeneity, it’s important to recognize the complexity of it both locally and globally. The term means different things in different contexts to different people. But in terms of the Griqua Nation, I’d describe us as a self-identifying indigenous community in South Africa. At the earliest time of colonization in the early 1700s, the Griqua emerged as sort of a mixed-race people who were a product of what was happening in the then Cape Colony. You have the indigenous Khoe (pastorialist) and San (hunter-gatherer) communities, [European] settlers, [enslaved] people from parts of Asia, Madagascar, and other parts of Africa coming together under unfortunate circumstances. So the Griqua come from that mixed genetic and cultural heritage, but we retain the connection to our Khoe heritage. I'm not able to pronounce the word as my ancestors would have pronounced it, but we descend from the “Grigriqua” who were known to have lived in what is now Piketberg all the way up to the Olifants River, where originally I am from. So the Grigriqua would have lived in close proximity to other [indigenous] groups like the Namaqua in the areas that are now considered the Western and Northern Cape. And that is where the admixture happened. But essentially, you have a group of people who were pushed out of these areas because they were escaping colonialism. According to our oral history, we were the first Voortrekkers (descendants of Dutch and French settlers who migrated to the South African interior to escape British colonialism). As the colonial borders expanded, we kept being pushed and pushed.

PB: It’s interesting to see how these migrations not only shift the lines of our DNA, but have always been part of our shared humanity. Whether it’s escaping colonial rule, searching for greener pastures, or being driven by curiosity, there is a sense of constant movement and adaptation.

YLF: Absolutely. Today you have a place called Griqua Town in what was previously Griqualand-West. You have places like Free-State, Colesburg where my ancestors settled for quite a long time. I am a direct descendant of Adam Kok III, and other leaders from the Griqua chieftaincies. When it comes to the Griqua, you’re dealing with people that were called bastards during colonial times. They were framed as illegitimate people because they were a mixture of different things. So from the word bastard comes a shift where our people adopt the name of Griqua to cement their collective sense of remembering who we are and where we come from. And this is around the mid-to-late-1700s, going on to the 1800s. You have these people who say, “we’re not bastards, we’re illegitimate. We are a people. And we call ourselves Griqua.” We’re an amalgamation of different genetic and cultural heritages coming together under the name Griqua. There is a lot of nuance and complexity to Griqua [identity] because it was essentially formed and shaped by colonialism. In other words, the Griqua emerged as a response to colonialism. In fact, I see the Griqua as one of the early anti-colonial movements [in South Africa].

PB: That’s an interesting framing of Griqua resistance.

YLF: I always say that when you talk about the Griqua, you have to talk about us as a political movement. I call it “Griqua Consciousness” because in a world that wanted us to forget, our ancestors were tasked with remembering. They had to let go of many things, forcibly removed from who they were. I'm really glad [Project Biome] is making this connection between indigeneity and ecology because when I think about my ancestors, they were violently removed and dispossessed from their land. A pain that was never healed. And from an anthropological perspective, when you’re removed from your land, it alienates you from your culture, language, and values. It also alienates you from indigenous ecological knowledge because without the land, you cannot practice your culture, you cannot practice your knowledge. And my people have been greatly alienated from the relationships they've had with the land and with nature. I've read about how hard my ancestors fought not to become Christianized because there was a huge project of sending missionaries into Griqua communities. But thankfully, over the generations from colonialism to apartheid, we've continued to hold that Griqua consciousness despite needing to assimilate. We’re very spiritual people and we believe our ancestors somehow follow the calling that we have to remember. And we believe today we are in that space of being called to remember. My ancestors always spoke about tomorrow, this is for tomorrow, we're doing this for tomorrow. And we believe today is the tomorrow they spoke about, where we will have to rebuild from the flame we've tried to keep alive.

PB: It’s fascinating how indigenous communities, whether through cosmology or spirituality, always gestured towards the future. And you mentioned the ongoing need to maintain and preserve Griqua consciousness. How have the Griqua maintained that political consciousness through so much turmoil and uncertainty? You mentioned oral history. How do you maintain that consciousness while dealing with the violence of all these extractive political projects and systems?

YLF: When it comes to the Griqua people, you will immediately hear the utmost respect and reverence for our ancestors. You’ll often hear people say, and saying it in English doesn’t capture the full meaning, “we walk in the bloody footsteps of our ancestors.” When colonialism wanted to pressure them into letting go of who they were, they had to fight back. They had to make so many sacrifices. They had to fight to maintain the little bit that we had and to fight to maintain that memory. When it was inconvenient to be Griqua, they chose to hold onto what they had regardless of the consequences that came with that. They could have easily slipped into being Colored (a generationally mixed race descendants of European settlers, San and Khoe communities, enslaved people from South East Asia, and black South Africans) which isn’t a bad thing. I understand the violence that colonialism impacted on so many other peoples. But those stories of resistance were always carried down to us. We were always told of the sacrifices [our ancestors] had to make. For example, we have this hymn that tells us that we came up under Adam Kok III and it names all of our leaders over time. It calls all the people who have protected the Griqua people over the generations.

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We have this saying among the Griqua that you get stories through your mother's milk. We have these songs that call out our ancestors and our journey because so many of the stories we are raised with are captured in song.

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PB: There's something to be said about the ability of First Nation peoples to retain a distinctly indigenous expression of spirituality despite practicing Judeo-Christian religions. You see these ancestral articulations of religion in a number of communities on the continent, for example. I’d like to change gears for a second. I’m aware that non-South African audiences might know about the stringent racial categorizations that have shaped, and even created, identity and culture in our country. We take for granted how violently these categories were imposed upon people and the resistance towards them—especially from the Griqua. You could talk more about how the Griqua have interfaced with Colored identity?

YLF: I wouldn't attempt to unpack Colored identity because it is so complex and requires its own lens and approach. In terms of the Griqua, my understanding is that Colored identity was a blanket label that was put on so many different people which is typical of Western systems, as well as the apartheid system regime of course. They were people made up of enslaved South East Asia, different parts of Africa, Madagascar and Mauritius, indentured laborers, as well as European settlers who were brought to this hub of colonialism in the Cape. They intermixed through coercive and non-coercive means. Both the colonial and apartheid government wanted to put a label on this amalgamation of different people. They started classifying those who they couldn't classify under this one banner, ignoring the fact that these were people with histories. The Griqua people were classified under the Colored category.

But if you look at identity documents, there was this number system in the ID. And I don't remember the specific number for Griqua people, but even then, they were recognized as a distinct group under the Colored category. And I believe that has a lot to do with the advocacy of my ancestors. Obviously there is a shared history among Colored people. But even when I was growing up, my friends knew when I was going off to do a “Griqua thing.” I’d often take my friends to our sacred sites and they would know that this is something that Yvette does. It was something that makes us distinct within this broader racial category that was imposed on us.

Project Biome: It's extraordinary that your ancestors were able to maintain a political consciousness under such repressive systems. You mentioned sacred sites, and it reminded me of the article you wrote for the Natural Justice website in 2016 on the pilgrimage of the Griqua to Ratelgat, one of your sacred farms in the Western Cape. Could you describe the significance of Ratelgat to the Griqua Nation?

Yvette le Fleur: The Griqua have a deep belief in God and the greatness of God. We are strong believers in prophecy and we believe that God was able to speak to our Paramount Chief Andrew Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur I, the founder of the Griqua National Conference (GNC) and other leaders like Adam Kok III. Le Fleur was both a strong political and spiritual leader who saw our struggle as a mixture of both. We believed that he received a prophecy from God who showed him a vision of this place and he walked until he found it. And the place that he found was Ratelgat. And you'll see on official documentation, it's called Luiperdskop. But as Griqua people, we call it Ratelgat because le Fleur was very thirsty and asked God to show him the waterhole. A honey badger came along and he brought him to a watering hole where he was able to quench his thirst. This is how we knew that this piece of land was meant for the Griqua, that it had to be kept sacred.

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When my ancestors lived in Ratelgat, it was very dry and isolated. But it's still a very ecologically important biome with critical indigenous plants.

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It was hard for them to survive in those arid conditions so they weren't able to develop the land. Eventually, they've moved quite a bit because of insecure tenure. However, we believe that God told le Fleur not to worry because the Griqua would return to the land and not pay a penny for it. Fast forward to 1999, we were able to get the land back through the Restitution of Land Rights Act 1994, and we didn't pay for it because it was bought for us. It was absolutely remarkable and there are so many other stories like that in our Griqua mythology and cosmology. Our ancestors knew something, made decisions based on it, and they just came true. So that's why Ratelgat is so important to us. It’s the place we go to give thanks to God for holding us as a people and guiding our ancestors. As Griqua, we have a number of sacred sites in various parts of the country. We go back to those sites and ask God to take care of us, return the land to us, and give us back our dignity. This is an ancestral thing that gets passed down from generation to generation where my ancestors spoke to God and the revelations came to them. They were carried over to us in oral history. We're seeing the things come to pass that they were talking about. This is where our deep spirituality comes from.

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We’re always invested in tomorrow. I also think it links to my interest in climate change and ecological restoration. How do we keep the flame going for tomorrow?

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PB: You mentioned ecological restoration and how the future is linked to the state of the Earth for you. I'm curious how the Griqua relate to the biodiversity of the land from a spiritual, ecological, medicinal and food systems perspective? I think indigenous cultures had a profound grasp of this interweaving relationship within the ecosystem around them. Could you speak to that a bit?

YLF: This brings me to something that I am struggling with at the moment. I think Griqua spirituality was able to still linger despite the violence of colonialism. Spirituality was connected to the land. The return of land represented the importance of sovereignty and the ability to govern ourselves. But in terms of the indigenous ecological knowledge and how it relates to indigenous plants, I think we have become largely Westernized in that regard. You have communities like the Nama recognizing the value of medicinal plants and foods. However, the truth is that we have largely become more dependent Western medicine and food systems. The dispossession of land forced us to assimilate into “modern-day society” so today, the Griqua, like most people, don’t know where our food, clothing, and medicine comes from.

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Our ancestors didn't want to leave Nature. They didn't want to leave their way of life. It was forcefully removed from them. We’ve been dislocated from that process. In other words, we may remember our ancestors [as a Griqua], but making those ecological connections remains a challenge that I’m grappling with in my community.

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I've tried to talk to people about climate change but it’s difficult to get the message across. It's not easy to explain to people.

PB: Yes, because in part, it's requires a seismic mindset shift, right?

YLF: Precisely. And for me personally, I studied environmental anthropology then biodiversity conservation. Through my own studies, I understood that if biodiversity is so central to maintaining life on Earth, I need to know more about how it affects my community and humanity as a whole. When I was able to make the connection between climate change, biodiversity loss, and the fact that when [the Griqua] were removed from the land, I realized we were alienated from a wealth of indigenous ecological knowledge. We knew how to live lightly off the land, but those practices were stripped from us. It renewed my desire to get the land back.

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When I look at [Project Biome], I resonate with the idea that we cannot have ecological restoration without restoring humans back to Nature.

Now I’m not sure what that looks like, but those are the questions we have to solve collectively.

PB: As you mentioned, there were several communities who understood this innately. But I want to ask about the difficulty in relaying this message to our own community. I think we’re exploring these questions ourselves. How do you go about doing this conscious raising?

YLF: I've tried informal ways of doing it, but it has been very difficult. It took a concerted effort and curiosity for me to arrive at this point. It didn’t happen overnight despite my ancestral connection to this kind of ecological knowledge. It took years of studying and years of research. It wouldn’t be fair for me to expect people to quickly make the connection between historical dispossession and current crises we find ourselves in.  The world is struggling with it. I'm currently involved with an organization that has triggered my interest in popular education. This might be something that was used as a vehicle during previous struggles. I think that the struggle we're in right now calls for us to draw upon those methods. But it's still something I’m figuring out how to use.

PB: I was hoping we could discuss some of your work with the Indigenous Peoples’ of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC). Could you explain what IPACC is and their role in supporting indigenous communities on the African continent?

YLF: IPACC is an intercontinental organisation that was formally registered in 1997. I’ll explore its origins from a South African lens. So after [democracy in] 1994, there was a San and Khoe revival or resurgence. People from those communities came together to unpack how much the system had impacted them. But democracy triggers this consciousness for them to speak about indigenous issues at an international level like the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

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Interestingly, the Griqua had been advocating for themselves internationally before. There was even a time where we were going to the League of Nations.

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So after 1994, the Griqua had started talking to President Nelson Mandela and the newly established South African government about the Constitution. We said that while individual rights are important, we also need to speak about our collective rights as people. Our history and sovereignty had yet to be recognized within the country. People thought it had completely died. People thought we were an extinct people.

So the Griqua got together with other indigenous groups like the San and Khoe, and decided to go to the United Nations to assert our rights. When we were there, we met with various other indigenous peoples from the continent who had a similar struggle to us—being small minorities in their country, assimilating in the name of modernity and development and so on. What we learned when we went to Geneva was that other peoples across the world, especially in the Americas, were very organized. That wasn’t the case for the African continent. We came there with different voices without knowing about one another so that is where the need to establish a coordinating committee for the indigenous people of Africa came from. Now when we go to these international platforms, we go there in a coordinated way. IPACC was one of those early organizations that facilitated that role to bring indigenous peoples across the continent together in a coordinated manner and to organize for them to go to these spaces through the secretariat.

Right now, IPACC, like a lot of organizations, is struggling with funding. A few years ago, we received funding from USAID to start a three-year project to mobilize San and Khoe communities in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa back in 2023. It was part of a pilot program that emanated from a global policy USAID implemented on indigenous people. We were able to bring together communities that hadn’t seen each other in a long time. People were able to meet, hold conferences again, and structure themselves after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were incredible things that can come forward just from people sitting around the same table and bouncing ideas off of one another. We were able to come to terms with where we are now, where we were in the past, where we are heading in the future. But was halted when USAID funding was cut. Suddenly, we were in a bad position and we had to close the office that was running that project. We started looking for the funding, but we've not been successful. Currently, we had to close our IPACC offices here in Cape Town [South Africa] just to give context on where we are at.

PB: I’m sorry to hear that. I think this has long been a problem in the nonprofit sector. How do you source funding and do we need an overhaul of the funding models that have become par the course in this space?

YLF: I’m currently reading a book that has the line, “the revolution will not be funded.” I think we need to reconceptualize how we go about liberation.

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Who is going to invest in people reconnecting with the land? If it's not in the interest of the system, who is going to fund that? We will have to fight for it.

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And how do we go about doing that without capital? How do we do it in a sustainable manner that isn't constantly disrupted by political shifts, or who is in power? So how do we build agency and sovereignty within our struggles? That is high on my mind. I wish there were more third spaces to talk around this. As African people, as people who emerged from and in response to colonialism, we've been depending so long on the Global North to fund our healing. And look how fragile that model is? There's so many things going on, but our reality remains the same. In some ways, I look back at how our ancestors fought their struggles and we can learn a lot from them in terms of how to mobilize and resist. If we venture beyond the NGO complex, as they call it, how do we fight back? So a lot of thought needs to go into that, I think.

PB: I think that’s a lovely note to end on. Thank you so much for your time, Yvette.

YLF: Thank you.

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