fisherchild.org.za

About Traci Kwaai

Traci is a sixth generation Kalk Bay Fisher Child. She is a story keeper, decolonial ocean historian, social and ecological activist. Her work explores belonging and community through the voices of local fisher and other displaced Kalk Bay communities.

By engaging with both elders and youth, Kwaai seeks to weave together the rich tapestry of histories, memories and experiences that define Kalk Bay, a fishing village with rich and complex cultural roots.

The Walk of Remembrance

The Walk of Remembrance resurfaces and remembers the rich indigenous history of the Kalk Bay community and the marginalisation of their fishing and seafaring cultures.

It powerfully and painfully remembers the erased, silenced, displaced, people and memories of False Bay’s indigenous ocean communities of, whose histories are knotted and woven into stretched memories that span 300 years.

From Khoi through to when sea-faring, fluent ocean and ocean fluent indigenous people from Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, India , East Africa and deserters from the Philippines who fell under Dutch and British rule to the contemporary struggles of small scale fishers struggling under haunted apartheid legacies, rampant blue
economy expansions and fortress conservation.

By engaging with both elders and youth, Kwaai seeks to weave together the rich tapestry of histories, memories and experiences that define Kalk Bay, a fishing village with rich and complex cultural roots.