The Restorative Genius of Zambian Women

In the British Museum sits a headdress that once belonged to the Nawaitwika, a chieftainess of the Namwanga people. Displayed simply as an artefact, it is stripped of its story—how the role of Nawaitwika emerged when colonial borders divided our people, how her leadership sustained our communities and how the headdress embodies not just authority but our ways of knowing and being. This silence around African women’s power and cultural knowledge is not unique to my people’s heritage. Across museums and institutions worldwide, Western frameworks continue to shape how African women’s stories are told or are left untold. While Western feminism has traditionally focused on achieving equality between men and women through individual rights, this framework, though crucial, fails to address how colonialism destroyed indigenous cultures and collective communities. This erasure matters for two key reasons: human identity forms through cultural relationships, and when cultures are erased, we lose essential frameworks for understanding ourselves.