Roy Sesana
(Tobee Tcori)

(c. 1942-)

Botswana Bushman Activist
2005 Right Livelihood Award Winner

birthdate: ?
birthplace:
Molapo, Botswana

Roy Sesana is a Bushman activist from Botswana who co-founded the First People of Kalahari in 1991 to advocate for the Bushmen to be allowed to remain on their ancestral lands to practice their traditional way of life. The government of Botswana wanted to relocate the Bushmen out of what has now become a game reserve. Roy Sesana traveled to Europe and the United States to meet with government and United Nations officials in the hope of pressuring the Botswana government to allow the Bushmen to remain on their lands. Despite international appeals, the Bushmen were evicted in 2002. The Bushmen took the government of Botswana to court, and after the longest-running trial in Botswana history, in December 2006 the Botswana High Court ruled in favor of the Bushmen, declaring that the government had illegally tried to evict them from their ancestral lands. This landmark decision is a symbolic and practical victory for indigenous people all around the world who are facing similar treatment from their own nations' governments. In 2005, Roy Sesana and the First People of the Kalahari received the Right Livelihood Award (often called the Alternative Nobel Prize) "… for resolute resistance against eviction from their ancestral lands, and for upholding the right to their traditional way of life."

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