SNEAKPEAK: These are the first images from an ongoing long-term project. Th project started with the goats on St. Eustatius and Saba. This documentary component will continue with a conceptual translation, created in Europe. Come back if you're curious for more or want to discover what happens next.

 

Whose land is it?

In early 2024, I visited the islands of Sint Eustatius and Saba. Sint Eustatius has an estimated 12,000 goats and 3,000 people. An imbalance. The goats are eating away the vegetation, the cliffs are crumbling. The economy is faltering. The Dutch government is allocating 19 million euros to renovate the cliffs, but the goats must go. Not everyone agrees.

On neighboring Saba, a goat management program has made the island virtually goat-free after the arrival of Dutch hunters. Nature is recovering, but the method is provoking resistance. The fact that outsiders are telling local hunters how things should be done is jarring. Do they have the right to dictate the law to others?

Wherever humans and animals live together, clashes arise. But who gets to determine what that coexistence looks like? Do people have the right to control animals? Do people have the right to control each other?

 

The Right to Others

Who decides what belongs somewhere and what doesn't? A border is never just a border. Is a goat a pest or an inhabitant? Who decides? Is a human a custodian or an intruder? At what point does something belong to someone?

The islands are small, but the question is big. This isn't just about goats and hunters, about plants and cliffs. This is about power and ownership, about control and conflict. About how people define their space and subject others—human or animal—to it.

The goats didn't come here themselves. They were brought, just like the laws that now remove them. If you look long enough, the pattern is the same everywhere: first the other is useful, then the other is a problem. But who is "the other"? The goats on the cliffs? The hunters from the Netherlands? The islanders who are denied authority over their own land?

Nature is recovering on Saba. But who does that nature belong to? Who is that recovery for? If we chase aw

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This project is funded by Fonds Anna Cornelis ​

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