Danielle Smith is the founder and director of Sandblast. She has an MA in Anthropology and is fluent in Spanish, French and Arabic and Hassaniya, the spoken Saharawi dialect. Danielle has worked extensively as a freelance documentary photographer and filmmaker and was associate producer for a BBC2 Correspondent program on Western Sahara in 1998. Her award-winning film on the Saharawis, ‘Beat of Distant Hearts’, has featured in festivals in Europe, Africa and the US.

Founding an arts and human rights charity was inspired by numerous visits to the refugee camps, living with and among the Saharawi refugees and recognising the rich culture of the Saharawi people. This is her story:

“The seeds of Sandblast were sown when I first visited the Saharawi refugee camps in the summer of 1991 – the same year the refugees thought they would finally return to their homeland of Western Sahara, after 16 years of war. Their leaders had signed a cease-fire agreement with Morocco to end the conflict by a self-determination referendum and the UN was making plans to organize this in early 1992. So when I arrived I was greeted with a pervasive mood of jubilation mixed in with anxiety.

The refugee population was spread out in four large camps near the remote Algerian  town of Tindouf. When I got off the plane I was left with no doubt that I had come to the hottest place on earth. Under the crushing weight of the heat, I  surveyed the endless stretches of barren desert around me and kept wondering how a community, of nearly 200,000 people, had been able to survive in this inhuman patch of the planet.

I am not the first visitor to be struck by the extreme contrast between that relentlessly harsh environment and the warmth and hospitality you find within Saharawi tents and homes. The women, who largely run the camps, are impressive in every way. They are powerful, loving and highly organized and seem to defy the prevailing stereotypes of Arab and Muslim women. During my first visit I met Jira Bulahe, head of international relations for the Saharawi women’s Union in the camps. She asked if I could help organize for a group of Saharawi women to come to the US on a speaking tour. I was living in the US at the time and, I was visiting the camps to see what kind of support I could offer, so this was a request I could not refuse, even though I had no idea where to start. In the end, it was not my own inexperience that was the biggest challenge. Nobody in the US had heard of the Saharawis. Even in government and academic circles, their plight was little known. It was then that I realised just how invisible the Saharawi were, and felt even more keenly that I should do what I could to help them have a voice.

Sandblast grew out of the 14-year-long relationship that I have developed with the Saharawi refugee community since that year. I returned to the camps time and again, twice to teach English, other times to make documentaries and photo-essays, and each time I learnt about the Saharawis..With each visit it became clearer that culture and identity lay at the heart of their struggle. Their struggle was a fundamental quest for recognition as a people, with a distinct history and way of life. Their more powerful neighbour had taken over their land and was attempting to systematically erase their existence, their right to express themselves and be Saharawis. This theme was reinforced over and over in their songs, in their poetry, in their stories, many of which impressed on me their spirit, hopes and determination. It was through their music in particular that I came to understand the power of the arts to give voice and affirm ones existence-a power that seemed to defy the need to speak the same language.

This realization and the frequent pleas I received from Saharawis for a voice, for greater visibility, became the inspiration for Sandblast’s work.”