This exceptional documentary series covers 50 years in the lives of a group of Ju/’hoansi — Bushmen of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari desert in what is now Namibia. The first part, "A Far Country," is a complex personal narrative that interrelates the perceptions of the filmmaker, John Marshall (an American whose father, a retired Raytheon executive, first took him to the region in 1951), with stories told him by his Ju/’hoansi friends. It provides an excellent introduction to the history and customs of Ju/’hoansi, traditional hunter-gatherers for whom the colonization of southwest Africa brought extermination, dispossession, and forced labor. The shocking final chapter, "Death by Myth," traces the recent decline of these people under the European and American administrators of the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation. The foundation’s "conservationist" stewardship emphasizes income from tourism; according to Marshall, the Ju/’hoansi have received protected status but not the ability to create a sustainable economy. Exposing the arrogance, ignorance, and fear of the foreign conservators (with their gentle gray vocabulary and their tangled disclaimers), "Death by Myth" is lucid, relentless, and passionate.