Country

Kenya

agnes

Mon, 03/24/2025 – 15:36

Issues

Human Rights
Languages and Cultures

Program

5

Main Image

By Lucas Kasosi (Maasai, CS Intern)

If cities had ghosts, Nairobi would be haunted by the whispers of those it displaced. Beneath its glass towers and frantic highways lies a past rarely acknowledged: a history of forced removals, treaties signed under duress, and land slipping through Maasai hands like water.

The city’s name, Enkare Nairobi, means “place of cool waters” in the Maa language, a testament to the once pristine rivers and pastures where the Maasai brought their cattle. However, in 1899, British settlers saw opportunity instead of heritage. They pushed the Maasai out, built a railway depot, and transformed Nairobi into a capital city. Today, the Maasai are still being pushed aside, not by settlers in pith helmets, but by developers, conservationists, and politicians who see their land as prime real estate.

But on this day, the Maasai were back, not as relics of the past, but as its authors.

Inside the Serena Hotel, a historic gathering took place. Indigenous Maasai leaders from Kenya and Tanzania, elders adorned in shúkàs, young intellectuals armed with smartphones and urgency, and women whose beadwork told stories older than colonial borders all convened for the launch of “Decolonizing Maasai History: A Path to Indigenous African Futures,” co-authored by Meitamei Olol Dapash and Mary Poole.

This was no ordinary book launch. As Governor Joseph Ole Lenku declared, it was “a milestone in the journey of the Maa Nation reclaiming its rightful space in Kenya and in the world.”

Kamurar Maasai dancer
 

Meitamei Olol Dapash: A Life of Resistance

If there is one thing Meitamei Olol Dapash understands, it is struggle. For over three decades, he has been at the forefront of the Maasai movement for land rights, education, and environmental justice. As the founder of the Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition (MERC), he has spent his life advocating for Indigenous sovereignty, often at great personal risk.

“We wrote this book with one intention: to reclaim our history from colonized accounts,” Meitamei stated. “For too long, our stories have been told by outsiders, people who have never even set foot in this country. And once they write our history, they copyright it, they patent it, and it no longer belongs to us.”

Professor Meitamei Oldapash during the launch.

He spoke of the sixteen-year journey to bring this book to life, years of research, of traveling across Maasailand, of collecting oral histories that had been dismissed by Western academia.

“We have enough intellectuals. We have enough activists. We have lawyers, doctors, professors, storytellers. We no longer need to be patronized. What we need is genuine partnership.”

Then, with a solemnity that silenced the room, he added:

“You know I’ll die for the Maasai people. That’s a fact.”

Rewriting the Story In Our Own Words

For generations, history has been a weapon wielded against the Maasai. Colonial narratives painted them as willing participants in their own dispossession, as a people too primitive to deserve their land. Even today, Kenya’s National Museum still displays plaques falsely claiming the Maasai collaborated with the British.

“We were just at the National Museum the other day,” Mary Poole recounted. “There is still a plaque that insists the Maasai were British collaborators. But when you look at the actual evidence, even British records, that story falls apart. The truth is, the Maasai resisted, and they resisted fiercely.”

Mary Poole, A Co-author during the launch of the book

Mary Poole, an American historian who has spent decades working alongside Meitamei and other Maasai leaders, reflected on why they took on this monumental task.

“We knew we had to write this book to expose the false narratives that have shaped public perception for over a century. We subjected every claim in this book to immense scrutiny, because we knew we would face resistance. But we stand by it. Every word.”

Governor Lenku, speaking as the official Maa spokesperson, drove the point home.

“Let it go on record that the Maa Nation were never collaborators,” he said firmly. “For too long, others have spoken for us, rewritten our past, and dictated our future. But today, we take our history back.”

Mau Narok, Laikipia, and the Unfinished Fight for Land

The book does not just revisit history; it lays bare the unfinished struggle for land.

Kamurar Maasai, an Indigenous artist during the launch

One of the most harrowing chapters details the fight for Mau Narok, a verdant region that once served as a crucial drought reserve for the Maasai. In 1911, British settlers violently expelled them, paving the way for large-scale commercial agriculture.

“Our ancestors did not sell their land,” Meitamei said. “They were betrayed. And that betrayal did not end in 1904. It continued after independence. It continues today.”

In 2010, Meitamei and 52 Maasai petitioners filed a lawsuit demanding the return of 30,000 acres of Mau Narok land. The Kenyan government responded with violence, arrests, and the assassination of land rights activist Moses Ole Mpoe.

But the past is not past. As The Battle for Laikipia, a newly released documentary, shows, Maasai and Samburu herders in Laikipia are still fighting for their ancestral lands. European settler-descendants control vast ranches and conservancies, fencing off water sources and grazing lands, while pastoralists are labeled “trespassers.”

“Laikipia is not an isolated case,” an elder at the launch said. “It is Mau Narok. It is Amboseli. It is the same story, repeated over and over.”

Lenku’s voice carried a mix of frustration and defiance.

“Every time a government comes to power, the first thing they do is take a piece of Maasai land. And yet, despite everything, we remain the community with the biggest land in this country. Imagine if we had not been stolen from?”

Kajiado Governor and Maa Spokesperson H.E. Joseph Ole Lenku
 

Then, speaking of Amboseli, he grew even more forceful.

“Amboseli was never given away. There is no record anywhere that says the Maasai surrendered it. Yet today, we are being asked to ‘reclaim’ what was never lost. How do you reclaim what is already yours?”

A Future Rooted in Justice

The launch of “Decolonizing Maasai History” was more than a literary event, it was a declaration of intent.

“The Maa Nation is reaching a critical mass,” Lenku said. “More of us are educated. And we will use that education to correct the lies, to write our own history, to take back what is ours.”

Mary Poole echoed this sentiment.

“For history to be just, it must be told by those who lived it,” she said. “This book is just the beginning.”

As the evening drew to a close, an elder stood, his voice steady despite his years.

“We have always been told to move, move from our land, move with the cattle, move aside for others. But I say today: we will not move. The Maasai are here to stay.”

Applause. Ululations. A murmuring of history being reclaimed.

Outside, the neon-lit skyline of Nairobi stretched into the night. A city built on stolen land, now witnessing its original owners refusing to be erased.

This was not just history being reclaimed.

This was the future being rewritten.

Top image: From left Meitamei Olol Dapash, Maa spokesperson, Governor Joseph Ole Lenku, and Mary Poole.

All photos by Lucas Kasosi, Cultural Survival.